TU Dublin Leads €4 Million EU Research Network to Transform STEM Education Through Spatial Thinking
TU Dublin has announced the successful completion of SellSTEM (Spatially Enhanced Learning Linked to STEM), a Europe wide research initiative designed to revolutionise how spatial ability is understood and developed in education systems. The four year project (Jan 2021–Dec 2024), funded through the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie programme, brought together 15 PhD researchers, 10 universities, and eight non-academic partners. TU Dublin coordinated the €4.03 million network.
SellSTEM was established to train a new generation of researchers capable of addressing two critical issues in Europe’s STEM landscape: low enrolment and continued gender imbalance. The consortium focused on one key factor shown to influence STEM success: spatial ability, the capacity to understand and manipulate shapes, objects and spatial relationships.
Fifteen doctoral researchers were recruited across Europe and trained to collect spatial ability data from children, evaluate their academic trajectories and explore how gender, region and socioeconomic status shape outcomes. The researchers also investigated how spatial ability can be enhanced at school through online and tactile learning, maker-space activities, integrated classroom tasks and teacher driven innovations.
The team worked closely with teachers and teacher educators to identify barriers to spatial learning, producing sustainable solutions that will impact classrooms long after the project’s completion. Researchers evaluated national education policies and curriculum frameworks to ensure they reflect the latest cognitive and developmental science.
The project ultimately delivered new policy recommendations, curriculum proposals and teacher resources—including guides for assessing spatial ability and age-specific classroom activities with particular emphasis on supporting girls’ spatial development.
Partners spanned 10 universities: TU Dublin (Lead Partner), Bangor University, Delft University of Technology, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Leiden University, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Universität Regensburg, Universität Salzburg, University of Koblenz-Landau and the University of Latvia.
Non-academic partners were VHTO (gender in STEM NGO in the Netherlands), Waag Fablab (makerspace learning in the Netherlands), the Ada Lovelace Project (promoting STEM to girls in Germany), Marino Institute of Technology, Monaghan Education Centre, SAP, de Galan Training and MicroSoft DreamSpace (a STEM outeach centre in Dublin).
SellSTEM’s multidisciplinary approach brought together linguists, psychologists, industrial designers, engineers, teacher educators and mathematicians, all united by a shared interest in spatial cognition. Their projects addressed topics such as:
- How gender stereotype threat can impact spatial ability
- spatial language use in classrooms to develop spatial ability
- links between working memory and mathematics performance
- online learning for spatial reasoning (including the RIF spatial learning platform)
- spatial thinking in STEM outreach
- teacher training for spatial development
- curriculum critiques across Europe
- Japanese lesson study as a form of teacher PD for embedding spatial learning
- Frameworks for spatial instruction in makerspaces
SellSTEM achieved significant impact, with:
- 1,000 teachers engaged in workshops (600 in person, 400 online),
- 400 children participating directly in SellSTEM activities,
- 2,000 Irish Transition Year students completing the Developing Spatial Thinking course delivered by SellSTEM-trained teachers.
The consortium produced approximately 80 conference papers, 20 journal articles and a special issue in Frontiers in Education. In September 2024, TU Dublin hosted Spatial Cognition 2024, welcoming 80 international delegates and further strengthening Europe’s leadership in this emerging field.
SellSTEM also supported researcher career development. Many PhD candidates have completed their degrees and secured academic posts. Notably, a researcher from the University of Salzburg who conducted fieldwork in Dublin now works at Ireland’s Education Research Centre, contributing to preparations for TIMSS 2027, a powerful example of the mobility and excellence that MSCA funding aims to promote.
Project Lead and Lecturer in School Of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, TU Dublin, Gavin Duffy said:
MSCA Doctoral Networks is an extremely competitive funding call, so it was a major achievement for our proposal to get funded. With the support of TU Dublin HR, all 15 PhD students were recruited on time despite the challenges presented by Covid-19 in 2021. This allowed the SellSTEM research and training programme to start on time… It was a highly multidisciplinary team… and supported by several non-academic partners.
TU Dublin’s Research Support Services played a central role from application to close-out.
Research Support Services (RSS) had the opportunity to support SellSTEM from the initial application stage through to project completion. The award-winning proposal was developed in collaboration with our former Pre-Award colleague, Dr Amir Tabakovic, who guided the submission process. Over the lifetime of the project, Aideen O’Byrne and the Post Award team worked closely with Gavin, when needed, to ensure smooth research management and project coordination. This included liaising with Research Finance and Research Contracts to manage partner funding, drafting and executing collaborative agreements, and handling amendments. As the project ended, Gavin also benefited from Post Award’s research management support service.
SellSTEM has significantly advanced Europe’s capability in spatial cognition research and its application in classrooms. It has influenced policy, empowered teachers, provided new educational resources and opened a vital research field with direct relevance to Europe’s STEM workforce of the future.
For more information, visit sellstem.eu