Spatial thinking is teachable — and schools mostly skip it

Correct: B — Treated as a teachable competency that schools generally neglect

Newcombe (2010) synthesized developmental and educational evidence to argue that spatial thinking is a foundational competency for STEM, geography, and design — yet receives little explicit attention in standard curricula. She catalogued effective spatial-training approaches (gestures, sketching, block play, mapping activities, mental-rotation tasks) and called for sustained, age-graded spatial instruction throughout schooling. The piece became a touchstone for the U.S. National Science Foundation's Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center program and helped legitimize spatial training as a curricular target rather than an extracurricular accident.