Spatial thinking research has informed geoscience education research, yet current theoretical frameworks face growing empirical and practical challenges. In this presentation, we will consider three issues hindering spatial thinking research in the geosciences, especially as related to the Newcombe and Shipley (2014) typology: 1) limited empirical support for the 2 x 2 partitioning of spatial thinking types; 2) challenges classifying spatial thinking with cognitive strategies rather than geoscience problem solving; and 3) the inadequacy of existing frameworks to describe spatial thinking in fluid-Earth science disciplines. In response to these challenges, we propose geoscience education research include an ecological approach to spatial thinking that focuses on how geoscientists attend to and use information available in the environment. We will discuss how this approach reframes spatial thinking research from identifying the spatial skills necessary for success in the geosciences to understanding what environmental information geoscientists use to solve geoscience problems and how we can best guide students to recognize this information. We argue that this bottom-up, task-centered perspective can complement existing frameworks and offer new directions for both research and instruction across the full breadth of geoscience disciplines.