Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics domains draw heavily on spatial reasoning (NRC, 2006). One particular science thought to be especially spatially-complex is astronomy. Understanding astronomy requires using a "space-based perspective" to explain phenomena we see from an "Earth-based perspective." That is, it requires using a physical or virtual model of the Earth, Sun, and Moon to explain apparent motions of celestial objects, such as day/night cycles (Plummer, Wasko, & Slagle, 2011). Thus, spatial perspective-taking skills (i.e., recognizing a scene or an array of objects from various vantage points) are hypothesized to be particularly important for astronomy learning. Children experience and learn about celestial motion through their everyday experiences as well as through formal and informal education. Furthermore, young children struggle with perspective-taking and it is not until around 8- to 9-years that children are able to infer the view from complex perspectives other than their own 'self' or 'ego' perspective (Piaget & Inhelder, 1957). Children's perspective-taking skills positively correlate to children's understanding of celestial motion (Plummer, Bower, & Liben, 2016). However, it is still unclear whether having high perspective-taking skills causally facilitates understanding. The purpose of the current study was to provide 8- to 9-year-olds experience with perspective-taking activities prior to teaching them about celestial motion to see if the perspective-taking instruction would facilitate children's understanding of astronomical phenomena. An experimental group participated in activities that involved changing viewing positions and motions in large, outdoor and in-room-size environments. The lessons were domain-general, that is, they were devoid of explicit astronomy content. A control group participated in other activities in the same space for the same amount of time, but these activities did not include explicit perspective-taking instruction. Before and after training, all children were given a general perspective-taking task ("circles") and a multiple-choice astronomy test. All children were also given instruction in astronomy and participated in an interview about astronomy at post-test. Three transfer perspective-taking tasks were also given at the immediate post-test session to examine the impact of training on perspective-taking skills more generally. One-week later, children were again given the circles task and astronomy test. These served as a delayed post-test to test for retention or consolidation of learning. Results indicate that the perspective-taking training did facilitate understanding of celestial motion as assessed by the astronomy interview, although not as assessed by the multiple-choice astronomy test. The training also significantly increased performance on the circles perspective-taking tests at both immediate and delayed (one-week) sessions. There was, however, no main effect of training on success on the other three perspective-taking tasks. Performance on the outdoor map task interacted with condition and gender such that within girls (but not boys), there was significantly better performance in the control than the experimental group. Performance during training (experimental group only) and the child's ability to explicitly verbalize a connection between the training activities and the astronomy instruction were examined as were other predictors of astronomy understanding. Overall, the domain-general perspective-taking intervention increased children's perspective-taking skills and facilitated their understanding of celestial motion as assessed through scripted interviews. Although additional research is needed, the current results suggest the potential utility of perspective-taking activities as foundational support for STEM education. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]