Personal Growth: The degree to which you are curious is correlated with your level of openness to personal growth opportunities and your capacity to connect with others. Squash Stereotypes: Since research indicates that curiosity promotes the cognitive process and leads to a greater capacity for personal development through openness to new experiences, then curiosity must also have the power to squash stereotypes.
When you are in the middle of a dispute or negotiation, it is very hard to come to a resolution without engaging in curiosity. If you become defensive and are unwilling to listen to the other person's point of view, then you are not exercising curiosity and have clogged the cognitive process. If you can approach a disagreement from a place of true curiosity, defenses are disarmed, and productive conversations become possible.
When you use curiosity to truly seek to understand another person's beliefs, then you can authentically examine your own assumptions and opinions. If you are genuinely curious, then you are truly listening and can then decide if you will stick to your beliefs or shift your convictions. For one thing, scientists have yet to determine its long-term effects. For instance, if a student's curiosity is stimulated at the beginning of a school day, will it help them better absorb information all day long?
Another thing the researchers are keen to investigate is why some people are more naturally curious than others, and which factors most influence how curious we are. For the moment, though, these findings serve as a reminder that there is no such thing as a dumb question, because as cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham notes in his book Why Don't Students Like School?
So rather than jumping straight into the answers, let's try to start students off with the sort of questions that encourage them to do their own seeking. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.
Your Brain Likes Curiosity Recently, researchers from the University of California, Davis conducted a series of experiments to discover what exactly goes on in the brain when our curiosity is aroused. So what did these experiments reveal?
Here are two of the most important findings. Curiosity prepares the brain for learning. This exploration can result from curiosity Loewenstein, ; Jirout and Klahr, and lead to active engagement in learning Saylor and Ganea, In the example given previously, the child sees that some butterflies have open wings and some have closed wings, and may be uncertain about why, leading to more careful observations that provide potential for learning. Several studies demonstrate that the presence of uncertainty or ambiguity leads to higher engagement Howard-Jones and Demetriou, and more exploration and information seeking Berlyne, ; Lowry and Johnson, ; Loewenstein, ; Litman et al.
For example, when children are shown ambiguous demonstrations for how a novel toy works, they prefer and play longer with that toy than with a new toy that was demonstrated without ambiguity Schulz and Bonawitz, Similar to ambiguity, surprising or unexpected observations can create uncertainty and lead to curiosity-driven questions or explanations through adult—child conversations Frazier et al. This curiosity can promote lasting effects; Shah et al.
More generally, curiosity can provide a remedy to boredom, giving children a goal to direct their behavior and the motivation to act on their curiosity Litman and Silvia, Gopnik et al. Children have less experience and skill in focusing their attention, and more exploration-oriented goals, resulting in more open-ended exploratory behavior but also more distraction.
For example, when 7—9-year-old children completed a discovery-learning task in a museum, curiosity was related to more efficient learning-more curious children were quicker and learned more from similar exploration than less-curious children van Schijndel et al. Although children are quite capable of using questions to express curiosity and request specific information Berlyne, ; Chin and Osborne, ; Jirout and Zimmerman, ; Kidd and Hayden, ; Luce and Hsi, , these skills can and should be strategically supported, as question asking plays a fundamental role in science and is important to develop Chouinard et al.
Indeed, the National Resource Council National Science Education Standards include question asking as the first of eight scientific and engineering practices that span all grade levels and content areas. Children are proficient in requesting information from quite early ages Ronfard et al. However, this behavior is observed in highly structured problem-solving tasks, during which children likely are not very curious.
In fact, if the environment contains other things that children are curious about, it could be more efficient to use a simplistic strategy, freeing up cognitive resources for the true target of their curiosity. Returning to the definition of curiosity as information seeking to address knowledge gaps, becoming curious-by definition-involves the activation of previous knowledge, which enhances learning VanLehn et al.
The active learning that results from curiosity-driven information seeking involves meaningful cognitive engagement and constructive processing that can support deeper learning Bonwell and Eison, ; King, ; Loyens and Gijbels, The constructive process of seeking information to generate new thinking or new knowledge in response to curiosity is a more effective means of learning than simply receiving information Chi and Wylie, Further, learning more about a topic allows children to better recognize their related knowledge and information gaps Danovitch et al.
This metacognitive reasoning supports learning through the processes of activating, integrating, and inferring involved in the constructive nature of curiosity-drive information seeking Chi and Wylie, Engel , finds that curiosity declines with development and suggests that understanding how to promote or at least sustain it is important. For example, previous work suggests that curiosity can be promoted by encouraging children to feel comfortable with and explore uncertainty Jirout et al.
One strategy for promoting curiosity is through classroom climate; children should feel safe and be encouraged to be curious and exploration and questions should be valued Pianta et al. Another strategy to promote curiosity is to provide support for the information-seeking behaviors that children use to act on their curiosity.
Children cannot explore if opportunities are not provided to them, and they will not ask questions if they do not feel that their questions are welcomed.
Even if opportunities and encouragement are provided, the fear of being wrong can keep children from trying to learn new things Martin and Marsh, ; Martin, Children can explore when they have guidance and support to engage in think-aloud problem solving, instead of being told what to try or getting questions answered directly Chi et al. Model curiosity for children, allowing them to see that others have things that they do not know and want to learn about, and that others also enjoy information-seeking activities like asking questions and researching information.
Technology makes information seeking easier than it has ever been. For example, children are growing up surrounded by internet-connected devices more than 8 per capita in , and asking questions is reported to be one of the most frequent uses of smart speakers NPR-Edison Research Spring, Children spontaneously ask questions, but adults can encourage deeper questioning by using explicit prompts and then supporting children to generate questions King, ; Rosenshine et al.
Although positive interactions can promote and sustain curiosity in young children, curiosity can also be suppressed or discouraged through interactions that emphasize performance or a focus on explicit instruction Martin and Marsh, ; Martin, ; Hulme et al. Performance goals, which are goals that are focused on demonstrating the attainment of a skill, can lead to lower curiosity to avoid distraction or risk to achieving the goal Hulme et al.
Mastery goals, which focus on understanding and the learning process, support learning for its own sake Ames, When children are older and attend school, they experience expectations that prioritize performance metrics over academic and intellectual exploration, such as through tests and state-standardized assessments, which discourages curiosity Engel, ; Jirout et al.
Among 5th graders, student ratings of teacher emphasis on standardized testing was associated with lower observed curiosity-promotion by teachers Jirout and Vitiello, These methods are consistent with inquiry-based and active learning, which both are grounded in constructivism and information gaps similar to the current operationalization of curiosity Jirout and Klahr, ; Saylor and Ganea, ; van Schijndel et al.
In this article, I describe evidence from the limited existing research showing that curiosity is important and relates to science learning, and I suggest several mechanisms through which curiosity can support science learning. The general perspective presented here is that science learning can and should be supported by promoting curiosity, and I provide suggestions for promoting and avoiding the suppression of curiosity in early childhood.
However, much more research is needed to address the complex challenge of educational applications of this work. Specifically, the suggested mechanisms through which curiosity promotes learning need to be studied to tease apart questions of directionality, the influence of related factors such as interest, the impact of context and learning domain on these relations, and the role of individual differences.
Both the influence of curiosity on learning and effective ways to promote it likely change in interesting and important ways across development, and research is needed to understand this development-especially through studying change in individuals over time. Although curiosity likely promotes science learning across cultures and contexts, the ways in which it does so and effective methods of promoting it may differ, which is an important area for future research to explore. Despite the benefits I present, curiosity seems to be rare or even absent from formal learning contexts Engel, , even as children show curiosity about things outside of school Post and Walma van der Molen, This publication was made possible through the support of grants from the John Templeton Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, and the Center for Curriculum Redesign.
The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation or other funders. The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. Benchmarks for Science Literacy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Google Scholar. Ames, C. Classrooms: goals, structures, and student motivation. Berlyne, D. An experimental study of human curiosity. Bonawitz, E. The double-edged sword of pedagogy: instruction limits spontaneous exploration and discovery. Cognition , — Bonwell, C. Active Learning: Creating Excitement in the Classroom. Chi, M. Eliciting self-explanations improves understanding. The ICAP framework: linking cognitive engagement to active learning outcomes.
Chin, C. Student-generated questions: a meaningful aspect of learning in science. Questions: case studies in science classrooms. Chouinard, M. Child Dev. Conati, C. Danovitch, J. Saylor and P.
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