Nurturing Students’ Curiosity through Contextual Learning (original) (raw)
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Curiosity is an aspect of intrinsic motivation that has great potential to enhance student learning. Theory and evidence describing curiosity are discussed, focusing on psychological and pedagogical literature relating to adult education. In particular, the concept of 'information gaps' as a source of academic curiosity is explored. In addition, the concept of curiosity in two disparate sample disciplines; second language learning and medical education are considered. The role of inquiry based learning approaches are also discussed as potential modes of stimulating student curiosity, as well as simple classroom techniques, which could be applied to almost any academic discipline and based on the theories should act to enhance student curiosity.
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My aim, in this chapter, is to present a characterisation of the intellectual virtue of curiosity that offers some insight into educating for the virtue, and provides theoretically grounded motivations for doing so. I begin by outlining a characterisation of curiosity as an intellectual virtue. I then examine three key features of this characterisation relevant to the task of educating for curiosity as an intellectual virtue. Finally, I present, what I take to be two of the most compelling reasons to educate for the intellectual virtue of curiosity.
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What potentials does curiosity bear for education? Some characterizations portray curiosity as self-motivated search for answers, a drive conformable with conventional education's imperative for correct answers. For participants in this study, curiosity engages them with their relationships to the world. This article examines curiosity from along my developing in learning and teaching. While school settings limited or excluded curiosity, both for me as a student and as a teacher, it relates how I encountered the value of curiosity in examples of my father, mentors, and other experiences. Beginning with a gradual and uncertain process, I transitioned from being an educator bound by conventional expectations, to a teacher-researcher creating environments where learners' expressions and acts of curiosity constitute the educational work that I actively support and seek to extend. Curiosity in the classroom generates trajectories and engagements that differ from conventional instruction. This article demonstrates and researches the educational work of curiosity, through contextual narratives from my teaching as a beginner at accommodating students' curiosity, and from my recent teaching, where students and I more fully commit to the relational and educational possibilities of encouraging curiosity. In facilitating these experiences, I apply the research pedagogy of Eleanor Duckworth, 'critical exploration in the classroom'. In narratives from my teaching, curiosity propels exploring relationships among: floating and sinking; trees, leaves and acorns; dye in water; maple sap sweetness; bubbles in water; and permutations of objects. Provocations from historical works include: Leonardo's drawings; Hooke's and Ramón y Cajal's microscopy; Keats' "negative capability"; Dewey's reflections on interdependency among children and adults; and children's creations in Reggio Emilia preschools. As experience builds through curiosity, relations deepen in ways simultaneously unadulterated-exploring unconstrained-and unchildlike-sustaining commitment. Participants characterize our process as having "No End Goal" imposed from outside themselves, unlike formal instruction that suppresses personal curiosity in favor of pre-ordained goals. The natural world, opened by curiosity, embodies ever-emerging relationships that accommodate concurrent widening and Extended author information available on the last page of the article deepening of learners' involvement and realizations. Learning experiences happening through relationships are infused with emotion, aesthetic qualities, and social connections and concerns.
On educating, curiosity, and interest development
Current opinion in behavioral sciences, 2020
This review provides curiosity researchers and neuroscientists with information about the distinction as well as the relation between curiosity and interest, and their potential to benefit educational practice. Both are universal, and are associated with rewarding information search (that is, they do not require external rewards for their existence); however, they differ in their characteristics and in their impact on learning. Whereas the information seeking that characterizes curiosity may result in short-term and specific learning as the knowledge gap is closed, information search associated with interest serves to trigger new questions leading to an ongoing deepening and development of learners' knowledge and value. Suggestions are made about (a) how the coordination of research on curiosity and interest development could benefit educational practice, and (b) how neuroscientific research is uniquely positioned to distinguish between curiosity and interest.
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Curiosity is widely acknowledged as a crucial aspect of children’s development and as an important part of the learning process, with prior research showing associations between curiosity and achievement. Despite this evidence, there is little research on the development of curiosity or on promoting curiosity in school settings, and measures of curiosity promotion in the classroom are absent from the published literature. This article introduces the Curiosity in Classrooms (CiC) Framework coding protocol, a tool for observing and coding instructional practices that support the promotion of curiosity. We describe the development of the framework and observation instrument and the results of a feasibility study using the protocol, which gives a descriptive overview of curiosity-promoting instruction in 35 elementary-level math lessons. Our discussion includes lessons learned from this work and suggestions for future research using the developed observation tool.
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The aim of the study was to assess the relationship between curiosity and wellbeing in the sample of university students. A total of 318 college students from the Faculty of Teacher Education and the Faculty of Kinesiology (100 males and 215 females) participated in the study. The students ranged in age from 18 to 26. Four questionnaires were administered: Curiosity and Exploration Inventory CEI-II (Kashdan et al., 2009), Positive and Negative Affect Schedule PANAS (Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988), Flourishing Scale – FS (Diener et al., 2009) and Basic Needs Satisfaction Scale (Gagné, 2003). Results of ANOVAs showed that students of the Faculty of Kinesiology had higher scores on both curiosity scales: Curiosity Stretching and Curiosity Embracing. Curiosity stretching reflects the motivation to seek out knowledge and new experiences while embracing dimension is related to willingness to embrace the novel, uncertain, and unpredictable nature of everyday life. They also scored higher...
The stance of curiosity in the classroom
. Alongside this, many schools have a growing interest in citizenship education. Relationship strategies traditionally used by counsellors are included in teachers' interactional repertoire. This article presents findings about the relationship potential of "a stance of not-knowing" when it was employed by teachers for educational rather than therapeutic purposes. Examples are drawn from the results of a research project that examined how teachers might utilise various conversational moves from narrative therapy in support of their relationship practices. In spite of the paradigmatic differences between counsellors' and teachers' work, and the consequent difficulties these might pose for teachers when they try to shift between different relationship paradigms, the research participants almost unanimously embraced a stance of not-knowing. While the enthusiasm of these teachers provides an argument for the positive potential of counselling knowledge beyond therapeutic contexts, I also raise questions about the overenthusiastic transport of counselling skills into the classroom. The purpose of this article is to encourage discussion among school counsellors and teachers about their respective roles and contributions to students' learning. Recent decades have witnessed some major shifts in the dominant philosophies and practices of schools.
Expressing the level of curiosity of students studying in college
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This research is designed to expose the level of curiosity of students in learning in the aspects of interest, novelty seeking, openness of experience, and exploration. In particular, we will measure the differences in curiosity assessed from the points of semester level and gender. The study involved 234 students in their third, fifth, and seventh semesters in nine study programs at the University. Data was collected from the curiosity questionnaire in learning, consisting of 48 items on the Likert scale with a reliability of 0.886. The results showed the level of curiosity of students in the aspects of interest, novelty seeking, and openness of experience to be in the medium category and in the exploration aspect, in the low category. On the other hand, students in the third semester a had higher curiosity in learning compared to students in semesters five and seven, while studies on the gender aspect did not find substantial differences in students' curiosity in learning.
A STUDY ON CHILDREN'S ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT AND THEIR CURIOSITY
Curiosity is about being aware and open, checking things out, experimenting, and interacting with in one's surroundings. It is a tendency to wonder, to inquire, to investigate and to seek information about anything that is new or unknown. It is an essential part of human consciousness as it contributes to learning, problem solving and creative thinking. In other words a satisfied curiosity can be called as an emotionally healthy curiosity. There is a connection in the brain between curiosity, memory and learning. Thus, it can also be said that emotionally healthy child will have better retention and learning habits. When the child enters the school (s)he/she becomes more eager to learn, this is the age of socializing. At this age the child starts making friends and trusting people outside his/her family. It is very important to nurture their curiosity at this age (at primary school) because this is where the base is formed. For the present study 144 children studying in different private schools in Namchi town were selected from the total population of 223. To assess children's curiosity, Children's Curiosity Scale (English version) developed by Dr. Rajiv Kumar (2009) was used and for academic achievement of the students, the annual result of the previous class was analysed. No significant correlation was found between children's academic achievement and their curiosity.