How We Learn - The Role of Curiosity

My 9th-grade science teacher was one of those people who could see a quality in you and make sure you understood that it was there for a reason. "This curiosity you have - it's an important part of you," is likely something he doesn't remember saying to me because it was such a casual statement on his end.  But for the awkward, nerdy, 14-year-old girl who looked up to him, it meant a lot.  Curiosity is a defining feature in my life, but to be told it was important really mattered.  What we now know from education research is that curiosity also matters for learning.

Last week, I wrote about one of my takeaways from the book How We Learn by Stanislas Dehaene, but I never put my highlighter down while reading the section on curiosity.  I may have highlighted more sentences than I didn't.  It can sometimes be difficult in educational research to know how to conduct scientifically valid experiments to confirm things that we intuitively understand to be true.  Does a teacher's enthusiasm make a difference in student learning?  Of course, we know it does, but how do we design an experiment for that?  What helps maintain student attention?  There's a lot that we know from experience, but how do you measure attention (or even decide on what markers mean a student is paying attention)?  Studies on curiosity are similar.  Because curiosity is an internal desire, it can be hard to measure it.  That said, where studies have been conducted, they have been universal in their conclusion.  A curious student learns more.  According to Dr. Dehaene, "Piquing children’s curiosity is half the battle. Once their attention is mobilized and their mind is in search of an explanation, all that is left to do is guide them."

I know of zero teachers (even the weirdest ones on Twitter) who wouldn't be on board with this thought; of course, if we want to know something, we will pay better attention and be more likely to remember the answer we were looking for.  The neurology is fairly simple, including the reward-feedback loop.  In the book, Dr. Dehaene puts it this way, “Memory and curiosity are linked - the more curious you are about something, the more likely you are to remember it . . . Through the dopamine circuit, the satisfaction of our appetite to learn - or even the mere anticipation of that satisfaction - is deeply rewarding. Learning possesses intrinsic value for the nervous system. What we call curiosity is nothing more than the exploitation of this value . . . Whereas other animals visit space around them, we explore conceptual worlds. We rejoice in the symmetry and pure beauty of mathematical patterns.”  He even refers to mirth as the result of learning something new that we wanted to learn.  

So, the question becomes how do we pique student curiosity?  That part is tricky because it is going to be different for different students, but there are a few aspects that are universal.  For example, students will not be made curious about things that are too simple, easy, or that they have done many times before.  As an 8th-grade teacher, I do not teach "the scientific method" for a lot of reasons, but the primary reason is that they have learned it so many years in a row that I would be starting the year implying that they won't learn new things in this class.  Equally, students are bored by things that are too difficult.  If it is so beyond their understanding that they can't even form a question, they will totally check out of the lesson (we've all been there, if we're honest).  Again, Dr. Dehaene addresses this sweet spot for curiosity.  “Between the boredom of the ‘too simple' and the repulsion of the ‘too complex,’ our curiosity naturally directs us toward new and accessible fields."  

This involves a bit of metacognition as we have to figure out what we know, what we don't know, and what we might wish to know.  Teacher questioning helps with this process as we ask questions that help them to realize they do know some things about a topic.  I start almost every chapter by having students share what they already know about the thing we are about to study (which is pretty easy in physics because we have all had interaction with electricity, sound, light, force, motion, etc.).  When we ask a question they don't know the answer to, they have found their knowledge gap.  It doesn't automatically make them curious, but they can't be curious without finding that gap.  The research shows we can shut down their curiosity by telling them too much too soon as we introduce a topic, so questions are likely more helpful than statements.  There is even an interesting study that concludes we should frame our lesson objective as a question rather than a statement (so, instead of posting "Today, we will describe the role of potassium and sodium in the nervous system," we would post "What is the role of potassium and sodium in the nervous system?"  While the research shows that it makes a huge difference in the outcome of learning, it isn't clear about why it makes so much difference.  I suspect it is because a question activates curiosity in a way a statement might not.

There is a move in education to teach students only about the things they want to learn (I alluded to the failures of that model in last week's post).  I understand the value of connecting our curriculum to student interests, and I do that as often as possible (again, easy to do in physics because the sports they play, the cars they love, the photos they post, and the electronics they play with are all based on physics).  What I object to is tailoring our curriculum to their interests because, when well-implemented, our curriculum can produce an interest they didn't know they had.  I have experienced this in my own life, not knowing that I loved physics when I signed up for the class and knowing by day 4 that it was what I wanted to do as a career.  I have also seen it in others a thousand times, the kid who didn't think he was good at math until one teacher showed him that he was, the student who grudgingly took their required art class and discovered a talent and passion for watercolors, and the student who rolls their eyes at the English teacher who says they are beginning their poetry unit only to discover that there are some poets that inspire them.  I didn't know I was interested in cognitive science until about 9 years ago when a friend gave me the book The Brain That Changes Itself; now I consider myself a brain-enthusiast.  There's a whole world to be curious about, and that can't happen if we aren't pushed beyond that which we already know we like.  

I don't have any research to back this up (if you know of a study, please share it with me), but I have a lot of anecdotal evidence that curiosity can be contagious.  If someone you like is really interested in something, you usually find yourself interested in it as well.  It's why we read books and see movies that our friends recommend.  It can be used in the classroom by teachers sharing their own questions with students.  I do this a lot.  When I teach light dispersion, one of the things we address is why the sky is red/orange in the morning and evening and why it is blue during the day.  When I finish teaching that, I pose the nagging question, "Why isn't it ever green?"  It seems like it should be green twice a day (especially because our eyes process green better than any other color), and I can't figure out why it isn't.  When I first pose the question, students assume I know the answer and am trying to get it out of them.  But I don't know the answer.  I also tell students about interesting things I have recently learned, books I am reading, and questions I want to explore whose answers aren't readily available on Google, even ethical questions about AI or recklessness.  I believe my curiosity will spark curiosity in them, at least in some of them (perhaps another teacher's curiosity will spark it in students that don't respond to mine).  

If this all feels a little overwhelming as a teacher at the start of the school year, let me give you this quote from the final pages of Dr. Dehaene's book.   “I hope that teachers will agree that their pedagogical freedom should in no way be restricted by the growing science of the learning brain. On the contrary, one goal of this book is to allow them to better exercise this freedom. Genuine pedagogical creativity can only come from full awareness of the range of available strategies and ability to choose carefully from them, with full knowledge of their impact on students."  There's not one way you HAVE to teach in order to take advantage of the results of these experiments.  They give you a menu of ways you CAN teach and the ability to analyze what fits best with your curriculum in your classroom with your students this year.  

Be curious; share your curiosity, encourage your students' curiosity.  Enjoy.

Well Meaning But Ineffective - Inquiry

I have spent much of the summer reading books on the science of learning.  This week, I finished How We Learn by Stanislas Dehaene, and I recommend it highly.  I always post quotes from these books on Facebook and Twitter, but this one had so many good thoughts, I think the most important ones got lost amongst the others.  For that reason, I decided I should reflect on some of them more thoroughly here.  I may do a few posts as there are parts of this book where I highlighted more lines than not.

First, let me tell you a bit about Stanislas Dehaene.  I first heard of him at a Learning and the Brain conference back in 2019, but I didn't get to hear him speak because he suddenly became ill and had to be replaced.  I had already downloaded his book Consciousness and the Human Brain, so I knew missing him was a loss (although the replacement speaker Dr. David Rose was awesome, so shout out to the person whose idea it was to sub him in).  Dr. Dehanene is a cognitive neuroscientist, specializing in numeracy, but he has also authored books on consciousness generally, learning as a whole, and learning reading specifically.

When I started reading this book, I was intrigued but also a bit intimidated because he uses the first quarter of the book to compare human learning to artificial learning, which was fascinating but also technical and difficult.  But once I got to Part 2, I couldn't get enough of this book.  Dr. Dehaene's passion for learning how we learn is evident, and he uses stories to illuminate what would otherwise be dry research.  He finally arrives at "the four pillars of learning" in the final section.  They are: Attention, Active Engagement, Error Feedback, and Consolidation.  At this point, I am fully on board and reading without pause.  

Then, I hit this sentence, and it made me sit up straighter, grip my highlighter and tear up a bit.  “The fundamentally correct view that children must be attentively and actively engaged in their own learning must not be confused with classical constructivism or discovery learning method-which are seductive ideas whose ineffectiveness has, unfortunately, been repeatedly demonstrated.”  

If that sentence didn't grab your heart like it did mine, it could be that you are not a science teacher who constantly fights the idea that as long as you have enough labs, kids will love and learn science while knowing that your students have never learned anything from a lab without your very explicit teaching preparation AND reflective follow up.  You don't constantly feel guilty about not doing enough labs because it is what other people think you should be doing even though you know it is rarely an efficient or deep way to get to deep scientific concepts.  Perhaps, you were a victim of constructivist theory as a student (did you get subjected to inventive spelling, inquiry-based science, or discovery math?) and still don't know how to do the things you were meant to figure out.  I was in a class that used Discovering Calculus, and I remember saying, "There's a reason it took from the beginning of time until Isaac Newton to discover calculus; how am I supposed to do it in a semester as a college freshman?  

Please don't misunderstand.  I believe in the elaborate encoding that comes from hands-on activity and demonstrations of scientific principles, but given the amount of time they take, I choose my lab experiments very carefully.  I choose ones that I can carefully and explicitly prepare students for (so it's not inquiry learning because I have told them what they are going to learn), that can be carried out without much technical difficulty, that I can meaningfully follow up on to ensure they have learned what I want them to, and that I can refer back to in multiple chapters (for retrieval and because they address more than one topic).  Otherwise, it is just activity for the sake of appearing active.  There just aren't that many that rise to the level of all those criteria (and if they don't, they don't deserve the class period it takes to carry them out plus the time it takes to prepare for and reflect on).  You are much more likely to be assigned a project in my class than a lab because there is more time for processing and guidance.

Back to Dr. Dehaene.  A paragraph or so after the sentence that stopped me in my tracks, he said, “When children are left to themselves, they have great difficulty discovering the abstract rules that govern a domain, and they learn much less, if anything at all. Should we be surprised by this? How could we imagine that children would rediscover, in a few hours and without any guidance, what humanity took centuries to discern?"  I took a moment to congratulate my college freshman self and then mulled over the phrase "abstract rules."  That is exactly why constructivism doesn't work.  They can observe the experiment (which has value), but they have no idea of why the experiment works because the concepts (especially in chemistry) are too abstract.  So, in a science class, where our job is to teach why things happen, we are seduced by the idea that they will figure it out if we merely show them what happens.  It doesn't teach them to "think scientifically," which is the well-meaning theory behind inquiry-based learning.  We are naturally curious, but we are not naturally scientists (which, again, is why it took from the beginning of time until Galileo to think of experimentation in spite of really smart philosophers observing and hypothesizing about the natural world).  We need to build on the past and "stand on the shoulders of giants," not hope they will develop scientific thought processes anew.  

I don't know how to address this in the teaching of other disciplines, but I know there is a lot of push for student-driven learning in all of them as though they know enough to know what they don't know and how to explore it for themselves.  This brings me to the final Dehaene quote of this post. “Perhaps the worst effect of discovery learning is that it leaves students under the illusion that they have mastered a certain topic, without ever giving them the means to access the deeper concepts of a discipline."  

• Should we make learning as relevant as possible to students?   Yes.
• Should we pique their curiosity?  Yes (and I'll write more about that next week).
• Should we work in choices where it makes sense to do so?  Yes.
• Should we help them to understand just how much more there is to learn than what there is time to fit into a school day? vYes
• Should we ask them what they want to learn and how they want to learn it and neglect our own professional judgment?  No.  That is educational malpractice.  And all the research says so.

It Was Just in Someone's Mind

This morning, in a post-camp haze, I was mindlessly flipping through channels.  Being Sunday morning, there were a number of church services, and a passed one with a very large and exceptionally skilled choir.  They were singing The Hallelujah Chorus. While I am not sure why they were singing this in July, I am happy to hear this song any time, so I stayed and enjoyed the rapturous crescendo that defines that incredible work, missing being in such a choir (because hearing that song from an audience is nothing compared to being surrounded by it).  As it ended, it occurred to me that, because it was written in 1741, there was a time when that song did not exist.  What then struck me was what it must have been like to be Handel, to have never heard that song before, and then to have had it in your mind.  What must that feel like? 

Creativity and imagination are words we have cheapened in our culture. Like most other good words, we have overused them to the point of meaninglessness or used them in a context they are too big for.  When we tell students that part of their grade on a project will be for creativity, what too many teachers have meant is that they will give points for making it pretty.  All you need is a little glitter to get creativity points (which is disadvantaging to boys, by the way - a project can be awesome and ugly at the same time and there is far too much glitter in the world).  We also act like poets and visual artists and dancers are creative, while scoffing at the idea of a creative scientist.  This comes, I believe, from a misunderstanding of what creativity means.  Creativity, as defined by Sir Ken Robinson, is "the process of having original ideas that have value."  It is original thinking, and it's part of being made in the image of God. He is creative, so we are creative.

But it starts with something else we seem to have trouble grasping the definition of - imagination.  Again, we use it too often out of context.  Anyone who says kind of silly things is praised for having a good imagination, but we are making that word too small.  Imagination is one of the things that sets humans apart from the rest of creation.  It means having an image in our minds of something that does not exist.  Imagination enables us to envision the outcome of various choices we might make.  It allows us to hold imaginary arguments in our heads before having real ones.  It gives writers the ability to create stories and movie makers to create new worlds, but it is also what enabled the construction of a highway system before there had been one.  Before there was ever a skyscraper, someone envisioned it.  Far from being the exclusive realm of artists, imagination is held by all humans.  It is the gift from God that has allowed us to create and advance culture, to dream, to write, to invent, to describe the atom, and to travel to the moon.

Handel imagined a song he had never heard before, and a in Japanese civil engineer imagined this highway interchange.  Did he intend for it to look like a brain?  I don't know.  But, it took a nurtured and well-trained brain to make it happen.  It started with an image in his mind.  He then had to figure out how to get it out of his mind, onto paper, into the mind of someone else who saw its value.  They had to make a plan for how to make it a reality, pitch it to a group of people that would also see its value, get funding, materials, and labor.  They then had to teach those people the plan.  Those people then had to execute it.  

This blog is meant to be about education, so here's the connection.  Kids have tons of imagination, and sometimes, we unintentionally squelch it when we should be nurturing it.  There are a million products that are supposed to stimulate imagination.  While some of the people who design these may be well-meaning, the majority are just monetizing parental insecurities.  We don't have to stimulate creativity in children because God already gave it to them.  Our job is to keep them from losing it.  If a child mentions a crazy idea (which they do at least two or three times a day), it is true but unhelpful to say, "That's crazy.  The world doesn't work that way."  It would be more helpful to say, "What would that look like?" or "How would you do that?"  That allows them to elaborate on the image in their mind.  Keep them talking about the original idea they have.

Developing a child's imagination and creativity doesn't have to be difficult, and it doesn't have to cost money.  In fact, you only really need two sentences.  "That's interesting.  Tell me more."

Summer "Ehs"

When I created my Twitter account, one of the purposes was to use it for professional development.  I began by following scientific accounts, like NASA and Scientific American.  I also followed a few educational accounts, like Retrieve Learn and Cult of Pedagogy.  It took a long time, though, to build a community of other teachers (because you can't search Twitter by profession).  I am, however, now at the point where I spend a fair amount of time interacting with other teachers on Twitter.  This week, I had a lovely conversation with this lady.

First of all, let me say that I am so grateful that there are young teachers who were willing to begin their careers during the pandemic.  This lady likely did her student teaching virtually or hybrid and entered her first year in the year that most experienced teachers will tell you has been the most stressful in terms of student behavior and attendance and has seen more teachers exiting the profession than I have seen in my career.  So, God bless her for not being put off by these challenging times.  

I also love that she was willing to put this out there.  A lot of young teachers are scared of feelings they didn't expect to have.  The first year of teaching is filled, not only with the challenges you expect (learning to time things properly, writing test questions, creating projects, dealing with classroom management, etc.) but also with things you don't expect and might be a bit frightened by (the feeling of not liking a student, nightmares about the first week, the words you wish you hadn't said out loud, realizing you spent a lot of time explaining something incorrectly).  It is a wise teacher that reaches out to a mentor, but if you don't know those things are normal, you might not be inclined to.  

Reading through the replies to this young lady showed Teacher Twitter at its best.  It isn't always encouraging to see what teachers are sharing on Twitter.  I remember being warned about the teacher's lounge before my first year.  It's where teachers share the thoughts they don't share elsewhere, and that is sometimes dark.  Fortunately, I was in a very positive environment my first year, so I didn't have to deal with anything particularly negative, but I know it can be awful, and teacher Twitter is a worldwide teacher's lounge (with the difference being that you don't know is trustworthy and who is crazy, who just complains about everything and can be brushed off and who is actually telling you something important).  I have often wondered how some people keep their jobs after the things they say on Twitter.  This post, however, was only responded to by one or two Negative Nancies.  She was given lots and lots of encouragement.  She was encouraged to know that these feelings are common and given tons of advice on how to cope with it.  It boils down to the difference between the school year in which a teacher is scheduled and feels a sense of purpose, and the summer in which they decide their own schedules and feel a little useless.  

Just before I began writing this post, I went back to her profile.  She is grateful for the love and advice, and the original post now has 285 replies and nearly 2000 hearts.  

Experienced teachers, this is how we should be using Twitter, to encourage each other, especially our youngest colleagues.  New teachers, you may not be ready for this level of interaction.  I cannot imagine if social media had existed at the end of my first year, and I got 285 pieces of advice.  If you would be overwhelmed by that, text the teacher you were next door to last year.  Have lunch with an experienced teacher.  Send a quick email to a trusted administrator or even one of your former teachers or professors.  They'll be able to give you perspective and help you feel known.  As teacher tea has said here, you may "need a reminder you're not alone."  

Small Hops of Faith

Y'all know I love Learning and the Brain, right?  If not, welcome. This is clearly the first blog post of mine you have ever read.  One of the reasons I love following their blog is that they recognize the nuances of scientific research.  They pose a question like, "Does a student learn more when they take notes by hand than when they take them on a laptop?" The answer most often sounds like this.  "In some limited circumstances, sort of."

I love that because they do not draw absolute conclusions, knowing that the researchers tested a specific set of kids under a specific set of tightly controlled conditions.  When people ask questions of the presenters at their conferences, the answer is rarely short, and it always involves both the limitations of their research as well as their conclusions and often with a caveat to "apply it to your context in the way that works for you."  That is a scientist's answer.  If it surprises you, it may be that you have limited exposure to real science.

The TV version of science seen on The Big Bang Theory and Bones (both of which I like) and the like would have you believe that scientists are slaves to logic and, therefore, always certain of their conclusions.  It's why people were so frustrated with Dr. Fauci when they asked questions like, "When will we return to normal?" and "Will we be having traditional Christmases with our families this year?" They wanted answers of absolute certainty, and he was giving them answers that included "If . . . then" and "Assuming that there isn't a new variant at that time, then."  Those answers are perfectly normal to those of us who spend time around scientists.  If I pose a question to ten scientists in a room, I'll get at least eleven different answers.  It doesn't bother me at all because I have spent a lot of time reading and listening to scientists, but I think most people expect the fictional version in which logic is worshipped.

I have news for you.  Logic is a relatively recent invention. dating back to roughly the fifth century BC.  It's hard to imagine that there was a time when no one said, "Well that's just not logical," but there certainly was, and it was only about 3000 years ago.  It's an important tool, and many of the things in our lives certainly fall into its category, but it's important to note that not everything does.  Something can be logical and yet untrue.  I think most of us are okay with that.  What I have found really bothers people is that something can be illogical and yet still true.  

When I was a small child, I loved playing in the sandbox in my backyard.  One day, I skipped around scattering sand as though I were sowing seeds.  The following day, there were dandelions growing in those parts of the yard, and I drew the conclusion that sand was dandelion seeds. My kid logic was flawless.  There were no dandelions.  I did something.  Then, there were dandelions.  Therefore, what I did must have caused them to be there.  I don't remember how long I believed that or how I found out it wasn't true, but it obviously is not.  Conspiracy theorists take advantage of this kind of thinking to be persuasive by putting two unrelated thoughts (sand and dandelions) together and then saying something like, "It's obvious that no other conclusion can be drawn."  I have students who draw logical but incorrect conclusions pretty frequently, and they are shocked when I tell them that something can be logical and untrue at the same time.

There are also a number of things in modern science that are illogical and yet still true.  Do you want to have your mind blown?  Google the term "quantum weirdness."  There is nothing intuitive or logical about quantum mechanics.  When I tell my students that an electron can be at point A and then at point B without having been anywhere in between, I get either blank stares or complete astonishment.  I know. It doesn't make sense, right?  Even weirder, it behaves differently if we are measuring it than it does if we aren't.  There is a possibility (what's called a non-zero probability) that all the atoms in your trashcan could reside on the same part of the quantum wave function all at once and jump right off the ground or that all of the atoms in your body could align perfectly with all of the space between atoms in a wall, and you could just walk right through it.  (Don't spend a lot of time watching your trashcan or walking into walls over and over.  Non-zero probability means so close to zero that we can neglect it, but just not zero, something along the lines of a 1 in 100 billion chance.). My point here is that while none of this seems logical (string theory requires a minimum of 9 dimensions, and light behaves simultaneously as a wave and a series of particles), it is nonetheless true. Well, the jury is still out on string theory, but I want it to be true.  While we don't think of science as requiring faith, the farther we get into it, the more we recognize that there are some things we either don't yet understand or may not ever be able to understand.

Last week, I had lunch with a friend, and she was telling me about a conversation she had with a student.  The student was struggling with the problem of evil and had questions about sovereignty (with you sister, we've all struggled with those questions).  My friend had given her some Kierkegaard to read in which he addresses the point at which things must simply be accepted on the basis of faith (Can I just say at this point that I love that I have colleagues who read, enjoy, and recommend Kierkegaard and students who might actually read it?  I love my job.). My friend was wondering if it was okay to take this approach as there is so much of a push right now to counter objections to Christianity with logic and rationality.  Apologetics is important, and I do think there are people who may be persuaded toward Christianity through works like Mere Christianity and Reasonable Faith because it shows that our faith is not a leap of faith from A to Z.  

But, much like science, there are times when we must recognize that something can be true even if we do not yet understand it.  It is okay that we sometimes go from A to B and B to C and C to D with logic while recognizing that we may need faith to get from D to F.  If the smartest people in science are willing to accept that about the natural world which can mostly be observed and measured, why do we insist that all parts of the supernatural world (which cannot be) must be explainable without any reaching.  Our faith is not a blind one or one that requires huge leaps of faith all the way from beginning to end, but you aren't going to make sense of the Trinity through logic, and that is okay.  Not everything that is true is logical, and not everything that is logical is true; so you may need to make a few small hops of faith in theology just like we do with science.