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.
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