Exciting curiosity, creativity and passion
Why is curiosity important? How do we ignite it?
Curiosity is at the heart of inquiry-based teaching and learning.
We can and should teach young minds to embrace their inquisitive nature. Studies suggest inquisitiveness is linked to joy of the job, social skills and even a happy disposition. In an academic context, greater curiosity generally predicts greater success. (Piqued: The case for curiosity, The Hetchinger Report, July 2018)
"It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot irreverence to their studies. They are not here to worship what is known, but to question it." (Jacob Bronowski, Ascent of Man)
WHY is curiosity important?
Why is it that children sometimes become less creative the older they become?
In a blog entitled Are We Wringing the Creativity Out of Kids? Picasso is quoted as saying: "Every child is born an artist. The problems once we start to grow up." Jonah Lehrer argues that parents and teachers need to actively encourage the creative side of children through developing their curiosity and passion: “(It's) important to give kids a menu of possibilities pretty early on, a menu of things they might fall in love with—maybe it’s painting, maybe it’s drawing, maybe it’s writing, maybe it’s computer science—just a bunch of passions that they could discover. [You want them to] find these things that don’t feel like work, activities that just feel like fun. And then you have to remind them—‘OK, so you’ve found something you love, the goal you want to strive for. Now you have to work hard. Now you have to put in your thousands of hours of practice. Now you have to be willing to persevere through failure and frustrations."
"All of us want to know how our world works: why a piece of music is beautiful to one person and cacophonous to another, how engines are able to make cars move, why green leaves turn brown and helium balloons stay aloft, or how new languages develop. Living means perpetually searching for meaning. Schools need to be places that keep this search alive." (Brooks, J.G., To see beyond the lesson in Educational Leadership (2004) 61:1)
Ken Robinson wrote The Element in which he argued that it is essential that people discover their passion since it changes everything. In the first of the following two videos Ken Robinson makes this key argument. As you listen consider what challenges this presents to your education system? What questions does this raise?
If you have time read a summary of Ken Robinson's book The Element: How finding your passion changes everything in the form of a Think Piece. You can access a written summary here and a YouTube summary here.
In Curious: The desire to know and why your future depends on it, Ian Leslie defines three types of curiosity: diversive, epistemic, and empathetic. Diversive curiosity gets our attention and usually isn’t very structured. If we live in a world with only diversive curiosity, we jump quickly from topic to topic, staying there only long enough to find an answer and then moving on. With epistemic curiosity, we want to dive deeper into a topic to understand how something works or why it works. This can lead to interesting discoveries and connections between seemingly unrelated ideas. The third kind of curiosity is empathetic: how and why does this matter to other people, and how can we make life better for all of us?
HOW to ignite curiosity
Activity 1: How do you spark curiosity?
Watch Ramsey Musallam's TED Talk "Three rules to spark learning'. As you watch reflect on the kind of questions he asks? How does he cultivate student learning? How else could you cultivate student learning through the asking of questions?
His three rules are:
- Curiosity comes first – questions can be windows to great instruction
Embrace the mess – learning is ugly – trial and error can be part of what we do
Practice reflection
Ideas and resources for igniting curiosity
- Teacher modeling - be the curious learner you want to see in your students. Always be curious about your students and what they are learning and how. Remain curious about teaching and learning - where to next? what is this telling me? how else could I do this? what impact am I having? Be curious about yourself and your own learning - what am I wondering? what am I noticing?
- Innovation Day Projects sparked by student questions. For example, 'How do you make cheesecake?' 'How do I make my own webpage?' 'How can I make my own clothes?' 'I want to find out about the history of rugby.'
- Follow your passions: time-tabled afternoons to 'try out' a new club or activity in a taster menu.
- Genius Hour opportunities to inquire into something you are interested in ignited by such websites as Wonderopolis which posts interesting questions daily or Stumbleupon which provides you with a web journey on things that an individual is interested in.
- I wonder: provide regular opportunities for students to wonder. What about wondering aloud and then walking away? What about having a 'Wonder Day' in your school? (see the video at the end of this page).
Peter Johnson’s book “Choice Words” reminds us of the power of even single words to impact on students’ thinking and participation: “I wonder…” represents a class of linguistic lubricants. It marks the offering of a possible hypothesis, or a tentative idea with an invitation, (but not an insistence) to pick it up and improve it or take it further. For group discussions to take place such lubricants are necessary. Other examples include “maybe”, “seems like”, “perhaps” or “I think”…this kind of “exploratory talk” brings multiple minds together to work on the same problem in powerful ways.” - Use the language of possibility: 'what if...?', 'could be...'
- Teachers and students keep a question journal. Teachers meet periodically with students and ask what question they would like to explore. (Dr. Tony Wagner)
If curiosity is an appetite we have more accessible food than ever before ....
