Tag: curiosity

Saying You Don’t Know Fuels the Desire to Find Out

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It was with a fair dollop of trepidation I took to a stage last week at Edutech 2014 in Brisbane and shared some ideas about creative learning. Marginally due to the number of people, but mainly it was the fact that I had not done the keynote before, some new ideas / new keynote angst.

During my talk we explored the struggle for great pedagogy and the tension of creative learning. I outlined the need to dispel the myth that we are making such polarised choices about learning – the reality and the beauty of it is in the complexity.

I shared some research by Elizabeth Bonawitz, called the Double Edged Sword of Pedagogy that showed young learners are more likely to explore and discover for themselves if they are not taught all of the information. Their tendency to explore increases when adult instruction suggests there is more to find out.

Furthermore Bonawitz observed the emerging awareness to an instructional pedagogy even in youngsters:

“the results suggest a striking competence in young children: they are able to negotiate the trade-off between exploration and instruction such that they explore more when that can rationally infer that there is more information to be learned. Moreover, children demonstrate this competence remarkably early. By preschool, children seem actively to evaluate their teachers both for the knowledge they have and their ability to demonstrate it. Thus, well before children are immersed in formal education, they are sensitive to some conditions that promote effective instruction.”

Signalling that there is more to discover can be achieved by simply saying “I don’t know”. Not in any defeatist sense of closure but in one of open delight that there is much more to learn.

I have always believed that such a stance with learners should be a default option. Especially when we are fielding the questions they ask. In addition to encouraging further exploration we also encourage more questioning. Think of these questions as way-markers for that journey into a new land, over time they will leave a breadcrumb trail for us to look back upon and maybe for others to discover together.

Another important effect of saying “I don’t know” in terms of learning is the prolongment of the period of enquiry, providing more opportunities for further questions and discovery. If questions start everything a prolonged state of uncertainty maintains and deepens our thinking, as John Dewey outlined:

“To be genuinely thoughtful, we must be willing to sustain and protract that state of doubt which is the stimulus to thorough enquiry, so as not to accept an idea or make a positive assertion of a belief, until justifying reasons have been found.”

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I thoroughly enjoyed sharing some of my ideas during the keynote and it has been lovely to have seen some of your feedback comments from those of you who were there. I will be exploring some more of the themes from my talk in future posts over on the NoTosh Facebook page and in much more detail here.

The states of knowing and not knowing and the really interesting bits in between

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Read, Read, Read

Last year I was attending a conference in Boston, US and was lucky enough to listen to Alec Couros, a Professor of Educational Technology and Media at the Faculty of Ed., University of Regina.

He described a time in a supermarket when his 5 year old son asked whether bananas on a tree grew with their tips facing up or facing down. I will let Alec describe what happened next and how he reacted to his son’s question:

“I didn’t actually know off-hand. But, being the connected father I am, I pulled out my iPhone, Googled it, and in less than 30 seconds, we were looking at photos of banana plants and we no longer had to wonder.

*We no longer had to wonder.*

I did that entirely wrong. At the very least, I could have asked my boy, “Well, which do you think son?” perhaps followed by “So, why do you think that?” But I didn’t. And because I didn’t, I messed up a great learning opportunity.”

During his talk Alec outlined how the states of “knowing” and “not knowing” are drawn together by the pervasive nature of technology.

I believe that in a time when technology provides unprecedented access to knowledge we need to be exploring the really interesting bits in between. Spending longer between posing a question / a state of wonder and the clarification of new or affirming knowledge.

We need more learning designed to unflinchingly explore the unknown, enquiry state and for much longer.

The brevity of not knowing, which Alec describes, often short circuits our opportunities for enquiry, for exploring and revealing our existing knowledge and perhaps discovering new and better ways to find things out.

It is the discerning application of technology in these instances that we should be developing with our students. To know when to ponder, mull and cogitate, working out something with others, and when to simply close the gap, “Google it” and do something with that new knowledge.

Making this type of choice will be the key to constructing knowledge in the future, alongside retaining an enduring curiosity for the world and what it is like to not know.

Pic Read, read, read. by cuellar

Practical Steps to Get Out of the Way of Children’s Thinking

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Eleanor Duckworth’s work on Critical Explorers asserts that the combination of: teachers as curriculum designers and the focus on children’s thinking and not simply our own, is a powerful learning duo.

Today we take a further look at some practical questioning strategies she has outlined in her work and a hexagonal thinking strategy you can use. The following is from the Critical Explorers site where you can delve more deeply into the ideas she offers.

Catch students’ interest

  • Try to convey that you think they’ll enjoy exploring this image (or text, or map, etc.), and that what they are doing and saying sheds new light for you on the object. It always does.
  • Try to keep them thinking about it, even when they may think they have done all they can.
  • Try to find out what they are thinking about the image, and to follow their thinking as it changes.

For example:

Ask for observations:

  • Start with a question that allows for a very small answer, where everyone has something to say — for example, “What do you notice?”
  • Ask them to point to the image and show everyone what they are talking about.
  • Ask what else they notice.
  • Ask them to say more about an observation they’ve made.

Ask for clarification:

  • Ask them to refer back to the image itself to back up whatever they have to say about it.
  • Ask them to clarify something, or to explain what makes them say what they do.
  • Make a hunch about what is behind what they say, and check the hunch with them.

Ask about conflicting or contrasting ideas:

  • Draw attention to some seeming inconsistency in what they have said.
  • Ask what about the image puzzles them.
  • Ask how what they have said fits with another part of the image, or with something they said earlier, or with something someone else has said.
  • Ask them to think about other students’ ideas, and to refer to the image to explain why they agree or disagree.

To provide further support for children we have found that a hexagonal thinking activity gives them a clear way to structure their thinking, seeing the combinations of ideas they have and manipulating their thinking in a tangible way.

You can explore a range of resources and further reading about hexagonal thinking/learning such as one of David Didau’s original posts. This post is useful from Frances Brown that extends some of the ideas and of course HOOKed on Learning’s resource page which offers many a link journey to explore.

This summary presentation from my good friend Chris Harte, a Leading Teacher at the John Monash Science School, is a great place to start.

Photo by Diego PH on Unsplash

How we are Hardwired for Curiosity and Discovery

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“One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.” – Andre Gide

When we moved to Australia from England at the beginning of 2013 the whole period was memorable and distinct for many reasons. But there is one emotion or memory that still strikes me, that of the feeling of being in limbo, between places and our lives being in transition, in flux. It was primarily on the plane journeys and the whole idea of having only bought one way tickets. The relief of getting to that point, after months or organisation, soon subsided and I wondered about the future.

It is a powerful memory because we rarely take such extreme decisions and as it immersed us, as a family, in the unknown. There were so many questions we all had. I recall meeting a few other families who had made the trip across from Europe at the same time and were also settling into life in Australia, it seemed we shared that experience and perhaps shared something in our characters to make the decision in the first place.

In learning more about the curiosity we recognise in our young children and how this continues to change throughout our lives, I have been particularly interested in the innateness of a curious mindset, an explorers disposition and how this grows and diminishes.

In a fascinating article, “Restless Genes” David Dobbs outlines that this innate disposition to explore, discover and curiousity for the world around has been mapped to a specific part of the human genome.

“If an urge to explore rises in us innately, perhaps its foundation lies within our genome. In fact there is a mutation that pops up frequently in such discussions: a variant of a gene called DRD4, which helps control dopamine, a chemical brain messenger important in learning and reward. Researchers have repeatedly tied the variant, known as DRD4-7R and carried by roughly 20 percent of all humans, to curiosity and restlessness. Dozens of human studies have found that 7R makes people more likely to take risks; explore new places, ideas, foods, relationships, drugs, or sexual opportunities; and generally embrace movement, change, and adventure.”

A combination of DRD4, high dexterity from our hands (as tools), big brains for imagination and the greater levels of mobility we have from our limbs than most other mammals, compose a set of traits uniquely suited for creating explorers.

Dobbs refers to Alison Gopnik’s work, a child-development psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who says that humans have a longer childhood, a slower path to puberty in which “we can exercise our urge to explore while we’re still dependent on our parents” and have “an unmatched period of protected “play” in which to learn exploration’s rewards.”

Gopnik outlines that:

“Yet while other animals play mainly by practicing basic skills such as fighting and hunting, human children play by creating hypothetical scenarios with artificial rules that test hypotheses. Can I build a tower of blocks as tall as I am? What’ll happen if we make the bike ramp go even higher? How will this schoolhouse game change if I’m the teacher and my big brother is the student? Such play effectively makes children explorers of landscapes filled with competing possibilities.”

Typically we see the play based disposition change as we get older and young adulthood often swamps our willingness to explore, often replaced by a desire for habit and familiarity.

In the classroom or at home there are many simple things that you can do to continue to encourage and protect this love of exploring and curiosity:

  • Embrace a supportive approach to asking and sharing questions.
  • Change things – the classroom furniture, the displays, pictures on the fridge.
  • Try new things together – modelling a willingness to explore and discover together is a powerful motivator.
  • Give children time to think – space, time and the encouragement to think, ponder and mull over questions or new ideas is important.
  • Offer provocations – these could be images, quotes, films or artefacts that make us wonder and challenge our thinking.
  • Say it is OK not to know – let your children hear this from you, that sometimes wondering is more important than having all the answers

There are so many ways we can design the conditions for ongoing discovery and support children’s disposition towards exploring and their natural curiosity. What successful strategies have you tried at home or in the classroom?

Image: almost may by paul bica

Encouraging Curiosity is Not Enough

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My own son’s curiosity for the world around him was the inspiration for my book. In turn my own curiosity for the questions that he was asking, what these meant and why he was asking them in the first place encouraged me to put pen to paper.

Since publishing it and talking to hundreds of educators about the premise of encouraging curiosity in our children or the learners in our class, I have come to realise that perhaps that is not enough. From our earliest days we have a predisposition to explore a new world all around us – with our mouths, fingers and hands and of course through the language we develop and the questions that inevitably come.

Similarly Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a Hungarian psychology professor, states that: “Each of us is born with two contradictory sets of instructions: a conservative tendency, made up of instincts for self-preservation, self-aggrandizement, and saving energy, and an expansive tendency made up of instincts for exploring, for enjoying novelty and risk. We need both. But whereas the first tendency requires little encouragement, the second can wilt if it is not cultivated.“ [Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi]

I have since further recognised that when George, my son, asks those many (many) questions he is doing so as a direct result of the environment around him. He is able to focus on the tendency for exploring and risk because he is, ultimately, safe. Indeed it is this sense of safety that he uses as a base for the forays he makes into the unknown.

The majority of my teaching I worked with children who, for many, recognised school as being the safest aspect of their lives, they did not have the luxury of a solid, safe environment that allowed them to be curious because their self-preservation tendency was more important. Therefore, as Csikszentmihalyi suggests, their instincts for exploring “wilt”. Simply encouraging these youngsters to question the world and explore is simply not enough, in fact protecting the curiosity in our youngsters is also not quite enough. We need to be developing a broader understanding into our potential impact on children’s dormant curiosity and how we can affect this torpidity.

Perhaps the “wilt” that occurs, as Csikszentmihalyi suggests, is something that can of course be reversed. A tendency that lies dormant, ready for the conditions that are needed to become active once again, or indeed for the very first time.

An inherent feature of designing learning is the provision of a safe environment, and it is through this ongoing effort that we can help activate curiosity in young learners, encourage it in new ways. Ultimately we must protect and cosset this precious tendency.

(Tweaked a little, but originally posted on our NoTosh Facebook page.)