Category: Curiosity

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

Curiosity, Featured, ThinkingPublished onUpdated on1 Comment on Practical Steps to Get Out of the Way of Children’s Thinking

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

The Big Bang Breakthrough: a cosmological self-examination

CuriosityPublished onUpdated onLeave a Comment on The Big Bang Breakthrough: a cosmological self-examination

“We are talking right now about a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a millionth of a second after the Big Bang, so we see the face of the Big Bang. It is an image of the gravitational waves which are purely quantum gravity feature of what was produced in the Big Bang.”

This is footage of Professor Andrei Linde being told there is evidence that supports his life’s work. Along with Alan Guth he proposed a theory of cosmological inflation, the expansion of space in the early universe. The original ideas were proposed in 1980 by Guth and have now been supported by this latest discovery from a team of American physicists.

“Reaching back across 13.8 billion years to the first sliver of cosmic time with telescopes at the South Pole, a team of astronomers led by John M. Kovac of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics detected ripples in the fabric of space-time — so-called gravitational waves — the signature of a universe being wrenched violently apart when it was roughly a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second old. They are the long-sought smoking-gun evidence of inflation, proof, Kovac and his colleagues say, that Guth was correct.”

I don’t profess to understand the science behind what they were looking for or indeed how they could explore such evidence in the first place. What strikes me though about the film is how it signals the twilight of a period of time for those scientists involved. A prolonged time of theory, of uncertainty and exploration is, perhaps coming to an end. The evidence still needs to be corroborated, but the emotional moment when Linde was told of the emerging evidence is incredible.

There is much to admire in those people around us who choose to remain in a place of acute uncertainty, often in science, who become accustomed to working against orthodoxy or popular belief. Individuals who have the will and determination to stand by a theory and bide their time over decades are part of a select group of explorers.

It reminds me of the Higgs boson particle discovery from the work at CERN. This emerged from the theoretical work of François Englert and Peter Higgs fifty years ago. They proposed the mechanism that suggested the existence of the particle, leading to a forty year scientific search and of course the development of the Large Hadron Collider one of the largest and most complex experimental science facilities ever developed.

We can only wonder what it must be like to have wondered, theorised and developed ideas for such a protracted length of time. What must it have been like for Englert, Higgs, Guth, and Linde to have lived with unanswered questions for so long? How must it feel to be told that you were right all along? What defines the character of such a determined group of individuals? We owe a huge amount to these individuals who for many years wrestle and struggle with the unanswered questions of our world.

For Linde the emotion comes across clearly in the footage and his disbelief, even scepticism is apparent towards the end of the film. The dawn of certainty for Linde is captured beautifully on his doorstep – as monumental a discovery as it is for him and Guth, it is also a fascinating glimpse into our cosmological self-examination.

One blog commenter sums up the revelatory moment from the film perfectly: “the universe regarding itself, and being overwhelmed by what it learns.”

How we are Hardwired for Curiosity and Discovery

Curiosity, FeaturedPublished onUpdated on3 Comments on How we are Hardwired for Curiosity and Discovery

“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

CuriosityPublished onUpdated onLeave a Comment on Encouraging Curiosity is Not Enough

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.)