Create the space for dialogue
In preparation for the third dialogue in my free webinar series on AI, I met with guests Claire Amos and Philippa Wintle from Albany Senior High School in Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand.
We are all set for a fascinating session next Wednesday, and a brief comment by Claire has been on my mind all week. I paraphrase, but it was along the lines of:
Artificial intelligence tools have the potential to reduce student agency.
You are more engaged, active, and open-minded when you’re curious. But what is it about curiosity that makes it so powerful? In this issue, we explore the psychology of curiosity and three surprising ways it changes your brain.
In a study published in 2014, researchers discovered a connection between memory and curiosity levels. Here are some of the key findings from the investigation by the University of California at Davis:
Point number two helps me get a handle on the characteristic of being open-minded. We can remember more of our experiences when we are curious.
A little test you can do for this is to try and remember extraneous information connected to an enjoyable learning experience.
When faced with something new, our brain weighs the risks and rewards before deciding whether to engage.
This happens when you are scrolling and decide to open an article or photo. You made a similar micro-calculation when you saw the subject of this email. Is this worth my time?
Curiosity, the restless feeling of wanting to know more, tips the scales in favour of exploration.
The regions deep in your brain responsible for processing rewards and motivation are active when you become curious. The nucleus accumbens, the bilateral caudate nucleus, and the ventral tegmental area all fire up when we want to know more.
When we’re curious, our brain has decided the potential rewards outweigh the risks. And this instinctive risk/reward calculation drives us to explore the physical and mental world around us.
Designing provocations for learning is a great way to heighten curiosity, so your students don’t scroll by!
When was the last time you discovered something new in a favourite topic? Experiences which challenge our knowledge increase curiosity and cause us to explore for longer.
Here’s a recent example I experienced.
Most of our understanding of effective teaching has shifted since I was a primary teacher. I am curious about this tweet about Adaptive Teaching vs Differentiation, which presents the following statement:
Having lower expectations for some groups, particularly by setting them different work, will result in pupils having different knowledge and worsens gaps.
Challenged? ✅ Curious? ✅ Motivated to find out more? ✅
All new learning challenges the schemas we use to organise knowledge and understanding. A study by researchers Bonawitz, Schijndel, Friel, and Schulz found children are more likely to remain curious in this challenged state.
An unpublished Duke University study also showed heightened curiosity, increased patience and made people more willing to wait to discover a solution. In contrast, less curious people were more impatient and wanted to jump straight to the answers.
More curiosity has the power to motivate us for longer and increase our patience for discovery.
Commit to action and turn words into works
Lead a team dialogue with these provocations
Explore cornerstone questions that will boost your teaching and learning, your project management and discovery, and ultimately your creative success.
Feedback is a glue that binds and potentially strengthens relationships. We might also say feedback is an idea propellant that drives us to succeed. In this opening issue of the month, we explore the essential components of critique.
Earlier this week, I tuned in to a public lecture from Laureate Professor Marilyn Fleer and her team. They presented their latest findings from the Conceptual Playlab at Monash University.
The Conceptual PlayLab is a research group. They investigate play-based models for teaching young children science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).
The lecture shared insights from the last three years of research about how infants, toddlers and pre-schoolers think, create and collectively innovate in STEM.
A foundation of their research is the experience of a conceptual play world which I want to explore today.
In the lecture, Fleer outlined the five key pedagogical characteristics of a conceptual play world:
The notes above are from this overview from Professor Marilyn Fleer: The Five Characteristics of a Conceptual Playworld (Fleer, 2018). This short document also provides some elaborations and practices for each characteristic.
I was struck by how the five characteristics remind me of facilitation, coaching and learning design.
I often refer to inviting people into a world for a workshop. As a group, we establish working norms or protocols (rules for this new world) and co-design a way to explore a challenge together.
When we perceive learning as a conceptual world to enter or exit. It allows us the opportunity to:
Conceptual world-building is a useful mental model as a learning designer and facilitator.
Coaching is about holding space.
You might wonder, what are we holding on to?
For me, this is about maintaining the integrity of the dialogic space.
When I hold the coaching space, I limit judgement, remain in the question and invest in the relationship.
The PlayLab’s research supports the view that learning in a conceptual play world is an essential foundation for STEM learning. I wonder how we can apply these ideas more broadly across different areas of learning? What would be the implications for schools, teachers and students? How might we fold early childhood research into adult learning design?
We are so busy and caught up in the ‘doing’ that we forget to take a step back, reflect and play.
The experience of change and innovation needs playful moments. When we play, we take risks, experiment and try things out. We also create the space to laugh at ourselves and let go of inhibitions.
The challenge for all of us is to find ways to intentionally create space for play.
Here are a few key takeaways about
Complement this issue with articles about play and innovation from my blog:
Finding the edges of your page ⟶
How our creativity is shaped by our culture ⟶
In A World of Their Own – the features of immersive play ⟶
Using Kinectimals to Support Play in the Early Years Classroom ⟶
David Whitebread and Marisol Basilio, in their essay “Play, culture and creativity”, explain that play is ubiquitous in humans and that every child in every culture plays.
My weekly email helps educators and innovation leaders enhance their practice by sharing provocations, ideas and mental models. Join today, and get your copy this week.
