Cultivating Curiosity in K-12 Classrooms

How to Promote and Sustain Deep Learning

Wendy L. Ostroff

• Publisher: ASCD
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781416622000
• Topic: Bildung
• Subtopic: Bildungstheorie & -praxis

Curiosity comes from within—we just have to know how to unleash it.

We learn by engaging and exploring, asking questions and testing out answers. Yet our classrooms are not always places where such curiosity is encouraged and supported. Cultivating Curiosity in K–12 Classrooms describes how teachers can create a structured, student-centered environment that allows for openness and surprise, where inquiry guides authentic learning.

Award-winning educator Wendy L. Ostroff shows how to foster student curiosity through exploration, novelty, and play; questioning and critical thinking; and experimenting and problem solving. With techniques to try, scaffolding advice, and relevant research from neuroscience and psychology, this book will help teachers harness the powerful drive in all learners—the drive to know, understand, and experience the world in a meaningful way.

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Chapter 1

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Promote Exploration and Experimentation

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We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
—T. S. Eliot

The seeds of curiosity lie in exploring. Right from birth, children are agents of their own learning. Exploration is the act of seeking novelty. It involves experiencing the world in order to gain knowledge. How do young organisms come to be so immediately and fundamentally curious?

The Evolution of Curiosity: Exploratory Reflex

In the 1860s, German zoologist Alfred Brehm placed a covered box of snakes in the cage of several monkeys living in a zoo. When the monkeys lifted the lid, they were terrified, which is the typical reaction of monkeys to snakes. But then they did something rather odd (so odd that Charles Darwin was compelled to recreate the experiment himself). In spite of their fear, the monkeys could not resist reopening the lid of box to take another look at the snakes (Darwin, 1874). Since the publication of these findings in the book Brehm's Life of Animals (1864/2015), scientists have tested more than one hundred species of reptiles and mammals on their reactions to never-before-seen things. In all cases, the animals cannot resist novelty. In fact, attention to novelty is a fundamental feature of behavior shared by almost all organisms possessing nervous systems (Pisula, 2009). Novelty compels us to engage with different things, helping us survive by making sure that we pay attention to anything in our environment that can help or harm us.

Experimental psychologists in the last half-century have been fascinated with motivation as a prerequisite for learning. They have discovered that when we come in contact with ambiguous, complex, or conflicting information, our nervous systems become aroused, amping us up and forcing us to pay attention. When we are puzzled, we find a resolution very rewarding, which sets us up for efficient learning (Berlyne, 1966; Loewenstein, 1994). Neuroscientists have begun using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure brain activation during new and interesting situations. When someone is curious, the brain areas underlying autonomic arousal and discomfort are more highly activated (e.g., the anterior insula and anterior cingulate cortex). Then, when the question at hand is satisfied, that is, when we gain access to relevant information, the brain regions associated with reward are activated (Jepma, Verdonschot, van Steenbergen, Rombouts, & Nieuwenhuis, 2012).

In the realm of human genetics, curiosity and a preference for newness have been linked to the migration of early humans to the far reaches of the earth. As we know, the first humans evolved in Africa about 150,000 years ago. About 100,000 years later, there was a major human migration out of Africa, with humans inhabiting all parts of the globe by about 12,000 years ago. Interestingly, recent studies have shown that those human groups who migrated the furthest from Africa also had a greater frequency of the genes linked to novelty seeking (specifically, the DRD4 exon 3 gene alleles 2R and 7R) (Lehman & Stanley, 2011; Pisula, Turlejski, & Charles, 2013). In other words, the people who traveled the furthest from their origins may have had some biological propensity to check out and explore mysterious new places and things. As their brains grew larger, humans adapted by seeking out newness and engaging with exciting, novel experiences as a way to learn about the unknown.

The Development of Curiosity: Novel Places and Things

All wonder is the effect of novelty on ignorance.
—Samuel Johnson, The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.

Just as curiosity underpins the movement and growth of groups of humans throughout evolutionary time, curiosity is also the driving force behind the growth and movement of each individual child in developmental time. Newborn babies come into the world able to hear, see, feel, taste, and touch things in their surroundings. Their sensory and nervous systems have evolved to respond to the demands of the world with spontaneous and involuntary actions (e.g., the sucking reflex, which ensures that infants will drink milk and be nourished). Reflexes are fixed action patterns that only last a short time, but they slowly turn into other more complex setups for learning. The greater the knowledge of the environment an infant has gained through curiosity, the more the possibility of adaptation to that environment (Kirkpatrick, 1903/2009). In fact, scientists at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development recently discovered that the more energetically 5-month-old infants explored their surroundings, the more likely they were to perform well in school throughout childhood, all the way to high school (Bornstein, Hahn, & Suwalsky, 2013).

Babies marvel at sights, sounds, and patterns; they manipulate objects to test their physical properties; they stroke and mouth textures. Infants' tendency to be curious comes from the way their nervous systems are set up, and just as with animals, the exploratory drive springs from a perceptual preference for novelty. When given the choice, babies consistently look at, listen to, or play with things they have never experienced before (Diamond, 1995; Lipton & Spelke, 2003). One of the best moments in my early parenthood was catching my baby son noticing his hands for the first time. This discovery stands out like a metaphor for all of the learning experiences to come—his immediate and lasting interest in what those strange and wonderful appendages could do was his first step toward managing to control them. Novelty preference is an efficient way for infants' and young children's immature cognitive systems to process information. Novelty preference helps infants handle environmental changes. It then develops into the insatiable urge to explore and experience new things.

Children, like infants, spend their days in wonder. They can be counted on to open boxes and drawers, peek underneath furniture, and manipulate everything they can. Children make it their business to notice and observe, unearth and manipulate all of the things that might afford action. They use as many sensory systems as possible as a means to know, understand, and master their worlds, sometimes even without realizing it. As my toddler daughter Sonia so eloquently said after being told not to play with a porcelain vase at her great-grandmother's house, "I wasn't touching it, I was just looking at it with my hands."

Children's curiosity swells as they continue to explore, and this curious orientation can underpin engagement throughout K–12 education and beyond. For instance, one study showed that when elementary school-age children read books on topics they were already wondering about, they learned significantly more—including picking out more details and retaining what they read for longer periods of time (Engel, 2011). In another study, high school students showed increased engagement and increased enjoyment across school subjects when (1) they were appropriately challenged, (2) they were in control of how they spent their time, and (3) the in-subject activities were relevant to their own interests (Shernoff, Csikszentmihalyi, Schneider, & Shernoff, 2003). Furthermore, adolescents with widespread curiosity and interest in everyday life (including school) experience significantly better health and well-being (Hunter & Csikszentmihalyi, 2003).

Children's Brains Are Optimized for Exploration and Experimentation

Seong Min moved to the United States from Korea at age 4, when her father became a graduate student in chemistry. At first, she would sit timidly in the corner of her preschool classroom, venturing over to a table once in a while to draw or have a snack between tears. With virtually no knowledge of English it was difficult for her teachers to know what Seong Min was thinking or how well she was adjusting. Within about one month, Seong Min was no longer crying and gravitating to the corner of the room. She was playing with the kids outside and participating in the learning centers. By the end of four months, Seong Min was speaking English fluently and participating fully in the classroom! How was she able to learn so quickly?

Both children's and adults' brains are constantly wired and rewired (altered in their structure and function) as they encounter new experiences, understanding, and knowledge (Hensch, 2004). This is called neuroplasticity. Since early experiences have enhanced and longer lasting impacts on the brain (or "optimal neuroplasticity"), youth is the ripest learning period of the lifespan (Knudsen, 2004; Thompson-Schill, Ramscar, & Chrysikou, 2009; White, Hutka, Williams, & Moreno, 2013). It is no wonder children are curious to the core—novelty, exploration, and experimentation are wired in them!

During infancy and childhood, neurons (the cells of the brain) are ultra-sensitive to patterns in sensory input in their environments. Perceptual systems (like seeing, smelling, hearing, and touching) zoom in on, pick up, and organize the features of the child's world. Those pieces of information that are experienced regularly (e.g., the sounds of one's native language) are prioritized in the brain. This means that their neural representations become refined, tuning the child's perceptual systems in to only those specific types of stimulation and input (Kuhl & Rivera-Gaxiola, 2008; Werker & Tees, 1984).

At birth, infants can tell the difference between any sound in any of the world's languages. They can clearly hear the difference between /r/ and /l/, for example, when someone says /rock/ or /lock/. This skill functions to optimize learning language in the first year of life (Werker & Tees, 2005). By 1 year old, however, infants' ability to discriminate sounds in any of the world's languages declines, attuning them to only those sounds that they have been exposed to in their native language (Werker & Tees, 1984). The young brain has now been modified to hear only the necessary sounds and preferentially responds to them. Likewise, adults cannot discriminate or even hear differences in sounds that are not used in their native languages. This is why adult native speakers of many Asian languages have difficulty with the /r/ versus /l/ distinction in English. As a native speaker of English, no matter how carefully I listen or concentrate, I cannot hear the difference between the Hindi dental "d" sound in [dal] (which is a type of lentil), and the retroflex "d" sound in [d˛al] (which is a tree branch). My brain is fully attuned to the sounds I have grown up hearing in English (Kuhl, 2004; Werker & Tees, 1984).

Whereas it was incredibly quick and easy for 4-year-old Seong Min to learn to speak English, it took close to five years for her mother, Ji-Hye, to become fluent, and she was never able to speak like a native. Children who are introduced to a foreign language before the age of 7 can seamlessly pick up the grammar and phonology of the language and speak it without an accent. After age 7, the ease of learning new languages gradually declines until adulthood, regardless of the amount of experience with the new language, motivation to learn, cultural identification, or self-consciousness (Johnson & Newport, 1989). Like languages, early experience in music optimizes the child's brain to perceive and respond to new information. In fact, research has shown that most of history's prodigious musicians, such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Jimi Hendrix, and Yo-Yo Ma, began training before the age of 7 (White et al., 2013). These findings highlight what many parents and teachers have observed anecdotally: the younger the child, the more effortless the learning. This is because young brains are set up to explore and take in novel information.

Neuroscientist Jay Giedd studies how the human brain develops from birth through adolescence; he has clearly shown that for children younger than 7 or 8, learning via active exploration is far superior to learning from teacher-led explanation: "The trouble with over-structuring is that it discourages exploration," he says (Kohn, 2015, p. 4). Young brains thrive on the exploration and experimentation that are manifested in curiosity.

Quick Recap

• Humans and animals reflexively seek out novelty.
• Being curious is evolutionarily adaptive.
• Infants and children have an insatiable urge to explore, know, understand, and master their worlds.
• Young brains are optimized for new information and change, making infants and children superior learners to older learners.
• Children's brains are optimized to learn from exploration and experimentation, not from passively listening to teachers.

Scaffolding Exploration and Experimentation in the Classroom

The way that teachers feel about curiosity directly influences the way that their students explore and inquire. In one telling study, 3- and 4-year-olds were invited to play with a toy farm set while an experimenter sat nearby and behaved either in a friendly, encouraging way or an aloof, critical way. The children were then asked to guess what toys they were feeling, hidden behind a curtain. Children who had interacted with a friendly, approving experimenter were much quicker to begin exploring. They spent more time manipulating the toys they could not see, and they were more likely to guess the identity of the hidden object at the end of the session. In contrast, children who had had an aloof, critical experimenter showed significantly less task-related curiosity and exploratory behavior (Moore & Bulbulian, 1976).

In another study, researchers created a box with small novel objects in each of the drawers. They then put the box in kindergarten and 3rd grade classrooms and watched to see who came up to it, how many drawers each child opened, and how long each child spent examining the objects inside the drawers. What these researchers discovered was that in certain classrooms, 3rd graders were equally as curious as kindergartners: Just as many came up to the box quickly, opened all the drawers, and manipulated the contents. Children in both grades played with the little objects equally as long. But in other classrooms, regardless of grade, few children investigated the box. These classrooms, welcoming as they seemed at first glance, were places much less conducive to exploration. The researchers later discovered that there was a direct link between how much the teacher smiled and encouraged students and the level of curiosity the children expressed (Hackmann & Engel, 2002, cited in Engel, 2011).

Some teachers feel that they do not have the freedom or the time to allow children to get off-task and that following the children's interests or indulging tangents is a luxury that they cannot afford because they must ensure that students perform well on standardized tests. In a recent observation of kindergarten, 1st grade, and 5th grade classrooms, when the teachers relegated stretches of time to achieving very specific learning objectives, there just was not time for curiosity (Engel, 2011). How can teachers work within prescribed content standards and still encourage exploration and experimentation? The answer may simply be a matter of shifting our implicit attitudes toward curiosity.

In an interesting study with 8- and 9-year-olds, researchers emulated a school science project called The Bouncing Raisins (adding raisins to a mix of vinegar and baking soda, with the delightful result of the raisins bouncing up to the top of the glass) (Engel & Labella, 2011). At the end of the activity, the experimenter responded to the children differently. For half the children, she said something like, "You know what? I wonder what would happen if we dropped one of these [picking up a Skittle from the table] in the liquid instead of a raisin?" With the other half of the children, instead of picking up a Skittle and dropping it in, she simply cleaned the work area up a little, commenting as she did it, "I'm just going to tidy up a bit. I'll put these materials over here." Then the experimenter left the room. As she left, she said, "Feel free to do whatever you want while you are waiting for me. You can use the materials more, or draw with these crayons, or just wait. Whatever you want to do is fine." Children who had seen their guide deviate from the task to satisfy her own curiosity were much more likely to play with the materials, dropping raisins, Skittles, and other items into the liquid, stirring it, and adding other ingredients. Children who instead had seen her tidy up tended to do nothing at all while they waited. The lesson of this research is clear: Teachers' own behavior has a powerful effect on a child's disposition to explore (Engel & Labella, 2011).

Then, these researchers recreated the study, but this time designed it to measure how teachers would respond to spontaneous curiosity and exploration on the part of a child. In this case, teachers who volunteered to be participants were all asked to do the experiment with a "student" who was really working with the experimenters. The first group of teachers was told that the focus of the lesson was learning about science. The second group of teachers was told that the focus of the lesson was filling out a worksheet. The task with the jumping raisins was exactly the same, but this time the child (who was a part of the study) was instructed to stray from the instructions and put a Skittle into the glass. If the teacher asked the child what she was doing, the student was trained to reply, "I just wanted to see what would happen" (p. 191). The results were striking. Teachers who believed that the goal of the lesson was learning about science responded with interest and encouragement to the child's diversion, saying things like, "Oh, what are you trying?" or "Maybe we should see what this will do." But those teachers who had been subtly encouraged to focus on completing the worksheet said things like, "Oh wait a second, that's not on the instruction sheet" or "Whoops, that doesn't go in there." Like all humans, teachers are very susceptible to external influences. In this study, teachers' understanding of the goal of a block of time directly impacted how they responded when children wanted to spontaneously investigate (Engel & Randall, 2009).

Curiosity Technique to Try: Discovery Learning

Students benefit from the extra time it takes to discover on their own, even through trial and error. Often in my seminar courses, my students will spend a lot of time hashing out ideas. It is tempting to stop them, especially if they are not on the "right track." For example, in my Biased Brain course, I find it difficult to hear incorrect attempts about brain functionality such as, "Maybe this is how the brain works …" when I have more experience with the research literature. But I have to be patient and let them explore so they can discover insights and meaning on their own.

In the same spirit, 8th grade science teacher Muriel Hasek designs labs that are purposefully left open, so that her students can genuinely experiment with the materials and come to their own conclusions. For example, when she wanted her class to understand the properties of solutes and solvents, she just asked the students to begin mixing the liquids however they chose. The students devised their own systematic ways of testing the properties of the liquids and arrived at the understanding she had hoped for (that mixed solutions take on the characteristics of solvents), albeit in very divergent ways. Mistakes were a part of that process, but the goal went far beyond knowing properties of liquids to fostering an experimental min...