Curiosity and Equity

Our nation is in the midst of an equity crisis and has been for some time now. Statistics for graduation, post-high school access, employment, incarceration, and government assistance all demonstrate the crisis. It is not an ability crisis, not an effort crisis, not an innate intelligence crisis. It is an access and opportunity crisis created by the systems we have in place.

What, you might be asking, does this have to do with curiosity? I once heard a speaker talk of “the equity of an excellent education.” Education cannot alone solve systemic racism, homelessness, or wage gaps, but it can help to close inequities such as test scores gaps, college access gaps, and as a result, many of the other gaps listed above.

Before we go any further, I want to make sure that we agree on one thing. ALL students deserve a great education (which I have argued must include a healthy dose of curiosity-inducing activities) and all groups of students are equally capable given the same tools and experiences.

Since you’re still reading, I’m assuming that you don’t disagree with that statement. But before we can delve any deeper, I want to make sure that we have the same base knowledge at our disposal. I will put a link to some pertinent research below. It is an incredibly interesting (and sobering) read. But if you’re busy and you trust me to summarize it accurately, I will do so below the link.

https://www1.udel.edu/educ/whitson/897s05/files/hiddencurriculum.htm

Jean Anyon, an educational researcher, found that educational outcomes across schools with varying economics deviate in well-known and predictable patterns. No surprises. Dr. Anyon set out to determine what explains these discrepancies. Most people have their hypotheses, but Dr. Anyon visited a large number of schools across the entire spectrum of economic demographies.

Dr. Anyon concluded that it is not the physical school buildings, not the bell schedules, not the years of experience of the teachers, not how prestigious the teacher’s university was, but instead the specific strategies that the teacher uses to instruct students. What struck me in reading the description of the strategies being used is how as she climbed the economic ladder of schools, the strategies got more and more curiosity-laden. Not only are students of poverty being robbed of these excellent learning opportunities, but also the long-lasting effects that we have spoken about in previous posts.

The research suggested that teachers may believe that students who are experiencing poverty must perform foundational, rote activities before getting to curiosity-igniting tasks later. Often, the lessons never get to those high levels of curiosity and then it becomes a vicious cycle resulting in a lack of curiosity resulting in disadvantages lasting many years. The teachers of affluent students skip right over the foundational lessons and jump straight into the rich, curiosity-inducing tasks right away.

Another researcher, Martin Haberman, took this study one step farther and made a list of common strategies that he saw at urban schools:
• Giving information,
• Asking questions,
• Giving directions,
• Making assignments,
• Monitoring seatwork,
• Reviewing assignments,
• Giving tests,
• Reviewing tests,
• Assigning homework,
• Reviewing homework,
• Settling disputes,
• Punishing noncompliance,
• Marking papers, and
• Giving grades.

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/1570/2df70734cb15a165c988db86c68d9759528a.pdf

Notice how none of these activities were included in the introductory blogs explaining what curiosity-rich instruction looks like.

Schools that are igniting student curiosity are giving their students lifelong advantages. My experience has shown me that these same schools that are less likely to be using curiosity-inducing strategies in class are also less likely to have debate teams, participate in Academic Decathlon, offer advanced STEM coursework, compete in the science fair, provide opportunities to express artistic abilities, arrange internships for students, or offer courses in computer programming, robotics, and engineering. A study by the Kapor center found, “Low-income schools are 4x less likely to offer AP Computer Science A courses than high-income schools.” The lack of curiosity strategies in the classroom compounded with the lack of curiosity activities outside of the classroom likely explains a portion of the achievement gap that we are seeing.

The Cure for Boredom blog is an attempt to give teachers the tools to increase the amount of curiosity in ALL classrooms. The ideas do not necessarily cost any money and will work with every student. There are also solutions outside of the classrooms as well. Twelve years ago, I noticed that only affluent students whose parents were professors, doctors, or scientists were winning at high-level science fairs. I wanted to put the "fair" in science fair, so, I began a Science Fair Expo in my county where I arranged for more than 30 science professors and professional scientists to sit in a room and meet with any student to discuss their projects and potentially be invited to work in the scientist’s lab. Attendees come from diverse backgrounds and help level the science fair playing field. Hundreds of students per year have attended the event for the last 10 years helping to level the playing field. The movie Spare Parts also told the true story of a high-poverty school being very successful in robotics competitions. An Arduino nano clone costs $4 and allows students’ computer programming to come alive in the real world building 3-D printers, robots, and much more, launching their curiosity and building useful skills.

Research shows that curiosity-inducing activities have enduring effects on academic achievement and this lack of opportunity certainly contributes a portion to achievement gaps. This is an equity issue, an access issue, and a fixable issue.

What is your school currently doing to give all students opportunities to participate in curiosity-inducing activities?

Curiosity Research Part 2: Curiosity and IQ

In Major League Baseball, the median ranked player (according to fantasy baseball rankings) made $3.25 million dollars last year (Leury Garcia). The player at the top 22nd percentile (Shin-Soo Choo) made $21 million and the player at the bottom 22nd percentile (Sam Gaviglio) did not receive a contract offer in 2019. The average adult male is 5’10” tall. An adult male at the top 22nd percentile is over 6’1” tall and the bottom 22nd percentile 5’7” tall.

Why do I tell you this? I’m trying to instill that a difference of 0.8 standard deviations is a significant difference. What if I could tell you that researchers found something that could increase a 3-year old’s IQ by 0.8 standard deviations or 12 IQ points? You’ve probably already guessed what it is.

In, “Stimulation Seeking and Intelligence: A Prospective Longitudinal Study,” Raines, Reynolds, Venables, and Mednick (link below) tested both the intelligence and curiosity of nearly 2,000 three-year-olds. They used a modified test appropriate for the age group using block stacking and visual tasks instead of reading and math problems like a typical IQ test. Then, they waited 5 years and tested the students again.

You’ve probably already figured out what they found. They found that 3-year olds showing high levels of curiosity (“high stimulation-seeking”) had IQs 12 points higher than their low curiosity counterparts and did better in school and had higher reading levels as well when they were 8 years old. Twelve IQ points puts those kids at the top 22nd percentile in intelligence if they began exactly average.

The effect size was between 0.5 and 0.77 which is significantly high. In Visible Learning, John Hattie considered anything above 0.4 to be significant. Researchers consider 0.5 to be medium and 0.8 to be high. An effect size of 0.8 means that 79% of the high curiosity group scored higher on IQ tests than the mean of the low curiosity group. If there was no relationship, one would expect a 50% rate.

This change of 12 points is important. An IQ of 100 is considered average and 115 is considered mildly gifted. In Curiosity Research Part 1, we found that another study found that infants whose curiosity was stoked outperformed their peers in school up to 15 years later. Since researchers have estimated that 50% of intelligence is inherited, that leaves another 50% that is fluid and impressionable. Curiosity Factor #1 and Curiosity Factor #2 each laid out some simple, no-cost tweaks that can ignite curiosity and igniting curiosity can have a lasting impact on a student’s intelligence.

Keep coming back to the blog for more of these research-based tips to ignite curiosity. Post your ideas in the comments section below how you’ve used these tips in your classroom.

https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/psp-824663.pdf

Curiosity Factor #2: Inquiry

           Before we get started with this blog, I’d like to ask a favor of you. Please go over to this link filled with great resources on the topic we are about to explore and poke around for a while.  I’ll wait here while you explore. Take your time.

https://www.edutopia.org/article/inquiry-based-learning-resources-downloads

            Thanks! Great to have you back. The topic that we are about to explore, one that psychology research has shown to enhance curiosity, is Inquiry. There are many definitions and types of inquiry: Scientific Inquiry, Argument Driven Inquiry (ADI), Guided Inquiry, Inquiry-Based Learning (IBL), and many more. My experience as a science educator has shown me that Scientific Inquiry is somewhat different than the others which are all very similar. 

            Scientific Inquiry is a process of teaching in which the amount of involvement of the student and teacher in the science activity varies according to the chart below.

Level 0: Teacher provides the question, teacher provides the procedure, students already know how it will turn out. (Not inquiry-based, "cookbook" experiment)

Level 1: Teacher provides the question, teacher provides the procedure, students do NOT know how it will turn out. (Structured Inquiry)

Level 2: Teacher provides the question, student determines the procedure, students do NOT know how it will turn out. (Guided Inquiry)

Level 3: Student determines the question, student determines the procedure, students do NOT know how it will turn out. (Open Inquiry, typically science fair projects and the like)

            The goal of a science teacher is to ask themselves how they might bump an activity up to the next level of Inquiry. Simply doing an activity before students have learned a concept bumps Level 0 up to Level 1. Teachers cannot and should not attempt to teach every concept via Open Inquiry (OI) for there is not enough time in a school year for that and not every concept lends itself to OI. But important topics that lend themselves well make good targets.

            The other forms of Inquiry have several things in common. They all involve having students explore concepts before being formally introduced to them.  In an English class, this might appear as having students tell a story to the group about what it might be like to get lost in fog before reading the chapter in Huckleberry Finn where Huck and Jim get separated in thick fog. In an economics class, students might do a simulation with fake products and money to discover that an abundance of product drives down prices and vice versa before learning about supply and demand.

            The best template I have seen for creating an Inquiry lesson is the 7-E Lesson Plan listed below.

Elicit- Where teachers draw out students’ prior understandings and experiences

Engage- Where teachers generate enthusiasm for a topic through real-world examples, discussions, debates

Explore- Here, students begin a project, write an introduction to a paper, prepare for a presentation

Explain- This is the traditional lesson part of the plan

Elaborate- Here, students apply what they’ve learned to other situations and formative differentiation occurs

Evaluate- Teachers evaluate students’ understanding of the concepts

Extend- Students receive either enrichment or intervention activities

            Notice that in a 7-E lesson plan, explaining the concept is the fourth step in the process. Students are experiencing the concept before they learn the formalities and the equations and definitions. For example, math teachers express that students often misapply calculations because they don’t remember when they are allowed to use an algorithm and when they are not. Before discussing the Pythagorean Theorem, a math teacher could give students a page with various triangles on it and ask them to verify whether the relationship a² + b² = c² is always true. Students will discover on their own that it is only true for right triangles and they will remember that much longer than if they were just told that rule. Sometimes this practice is called “Activity Before Concept” (ABC) and that is a very apt name for it.

"Following directions conserves energy, but following one's unique direction expands energy."
- Ian Kashdan, Curious?: Discover the Missing Ingredient to a Fulfilling Life

            Remember at the beginning of this blog post when I asked you to go out and explore on your own? Now, you’ll likely be able to explain the pedagogy behind that. Activity before concept...Inquiry...ignites curiosity and improves learning. Try to bump up the level of Inquiry in your classroom as well.

Think of a lesson that you have coming up. In the comments below or on Twitter (@mhortonleads), explain how you will add Inquiry to the lesson.

Curiosity Factor #1: Novelty

Below is an audio player with a sound effect. Please click on the play button before continuing to read below.

What did you feel when you heard that tone? If you're a modern iPhone user, you probably felt anxious and wanted to glance at your phone to see what new information was coming through. The urge may have even been irresistible and you actually checked your phone. Honestly, did you check your phone when you heard it?  This is the power of "Novelty." Imagine if you could make students that hungry to devour World History, Geometry, Chemistry, or The Great Gatsby. Your phone and many advertising campaigns have been specifically designed to trigger this human desperation for novelty.

Our brain is a novelty-seeking machine. Seeking out novel experiences is how cavemen moved out into the plains, it's how toddlers learn about the world, and why you cannot check the time on your phone without seeing what's new on Twitter, who texted you, if that auction finally ended on eBay, and what happened on The Bachelor last night. Novelty is one major key to opening students' brains to learning.

But, you might ask, "How do I make the Pythagorean Theorem novel?" I contend that you can make the Pythagorean Theorem novel but it is not necessarily a requirement as you will see. First, let me summarize some research. Scientists asked people to rank how curiosity-inducing a list of trivia questions were. They then put subjects in brain scanning machines (fMRI) and asked them these same trivia questions and then showed them pictures of faces. Later, they showed them those same faces mixed in with random faces and asked them which ones they recognized. They statistically significantly recognized faces more often if they followed a high curiosity trivia question than a low curiosity trivia question. The faces had nothing to do with the trivia questions.

Further research showed that the recognition of these faces lasted longer, even days longer because curiosity was induced first and that this brain-priming effect lasts for 5-15 minutes after the curiosity event. Of course, there's far more research behind this, and this was a cursory look at it. But bear in mind that the research has shown that when curiosity is sparked, learning is enhanced, even when the learning has nothing to do with the curiosity event.

What this means for the classroom, is that all you need to do is spark curiosity and students' brains will be primed for learning whatever you are about to teach. For example, you may lead into a very difficult calculus lesson by replacing chairs with bean bags. You might begin the class with a short curiosity-inducing video clip, trivia question, or partner activity. Students might walk in and there are virtual reality goggles on their desks with instructions on how to do a virtual field trip. Maybe there are clues taped to the walls around the classroom and a box with a combination lock on their desks. None of these things have anything to do with the Pythagorean Theorem, but all will induce curiosity through novel stimuli and prime the brain to learn more math.

For years, teachers have been taught that students need structure. They need to walk into a familiar classroom every day with familiar procedures and a familiar lesson plan. If you hope to create passive students who sit in rows and absorb some of the information that they're exposed to, then structure and predictability are key. But, if you want to create curious, exploratory, interested, deep, lifelong learners, then mix things up because novelty is the major key to curiosity. You can still have procedures for turning in homework or requesting to go to the restroom. But sprinkle novelty into your lessons and the research demonstrates that student learning will improve. Now, you've waited long enough, go see what new deal popped up on the coupon app on your phone.

In the comments below, share how you've introduced novelty into your classroom or into a lesson.

Curiosity Research

If you were asked what it is that separates humans from the rest of the intelligent animals, how would you answer? There are many possible solutions that scientists offer in answer to this question. For example, tool-use is often given, but there are many animals who use tools such as monkeys, apes, birds, and fish, for example. Maybe it’s the size of our brains? There are animals out there with larger brains than humans, in fact, a whale’s brain can be 6 times larger. Perhaps it is the opposable thumbs? However, many mammals also have opposable thumbs. Now that I’ve piqued your curiosity, I am going to make you wait to reveal the answer.

In my first blog on igniting curiosity in the classroom, I introduced readers to the power of curiosity as the drive for learning. Without curiosity, true, long-term learning does not happen. In this blog, I’ll discuss some of the research backing up this claim. I have literally consumed more than 2,500 pages of research including obscure psychology journals, books written for non-educators, blog posts, and communications with psychology researchers. I will whittle this all down to 3 important points for this blog.

1. It is important to start igniting curiosity early
2. Curiosity dies without constant ignition
3. Curiosity primes the brain for learning

When we say that we want students to be lifelong learners, what we are really saying is that we want them to be curious. In order to accomplish this, we must understand some of the research behind curiosity and the strategies to enhance it.

Researchers have developed ways to measure the curiosity of infants and toddlers before they can speak. They use pointing and exploratory behavior to quantify the child’s curiosity. Research has shown that 16-month-olds who measure as more curious than their peers end up being more successful students when they are 14 years old. That is powerful and enduring!

So, how did these toddlers become more curious? By feeding their curiosity. The research showed that if a toddler points at an object and the parents ignore it, the child will stop pointing and the lack of curiosity can persist for many years. If the child points and the parents give the child the object, then the child sees pointing as a tool to get something and curiosity is low, but higher than the first group. If the child points and the parents name the object, demonstrate how it is used, and tell the child about it, not only does the child immediately explore the object more (demonstration of curiosity), but that increased curiosity lasts until they are at least 14 years old.

Pointing toddlers is not the only time in a child’s development when curiosity can be enhanced. Similar research was conducted showing the same effect with regard to how parents respond to a young child’s curiosity questions. “Why does the bunny eat like that?” “Why does a skateboard have four wheels? If a parent replies something dismissive like, “I don’t know,” then curiosity is crushed and the effect can last for many years. If the parent gives the answer, then the child sees questioning as a tool to learn facts (low level of curiosity). If the parent and the child explore together to learn the answer, then the child learns to be curious and that enhanced curiosity leads to deeper learning of the immediate subject as well as increased levels of curiosity for many years. Fortunately, further studies show that stoking curiosity in school-aged children can lead to enhanced learning and levels of curiosity as well. It can be assumed that igniting curiosity at multiple levels will have an additive effect as well as preventing decline.

Throughout history, experiments have been performed showing that when a person’s curiosity is piqued, for several minutes after, learning is enhanced. Recently, fMRI experiments have demonstrated this connection as well. The learning does not even have to be related to what sparked the curiosity. UC Davis researchers asked participants curiosity-inducing questions and then showed them pictures of faces as well as answering the curious questions while scanning their brains. The participants remembered both the answer to the question and the photo of the face longer than they did if the information followed a low-curiosity question. This fact is important to teachers because even piquing curiosity by changing something in the classroom can help students to learn history or Spanish lessons better.

Future blog posts will begin to focus on these strategies that psychologists have identified to ignite, enhance, and capitalize on curiosity.

Have you been pondering the original question about what separates humans from the other animals? Did you google it? Did you figure it out from context? Most scientists agree that there are several things, possibly the foremost of which is curiosity. Other mammals have basic curiosity, but they don’t ask why things happen or what’s their place in the universe like humans do. A large brain coupled with high levels of curiosity is a recipe for intelligence. This deep drive for learning coupled with our large, complex brains best explains our advanced intelligence.

Why Curiosity?

We’ve all done it at least once… getting lost in a Wikipedia black hole. You started looking up who won Best Picture at the Golden Globes last year, then you look up which country produces the most gold, then you google why the periodic table symbol for gold is Au, that gets you to researching who names elements in the first place, then all of a sudden, you’re reading about how heavy elements are formed in a supernova. Two and a half hours later, you realize that it is midnight and you should be in bed. Maybe for you, it was Etsy, Reddit, or Quora, but we have all done it.

It was curiosity that drove your learning extravaganza. Imagine if we could make students this hungry about learning of the Declaration of Independence, point-slope form, balancing chemical equations, or conjugating verbs in the past imperfect. The good news is that we can. Psychologists have been researching curiosity and how to enhance it since the 1960s when Daniel Berlyne wrote Conflict, Arousal, and Curiosity. The next post will summarize much of this body of research.

Curiosity drives learning just like hunger drives eating and thirst drives drinking. It is an innate drive with its genesis in receptors in the brain. Another post will talk more about the biomechanics of curiosity, but in short, it is a rise in dopamine followed by a squirt of natural opioids. The anticipation of learning causes the rise in dopamine and the learning itself causes the opioid release. Rats who have been manipulated to not produce dopamine still enjoy rewards, they just do not seek them out.

Curiosity is how we evolved out of caves into the advanced societies we live in now. Curiosity is how a child learns to walk, talk, and navigate the world. Curiosity drives our travels, our hobbies, and our friendships. Curiosity is what truly separates us from the other intelligent animals. 

Some learning may be motivated by coercion, fear, grades, or mandates, but it is short-lived learning. I love learning. It is all I do. If I’m not reading, I’m writing, listening to podcasts, watching educational television (what little is left of it), or finding research papers in an online research library. And I absolutely hated school. I became a teacher because of this dichotomy. I am curious and I received pretty good grades, but none of them were motivated by curiosity. 

I cannot tell you what science class I took in 9th grade, what my teacher’s name was, or anything that I learned in the class. But I can recite every detail of the science fair project that I completed that year. I could still repeat the calculations, describe the procedure, and recall the hundreds of hours I spent looking through a telescope. Now I understand that the reason for this is that science fair projects have several features that research shows enhance curiosity (choice, autonomy, inquiry, novelty, mystery, etc.). 

I have identified about 15 tweaks that a teacher can make to their lessons, their classrooms, and their assignments to boost curiosity. None of them will require thousands of dollars, hundreds of hours, or any special skills. After the introductory material, each blog post will feature one of these 15 or so factors with examples of how to implement it in class. As a former science teacher, many of the examples will lean towards STEM. But the changes are straightforward enough that a master teacher in any subject will be able to implement them immediately given these STEM examples. 

Each blog post will include some prompts at the end. Feel free to respond to the prompts in the comments section below or on Twitter using the hashtag #IgnitingCuriosity. I look forward to hearing your ideas and feedback.

Follow-Up Prompts:

1. What is an example of a time when you were highly curious?
2. What do you already do in your classes to ignite curiosity in your students?
3. Tell the story of a student who was driven by curiosity.