Curious about Curiosity

Looking into motivation, particularly for learning, certain elements appear again and again.  So I’ve heard ‘relevance’, ‘meaningfulness‘, consequences, and more. Friston suggests that we learn to minimize surprise. One I’ve heard, and wrestled with, is curiosity. It’s certainly aligned with surprise. So I’ve been curious about curiosity.

Tom Malone, in his Ph.D. thesis, talked about intrinsically motivating instruction, and had curiosity along with fantasy and challenge. Here he was talking about helping learners see that their understanding is incomplete. This is in line with the Free Energy Principle suggesting that we learn to do better at matching our expectations to real outcomes.

Yet, to me, curiosity doesn’t seem enough. Ok, for education, particularly young kids, I see it. You may want to set up some mismatch of expectations to drive them to want to learn something. But I believe we need more.

Read the full story by

Tags:

RELATED READS
Should we use hotels, motels, restaurants, & movie theaters as classrooms? [In a letter to the editor at LA Times] My Pandemic British Columbia Teaching Plan
We are updating our Privacy Policy, so please make sure you take a minute to review it. As of May 25, 2018 your continued use of our services will be subject to this new Privacy Policy.
Review Privacy Policy OK