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Children’s Need to Know:
Curiosity in Schools
In this essay, Susan Engel argues that curiosity is both intrinsic to children’s development and unfolds through social interactions. Thus, it should be cultivated in schools, even though it is often almost completely absent from classrooms. Calling on well-established research and more recent studies, Engel argues that interactions between teachers and students can foster or inhibit children’s curiosity. She offers an explanation for why curiosity is not a priority in our educational system and calls for greater attention to children’s interests and explorations, which, she argues, are the mechanisms that underlie authentic learning.
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Susan Engel is a senior lecturer in psychology and founding director of the Program in Teaching at Williams College. Her research interests include children’s narratives, play, the development of curiosity, and, more generally, teaching and learning. Her work has appeared in journals such as Cognitive Development and the American Education Research Journal, and she has also published a number of columns and op-ed pieces on education in the New York Times. She is the author of four books: The Stories Children Tell: Making Sense of the Narratives of Childhood (1995), Context is Everything: The Nature of Memory (1999), Real Kids: Making Sense in Everyday Life (2005), and Red Flags or Red Herrings: Predicting Who Your Child Will Become (2011). Engel is a founder of an experimental school in New York State, where for fourteen years she served as the educational adviser. She is currently working with the Spencer Foundation in trying to develop new ways to measure what children learn in school.
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Winter 2011 Issue
Abstracts
