Nurturing Young People’s Curiosity and Interest

In this article in Knowledge Quest, psychologist Daniel Willingham (University of Virginia) affirms the importance of curiosity to academic success and offers a three-step description of what a successful curiosity “episode” looks like:

• We see a mental challenge that needs to be addressed or a piece of knowledge we don’t have.
• We seek the pleasure that comes from successfully addressing it (humans enjoy solving problems, he says).
• We quickly calculate that it will take some effort, but know that if we work at it, we might be successful.

Note the key elements: being intrigued, wanting closure, and believing success is possible. Research suggests that this loop – curiosity plus conscientiousness – has as much impact on school grades as intelligence. 

Willingham goes on to draw a distinction between curiosity and long-term interest: we can have in-the-moment curiosity about a book or video that doesn’t necessarily hold long-term interest – and we can be interested in something over time and not be curious about it in the moment. In both cases, the keys to engaging students are complexity (the student is intrigued and challenged by themes, allusions, and moral implications) and clarity – the student can master it without confusion or frustration. 

Many educators and parents believe that young people today are less willing to do that follow-up work. “They may be mildly curious about something,” says Willingham, “but they don’t have the mental discipline to stick to the problem for any length of time. Curiosity seems to evaporate.” Digital technologies are often blamed for shortening kids’ attention spans and interrupting the loop when curiosity or interest are piqued: “A student might grow curious about, say, an insect she sees in the garden, but when she goes to look it up on Wikipedia she’ll soon be distracted by Facebook. Or she’ll start a video game or a text message conversation with friends before she ever gets to Wikipedia.” 

This sounds plausible, but Willingham is skeptical. Young people sit through two-hour movies and read hefty novels like The Hunger Games. “The problem is not attention capacity,” he says; “it’s willingness to deploy attention.” What’s really going on, he believes, is that “pervasive access to entertainment has made for a very low threshold for boredom. If you’re bored, a quick fix is close at hand.” A YouTube video is disappointing? There are several other choices at your fingertips. Had enough videos? Time to text or visit Facebook. All this makes young people less willing to do the mental work of following through when something makes them curious. “Their experience may have led them to expect high payoff relatively quickly, with a modest outlay of their own mental effort,” he says. 

So what can educators and parents do to shift this dynamic and encourage young people to follow through when they’re curious or interested? Willingham has three suggestions:

• Model it. Young people will notice if adults show genuine curiosity and interest in something.

• Distinguish between short-term curiosity and long-term interest. It’s okay for young people to be intrigued with something and not turn it into a long-term passion. “It’s a pleasurable sampling, like a wine-tasting,” says Willingham. “For that reason, it can be frivolous. I would argue that indulging our curiosity is never a waste of time. That perspective implies we should honor curiosity in students wherever we find it, however trivial its object may appear to us.”

• Ask good questions. Curiosity and interest are sparked when adults frame intriguing and provocative questions. Simple, closed-response questions like, Why do you suppose snakes shed their skins? is not effective. “The best books, documentaries, and speakers are able to sneak up on good questions, so that by the time the question is posed, the audience is panting to know the answer,” says Willingham. 

“Making Students More Curious” by Daniel Willingham in Knowledge Quest, May/June 2014 (Vol. 42, #5, p 32-35), no e-link available; Willingham is at Willingham@virginia.edu. 

From the Marshall Memo #537