Rethinking “Curiosity Killed the Cat”

There’s a new buzzword around my town: Conley. David Conley, a professor at the University of Oregon and author of College Knowledge: what it really takes for students to succeed and what we can do to get them ready (2005) suggests schools are doing a better job of getting students into college, but not necessarily ready to succeed at college. Initially, not having access to his book, I sought out a readily available article. His premise is that schools need an intellectually coherent program that develops “key cognitive strategies” as well as content knowledge. There are many issues I’d like to comment on regarding this work, but for now I’m going to hone in on one strategy he lists: inquisitiveness.

I emphatically agree that inquisitiveness is critical and undervalued in today’s high-stakes atmosphere. However, I fear naming it a “strategy” and standardizing inquisitiveness will only encourage its demise. Citing Costa & Kallick (2000), Conley thinks cognitive strategies should be used intentionally and practiced. Our own state’s GLEs uses the term curiosity in a similar vein. Middle schoolers are expected to “Apply curiosity . . . when considering explanations and conducting investigations.”

Apply curiosity? Are we really seeking individuals who practice curiosity as if there’s an ON/OFF switch? Personally, I’m more interested in fostering genuine interests, the type that sustain humans over long periods of time, as I suspect you’d find among scientists or others working in fields of inquiry.

Every summer at my family reunion, I am treated to a cousin’s childhood stories that revolve around inquisitiveness in its purest form. This year, it was the adventures with the soapbox car base, inherited from a soapbox champion uncle. My cousin and his two buddies rode the bare-bones contraption down a hill in their neighborhood, increasing the elevation of the starting point with each run. Finally, they tackled the “big hill” with all three aboard, bailing out halfway down. One of them said he had heard head-on collisions were really bad. Protected only with a baseball helmet, he headed down a small hill toward a post. Conclusion: that really hurt.

While I’m certainly not advocating such dangerous inquiry, I wonder how the rigidity of our interpretation of standards interferes with natural curiosity about the world. The three boys “engaged in active inquiry and dialogue about subject matter and research questions and sought evidence to defend arguments, explanations, or lines of reasoning” (Conley’s definition of inquisitiveness) related to fundamental concepts that underlie a couple of months of my physical science class, achieving some concrete experience in the process.

Over the years, I’ve seen the pressure to mark off every GLE grow and I think it stands in the way of inspiring genuine curiosity. On the science WASL, my 8th graders are responsible for demonstrating investigative and design processes as well as content that spans a vast array of science content in earth, life, and physical sciences, covered and presumably retained during the three years in middle school (incidentally, a time in their lives when it is often difficult for young adolescents to remember what they did yesterday). While the good science teachers I know still find ways to squeeze in moments to honor inquisitiveness, I fear aspects of the system limit these moments, especially in underperforming schools and classrooms.

For several years, I have taught both mainstream and honors science classes in middle school. Because my honors students are basically at or above standard before the school year starts, and there is support for them to complete substantial homework, I have the luxury of delving into all sorts of topics. In a mainstream course, with a diversity of skill levels, grappling with one complex concept may take weeks, as well as additional time to teach the math and writing skills embedded in any good inquiry. As a result, my mainstream kids get less opportunity to develop their curiosity than my honors kids. Should curiosity be the domain of only those identified at an early age as on the college track?

The concern on the other side is that students will acquire neither depth of content nor skills, and I’m not advocating that. I’m advocating a balance between the proscribed GLEs and space for development of relevant student interests. This flexibility could be written into the GLEs and supported with professional development for teachers on how to integrate them into a student-centered curriculum. Professional development in science often includes some activity designed to capture students’ interest or challenge an established misconception or integrate technology or a discussion method, but rarely focuses on how to design a curriculum that originates with what truly intrigues individual students and builds skills and knowledge from there. Perhaps a bit of satisfaction will bring back the cat.

I hope you will contribute to this dialogue on inquisitiveness, whether you teach science or work as a scientist or fund science education or are revising the state’s science standards or merely interested in the education of all our students – college-bound or not.

Comments

[Travis]

I see curiosity as something that can be nurtured (e.g., once you are shown some of the hidden political images in medieval paintings, you want to find more and then apply that skill to other genres). However, that said, I would have to agree with Tom in that curiosity is hard to "teach" in a 47 minute a day class. Curiosity takes time. Curiosity is time consuming. My sons will spend hours in a sandbox with a house and scrap pieces of wood, building structures and seeing if they can build the master one that will withstand the flow of water. Hours. I have encouraged this type of play and curiosity. I have nurtured it by providing my sons with items and activities and directions that allow them to explore and thus be curious. I am unsure I could do this in 47 minutes.

I also wonder if students come to school anymore to be curious (given the personality of the current state of our country) or to do what you are told to do, grudgingly.

How can Washington state schools put curiosity back into learning? After all, it is crucial to wanting to learn; that life-long learner stuff and learning for the sake of learning all stems from curiosity.

As an English teacher, I use plenty of word puzzles to nurture the enjoyment and love of letters and words (because I cannot teach the curiosity of letters and words, but I can nurture an interest in them, hoping that will translate into a curiosity).

[Tom White]

Very interesting, Kelly. I think of curiosity (or inquisitiveness) as a disposition, not a skill. It certainly isn't something you can "switch on or off" but I do think it's something we can develop within our students. That said, dispositions are far more difficult to impart than knowledge and skills, and they also demand a lot more cooperation on the part of students! And I agree with you that in order to develop curiosity we need to be as student-centered as possible, which can jeopardize the extent to which we cover the knowledge and skills. It's a delicate balance, isn't it?