ChangED
ChangED is an educator based podcast for Pennsylvania teachers to learn more about the PA STEELS Standards and science in general. It is hosted by Andrew Kuhn and Patrice Semicek.
ChangED
Educational Innovation: The Role of Curiosity in Modern Education
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Can curiosity be measured, and if so, what fuels it to reach its full potential? Join us in an another enlightening conversation with Dr. Brian Housand as we dissect the idea of a Hierarchy of Curiosity in Education. Imagine starting a lesson with a spark that ignites curiosity, much like the intrigue of a movie trailer. We discuss how this approach, along with tools like "Firestarters" and artifact jars, can transform the classroom environment into one that celebrates exploration and discovery.
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welcome back to change ed. Change ed. I am your number one rated host in all of podcast. Land andrew coon, education consultant from montgomery county intermediate unit, and here with me is patrice samachek also out of montgomery county intermediate unit and also a host of the Montgomery County Intermediate Unit. And also a host of the show.
Speaker 3Oh, I'm a host. Now I've been elevated Co.
Speaker 2Yes, yes, you've been elevated.
Speaker 3No one heard the co.
Speaker 2I feel like the co was implied. It didn't have to be heard. It was implied. Anyway, we are here for part deux of our podcast with Dr Brian Housand, and I think people are going to be excited about this. This is a little bit of a teaser for what they're going to hear. They're going to hear about the hierarchy of curiosity.
Speaker 3The non-existent. You want it to happen.
Speaker 2Hierarchy of curiosity yeah but I'm putting it out there now.
Speaker 3So it's out in the universe.
Speaker 2It's been copyrighted and trademarked. Yeah, it's a thing, because it happened here. It happened here first. People know if it happens here. It really happened, yep, yep, I think we should dive right back in. Sounds good. You know, I'm curious, I'm almost positive. It's not a thing. But my curiosity about curiosity is wondering if there's like a hierarchy of curiosity itself, like a, like a tier one would be something you could easily google and you could easily find right, like I'm interested in that. Oh, I found the answer and I I kind of move away, like if there's something, then like kind of the next level is to like attach it to d okay like depth of knowledge type maybe, yeah, maybe, maybe.
Speaker 1That's a good example yeah, no man, I think that that's you pretty intriguing. I think that there's probably potentially some different factors that play a role into that of. You know, am I feeling psychologically safe in this particular environment as a part of that, is it something that is of a prior interest to me? Is it something that I am valuing? I think is probably a potentially another piece of like gosh.
Speaker 1You know, I need this piece of information in order to solve some other problem that I'm having, so I'm very curious about that particular piece, or, oh, I really am interested in similar things. Now I want to know more about that. I think that there's also kind of this like internal curiosity and that there's an external curiosity, that there's also kind of this like internal curiosity and that there's an external curiosity. Some people might have this intellectual curiosity of like, oh, I just want to pour all of the information into my head because I've got these questions, and then others might feel much more comfortable kind of going out into the world to ask people about that. So I think it might be kind of like an introvert, extrovert type of factor that might play into that as well.
Speaker 3Or a level of, but I really like the leveling of that.
Speaker 2It's copyrighted.
Speaker 3Can both of our names be on there. Whenever you do, whenever you do.
Speaker 1Change it. What is at all that?
Speaker 3Yeah, that'll be S at all I could, I could, like I can see it in my head. Bs at all I could, I could, like I can see it in my head. I think it's a really interesting, an interesting idea to attach it to DOK and also like the hierarchy of needs, like I feel like they're all interconnected and it would be interesting to see what that crosswalk or that graphic, I guess the other thing I can see is how a lot of what you were saying, brian, led me to this.
Speaker 2is that the other piece would be led me to this, is that the other piece would be, you know, even if it is something you go out and you go for you again, your quick, easy search on the internet to find this, I think factors like your, your own body of knowledge and your experience are going to impact. You know, am I satisfied with the answer that I've just received? Does that, does that work? Can I work through that? And it works. Or maybe even in that initial, what could have been a tier one curiosity, I bumped it up to tier two, because now I, you know, I'm willing to take it to the next step and kind of start to dig in further on my own.
Speaker 2And again, just kind of, even from life experiences, you know, you see things in the science world where, like, wow, that's fascinating phenomenon, what is this? And sometimes it's easy to find the solution because somebody else has really dived in. And other times you're like, well, this is my turn to actually be the one to dive in. I'm going to, we're going to try to go the distance with this and figure it out. So what I was hearing and I appreciate is I think there are so many factors which are always true in all aspects of education, since we're all our own unique individuals coming into this that there are so many different things that impact that learning opportunity for each person in that safe space and we can all have a different experience while seeing the same thing unfold.
Speaker 3So, while you're saying, that makes me wonder, like in terms of, in terms of like what I can do in the classroom, like I've learned a lot about genius hour and project-based learning and those kinds of things, and I'm thinking that that is a little bit more open-ended and therefore it allows for more curiosity to kind of take place. Project based learning is probably more directed. It's like in my head, it's like a scaffold of gradual release really, like you do a problem and you can get to a project based thing, and then you get to get to genius hour, like you can just dive in and explore whatever you want to explore. Have you seen, in all the work that you're doing, or in the connections that you're making, any of those strategies or anything else as being more impactful? Or have you found that like they're kind of all about the same and as long as you're even starting to kick off with something, you're going to make a little bit of a difference?
Speaker 1I think that there's kind of a lot of. It depends. You know, from kind of my perspective, coming from the University of Connecticut, studying at the Renzulli Center with Joanne Zulian and Sally Reese, then I'm definitely like a school-wide enrichment model, enrichment triad through and through individuals or small groups to come together to identify this real world problem and to produce something that is authentic, product or performance that's going to solve or work towards that solution to that problem. Yeah, they're contributing to that field of knowledge in exactly the same way that a practicing professional would, within whatever their discipline or field of study is.
Speaker 1I think that something like project-based learning or problem-based learning is kind of maybe a a step towards that. It is a little bit more scaffolded, a little bit more teacher directed than student directed. Genius Hour, I think, just opens up the opportunity to so many more students and creates that that opportunity of time and space in order to develop or investigate those areas of interest. When I think about all those things, and I think about that from kind of a classroom teacher perspective and I sort of hear all those classroom teacher voices in my head of like, well, we don't have time for this, all of those things take time, a lot of time and it's worthy of that investment. When I think about what a classroom teacher can do to spark that curiosity is to think about the lessons and the content that they're teaching, and instead of starting with, we're just going to state the objective right up front.
Speaker 3Tell them everything up front, yeah.
Speaker 1We're going to, we're going to, we're going to just cut to the.
Speaker 3We're going to cut to the final, so until we get there, here's the last page and they lived happily ever after.
Speaker 1No, I'm like you have all of the spoilers spoilers right there in that, yeah, yeah, like let's again build that moment of just not knowing, like how, like where's your entry point? How can you really heighten that anticipation in a really positive way, so that they're like oh gosh, I don't, I don't know. I, I'm intrigued by this. Yeah, I really want to know more and please, let's just like, let's dig into this. That's, that's where the magic is one of my friends started.
Speaker 3She used to work here. Brooke found this and I don't know where she found it and I'll have to figure it out. It's called Firestarters and so we've done this to like start off our PD sometimes, where they get a paper bag and I've done this in classrooms with kids and it's gone over really well. They get a paper bag with five items in it and it's like the most five random things. It's like Play-Doh, a straw, pipe cleaners and paper clips and like pom-poms, right, like none of those don't seem random at all, that just sounds like a lot of fun, right?
Speaker 3So so you give them, like this bag and you're like OK, you have five minutes. Here's a question, you have five minutes. I want you to create a representation of what you think the answer to this is. And they have five minutes and they have, that's it. All they can use is those materials, and I have seen some of the coolest stuff come out of adults and kids and I think that's like a super simple way of a teacher introducing a lesson Like here's just random stuff I have in my classroom. Now you've got post-it notes and markers, go do whatever. So I think there's like like you were saying small little things that can flip it, so you're not just spoon feeding them up front, like let's talk about what you know, and then I've done it, where they come back to what they created in their fire starter and they revise what they've made based off of their new learning, or they get another bag with the same stuff and create something new. Like it's a really interesting opportunity for teachers to just flip the script a little bit.
Speaker 1Yeah, I think that there's, you know some pretty classic ways that we can go about doing that you know kind of points to ponder provocative questions, those types of things. Let's show you some sort of you know intriguing image or artifact or you know just a very curious YouTube clip. I mean, those are, I think, you know, all relatively easy things that we can do just to you know start off in a slightly different way. I was just reminded of an activity that one of one of my good friends and I think, just an all around great teacher, justin Mitchell, who's from Kentucky.
Speaker 1He teaches, he's a middle school social studies teacher, and at the beginning of every school year he brings out these artifact jars and so in each of these kind of mason jars there's sort of the sands of time, but there's also these icons and like small objects then that represent each of the units of study that the students will be exploring over the course of this academic year, and so they're kind of looking through and they're you know they can't open up the jars but they can just kind of move them around and shift the sands in them so that you're seeing these different objects or representations of what might be happening, and they really use that as kind of this prediction tool to think about, well, where is this going? And as they come up to that unit of study through the year, then like let's take, let's bring that jar down to get a closer look at it and what this might now represent.
Speaker 3I love that so much. That's very cool.
Speaker 2You know, one of the things that you mentioned earlier, as you were describing it very much, you were describing, kind of like, how a story unfolds and that we don't just give you the end at the beginning it you know it needs to build, and so I'm very much hearing a storyline through here. But what it made me think of was that the goal of a movie trailer isn't to tell you the entire story, is to get you curious and intrigued and want to go see the movie and want to learn the storyline and see what's going to happen. Right, like, you've got me hooked, so it's getting you hooked. Curiosity is really a hook, but a genuine hook that you want to lean in more, you want to figure this out, and pushes you to go further.
Speaker 1So yeah, that's, I mean, that's exactly it. I mean I think that the movie trailer piece is, I mean, just the perfect representation of of what you want to do as as the start of a new unit, sort of a new lesson. You want it to be engaging so that your students are just they're wanting to know more. They're like, oh gosh, when is this going to end? It's like, oh no, now we need to see like the rest of the movie, we need to really dig deep into this.
Speaker 2I can't tell you how good it felt for you to say that I came up with the program I was going to say something snarky, but I kept it in.
Speaker 3It hurt, it hurt.
Speaker 2Did you see the pain on my face? It hurt. It's a good thing we haven't gone visual with our podcast, because people would have, it would have hurt anyway brian, as you know from recording with us not once, but twice.
Speaker 2we have a time-honored tradition here, long-standing tradition and change ed, where we like to give our vip guests the second to last final word, and you, sir, are a vip guest, so we'd like to give our VIP guests the second to last final word. And you, sir, are a VIP guest, so we'd like to send that to you now. Do you have a second to last?
Speaker 1final word. It seems to be a tremendous honor and with a lot of responsibility.
Speaker 3Don't listen to any other of our broadcasts.
Speaker 1Yeah, no, I am happy to be a vip. Yeah, as you know, as I'm thinking about this second to the last final words of wisdom, I am reminded of this concept of the flaneur. This comes from sort of 19th century france, particularly in paris, and the flaneur were these well-to-do individuals uh, let's just say well-to-do men who at that point in time, really had the opportunity to be connoisseurs of the street. They would sort of walk around the growing cityscape as these urban wanderers, being highly observant and just simply taking in everything that they saw, as they sought out experiences that were really going to fuel their creative minds. I think that what we perhaps should be really striving towards is to provide that flaneur experience to everyone that we possibly can. We're encouraging ourselves, modeling that for our students, presenting them with opportunities to allow them to be these highly observant wanderers that they're gathering in all of this information and really looking for ways that they can use that as the fuel that's going to spark new ideas and new innovation.
Speaker 3I want that job yeah.
Speaker 2It's actually really encouraging to know that there was this group that was even leaning into curiosity so long ago that it was valued, even if it's not valued the way that you had mentioned before with that curiosity and effort can rival IQ, even if we're still getting to that point that there still was that strong value back then.
Speaker 3That's awesome. All right, andrew, bring it home.
Speaker 2Oh, the final word Wow.
The Power of Curiosity in Education
Speaker 2Guys, I'm so unprepared, this never happened. Well, thank you for this honor. Thank you for coming on, brian. We really appreciate you giving us the time. Yes, brian, we're very fortunate you came on Sharing your knowledge, your education, your experience with us. It means a lot and we look forward to furthering the conversation of curiosity, not only in the entire nation because, honestly, change ed is everywhere but just continuing it in education itself. So again, thank you. Thank you all listeners for tuning in and listening. Things that really stuck out to me very strongly were what we just shared that curiosity and effort can rival IQ. That really hit home with me. I loved how you share that about having a hungry mind. That really was like, oh, that was a good visual for me. And I loved how you share that about having a hungry mind. That really was like, oh, that was a good visual for me. And I loved how you share that curiosity is a spark of everything.
Speaker 2It really just. We've had a podcast where we talked about igniting the spark. When the spark hits, what do we do to actually add to it so it becomes a flame, versus patting it out and pointing it out, and that really resonated with me. Also, I loved my analogy about the movie trailers. It was so strong, it really stuck with me. And then, you know, the last thing I want to say is just go on the record.
Speaker 3This is the longest last word ever. Yeah, it's the last word. It's like 18 paragraphs.
Speaker 2The Hierarchy of Curiosity is copyrighted by Andrew Kuhn Ending. In case you need curiosity is copyrighted by andrew coon and he's an consultant.
Speaker 3Yeah, that's how you're ending it at all at all. Thank you, brian. Will maybe be included in the footnote maybe.
Speaker 2Thank you so much. We look forward to having you on the show again.