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In the words of Thomas Edison, 'the greatest invention in the world is the mind of a child', and every mind is born with the instinct of curiosity. We all come into the world curious, an innate gift which newborns demonstrate as soon they are born when they look around.
As young children, we are wonderfully curious about everything. Curiosity is the natural inquisitive behavior that engenders exploration, investigation and learning (Wikipedia). It is an openness to experience new things, trying to find answers to the whys that we've asked and continue to ask throughout our lives. Yet research tells us that curiosity declines as we progress through our education systems.
The fact is that young people are curious about everything; they have an unrestricted desire to understand. (Henman 2009) At five years of age 98% of all children have no problem thinking divergently. Not surprising really, three year-olds, on average, ask their parents about 100 questions a day, every day! However by the time they are ten to 11 years of age they've pretty much stopped asking. Of even greater concern is that by the age of 25 only 2% can think outside the box; curiosity seldom survives into adulthood. (Keen 1973) As we grow up, we start believing the answers are more important than the questions. Yet adult creativity is still powerful; there is just not enough of it, it can be said that the creative adult is the curious child who survived.
Fostering the scholarly attribute of curiosity in learners is an important task; one that is at the heart of education and effective learning as it challenges and promotes active participation in learning. As educators, our challenge is that curiosity and curriculum are antithetical concepts with the curriculum often acting to limit student empowerment rather than enable for the most part. As educators we need to embrace curiosity and discovery in our thinking and planning.
However this is easier said than done. Predominantly the curriculum dictates the teacher's planning rather than the individual ideas...