Learning Science: What's Curiosity Got To Do With It?

While there is more demand than ever for scientists and engineers, few schoolstudents aspire to those careers, instead seeing school science as too 'brainy' or 'forother people'. Teachers are often encouraged to present science as a body ofknowledge to learn rather than a way of exploring the world. Those students who dowell are those who are best at accumulating the facts.What if there was another way to learn science? What if schools emphasised ahunger to find out something new, a desire to explore?My research sets out to look at the role that curiosity plays in learning science. Howcan we measure curiosity? Does it change over time? What makes students curiousabout science? Does it help students to do well in science at school? These are thequestions I want to answer.My study will take place in a secondary school in England, and will use acombination of questionnaire data and interviews to find out if being curious helpsstudents to make progress in science over the course of a year. I'll find out if theirscores on the questionnaire a year later change, as well as interviewing them to findout what happens in lessons to make them curious.If we can discover what makes students curious, we can start to change the way wepresent science to young people.