Research on Children’s Curious Questions or “When Children Ask”
RESEARCH OBJECTIVE:
The aim of the project “When Children Ask” is to understand the curiosity of lower secondary school pupils through their own questions. The research seeks to create a new tool for measuring curiosity that is not based on traditional self-report questionnaires, but on the analysis of spontaneous questions generated by the children. Concurrently, we examine how different formats of educational materials—video, audio, and text—influence the level of curiosity and how this curiosity manifests in the form of specific types of questions.
METHODOLOGY:
The research is conducted among pupils in grades 7–9 of public primary schools (typically involving a sample of 150–300 respondents). All participants are presented with the same content on the topic of “The Origin of the Seasons” in three different formats: video, audio, and text, all derived from the same original document. Pupils rate the interestingness of the material and subsequently generate at least five questions. For each question, they indicate their level of interest in finding the answer. To ensure validity and reliability, standardised curiosity scales are also employed: the Curiosity Scale (Kashdan et al., 2020) and the Epistemic Curiosity Questionnaire (Schmidt & Rotgans, 2021).
RESULTS:
The primary outcome of this research is a proposed new approach to measuring children’s curiosity, based on the analysis of generated questions. This approach serves as an alternative or complement to traditional questionnaire methods. The project provides insights into:
a) How children’s curiosity manifests in specific questions.
b) How the quality and type of questions vary depending on the format of the educational material used.
c) Which format most effectively stimulates an active interest in learning.
These findings can assist teachers and educational content creators in selecting the formats that most effectively foster children’s natural curiosity.
OUTPUTS (PUBLICATIONS, LINKS, NETWORKS):
Forthcoming