The Importance of Being Interested: Adventures in Scientific Curiosity

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Belland BR, Kim C, Hannafin MJ. A framework for designing scaffolds that improve motivation and cognition. Educational Psychologist. 2013; 48:243–270. doi: 10.1080/00461520.2013.838920. [ PMC free article] [ PubMed] [ CrossRef] [ Google Scholar] Answers or seeking answers to questions can be dangerous for some people because the answer May destroy the person's reality, example, God, or free will. Høgheim S, Reber R. Supporting interest of middle school students in mathematics through context personalization and example choice. Contemporary Educational Psychology. 2015; 42:17–25. doi: 10.1016/j.cedpsych.2015.03.006. [ CrossRef] [ Google Scholar]

The Importance of Being Interested by - Perlego [PDF] The Importance of Being Interested by - Perlego

Palmer DH. Student interest generated during an inquiry skills lesson. Journal of Research in Science Teaching. 2009; 46:147–165. doi: 10.1002/tea.20263. [ CrossRef] [ Google Scholar] This is the second book I have listened to by Robin Ince and it was, yet again, brilliant. As a writer he has written a fascinating journey into science having had access to some amazing minds and also having a great gift for explanation. As a narrator he comes across as utterly fascinated and enthusiastic about his subject matter. This really is great on all levels. His mind is joyous, eternally curious and making connections that can be deep and humorous at the same time. If you like to laugh and be able to learn something new about science at the same time, or at least see it in a different light, then read Robin’s book. Eccles JS, Wigfield A. Motivational beliefs, values, and goals. Annual Review of Psychology. 2002; 53:109–132. doi: 10.1146/annurev.psych.53.100901.135153. [ PubMed] [ CrossRef] [ Google Scholar]Never has a[n] [audio]book resonated with me so strongly and heavily. The only thing school taught me about science was that it wasn’t me for me - I hopeless at it. And so I let myself believe that. I’ve always been fascinated by space and the stars, but filed that fascination away into the “not for me” drawer in the mental filing cabinet. Interesting!! The first thing I’m inspired to do is look up the word ‘pedegogy’ I have an idea regarding what it means but who knows. But it’s so important to keep a curiosity when it comes to science. It is everywhere whether we like it or not. In our lives, in what we do, in what we are. It can be an amazing thing when that spark for science is relighted and something I’m very grateful to the Infinite Monkey Cage podcasts for, which Robin Ince also hosts (would recommend!). Recently, I had the pleasure to interview Robin Ince to mark the publication of his new book. In the interview, we discuss in depth the role of science fiction in engagement with science, the role of comedy and cabaret in the communication of science, and attitudes towards offense in both science and comedy. You can listen here:

The Importance of Being Interested - LinkedIn The Importance of Being Interested - LinkedIn

Engineering in Society – new module for engineering citizenship on Engineering in Society – new module for engineering citizenship Paul Silvia of the University of North Carolina has researched interest deeply. He highlights how interest gets us exploring and interested in new things, but also how it focusses our attention rather than being distracted by the huge number of possibilities and things going on around us. Berlyne DE. Novelty, complexity, and hedonic value. Perception & Psychophysics. 1970; 8:279–286. doi: 10.3758/BF03212593. [ CrossRef] [ Google Scholar]Mike: Thank you so much for your thoughts and questions—I appreciate the opportunity to think through this with you and clarify what I wrote. I’m glad to hear you think some of the values I articulated here are in the same territory as Bill Cronon’s definition of a liberal education. What it did give was some very interesting and personal viewpoints fromany different scientists in many different fields. Not just spewing facts but also going into philosophy and making you think about questions of mortality, life after death, religion, consciousness etc. Explore some of the work from the talented students on our postgraduate science communication programmes in the Science Communication Showcase blog. There is no such thing as a stupid question from an outsider because it may very well be that question helps solve the problem.

The Importance of Being Interested - Audible UK The Importance of Being Interested - Audible UK

But the improvisational part of tutoring—which is to say, the fun part—involves being interested: being curious about the student, their project, their discipline, the guidelines and constraints they’re working with, and what we each might learn or realize in the course of our conversation. For me, the best conferences—and they aren’t rare—are those in which I’m learning something that is of no practical use to me, something unrelated to my own scholarly work or to tutoring pedagogy. Something that’s just interesting. Being interesting and being interested “Bookcase, Ruth Mendez Home, New York, New York, 2000.” Photo by Susan Carr. In documenting the homes of people who had lived in one house for forty years or more, Susan, my aunt, had to cultivate an open-ended curiosity about and interest in whatever she might find in each home she photographed.

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The book also includes talks to many eminent researchers in their field, astronauts who have had a very unique perspective of earth and those who have had their own stories to tell when it comes to scientific curiosity. With that and Robin’s own thoughts and experiences, it made for very informative and great reading. A very worthwhile read! I loved it. Thanks Michelle, it’s terrific to see how the thread of (cross-disciplinary) curiosity leads into the creation of the CHE-Writing Center writing retreat at the Arboretum in November. It’s genius. The place, too, affords so many qualities for a writing retreat. I’m left wondering, too, whether the retreat produced unanticipated collaborative writing projects or even people trying out different genres for presenting their work? Rotgans JI, Schmidt HG. Situational interest and learning: Thirst for knowledge. Learning and Instruction. 2014; 32:37–50. doi: 10.1016/j.learninstruc.2014.01.002. [ CrossRef] [ Google Scholar] Thoman DB, Brown ER, Mason AZ, Harmsen AG, Smith JL. The role of altruistic values in motivating underrepresented minority students for biomedicine. BioScience. 2015; 65:183–188. doi: 10.1093/biosci/biu199. [ PMC free article] [ PubMed] [ CrossRef] [ Google Scholar]

The Importance of Being Interested: Adventures in Scientific The Importance of Being Interested: Adventures in Scientific

Whether it’s about conspiracy theories and questioning our information, on the topics of science and religion, the vastness of the universe, aliens or about our place in the universe, there’s definitely something in here for everyone to get your brain firing and your curiosity peaked. The chapter about life and death was so beautifully written and so well done. For those who know C.S.Lewis's take down of the Green Book in The Abolition of Man lectures, we have a very similar situation here with Ince. Lewis accuses the authors of "The Green Book" of unwittingly doing damage to the young mind through poor quality teaching of values, meaning and how we react to them. In a similar way, Ince will damage the developing mind with his extremely poorly thought through ideas, because he tried to inure us against psuedo science, conspiracy and theology with weak arguments that are more emotional than scientific, and yet if he applies the same to what he knows of science then he absolutely has to throw science out the window as well as religion. It teaches the reader to have inconsistent set of values to judge the worthiness of information, whereas what a person needs is to be able to judge the value of information on a consistent basis. Ince does not do this once. Scientists have found that strong interest can help students overcome academic difficulties and perceptual disabilities. For example, a study of high academic achievers including Nobel Laureates found that those with dyslexia managed to overcome these difficulties because of their burning interest.

In this book, there's a whole chapter on how the mind works, complete with memory distortions, cognitive biases and false assumptions. Robin seems entirely happy to frame the world through the distorting filter of his BBC bubble, never once realising that the water in which he swims doesn't reflect about 50% of the population’s view of reality. The underlying message is that the world would be much better if everyone saw the world like Robin. Perhaps it would, for all I know. Grove Press An imprint of Grove Atlantic, an American independent publisher, who publish in the UK through Atlantic Books. In November, I helped lead a writing retreat that was co-hosted by the UW-Madison Writing Center and the Center for Culture, History, and Environment (CHE) graduate student group. It took place at the UW Arboretum; the twenty-five graduate students in attendance were from a variety of disciplines, but knew each other through CHE. We started by going around the room so everyone could say what project they were working on. After our four-hour writing session, someone said that, though he knew in general terms about the research projects of other CHE grads, it was great to hear specifically and concretely what everyone else was working on that day. Coots! So I personally fail to see how this mans mind can arrive at a conclusion where he dismisses certain schools of thought in favour of others, claiming one to have no value where as science has all the value. But how can this man tell us this when he understands neither?