Developing Comfort With Uncertainty to Support Curiosity and Creativity

• In Event: Supporting Student Curiosity: Classroom-Based Research and Implications for Practice

Abstract

Objective and Significance
Curiosity and creativity top researchers’ and educators’ lists of vital 21st century skills This work presents a working theory that teachers’ promotion of curiosity in classrooms can also support creativity by exploring the association between curiosity and creativity. We will present a theoretical justification for the link between curiosity and creativity, based on a common process of approach toward uncertainty, and describe empirical studies underway that are exploring this, with some preliminary evidence.

Importance and Theoretical Framework
Curiosity refers to recognition of a gap in knowledge and the desire to close that gap through exploration (Jirout & Klahr, 2012; Loewenstein, 1994; Kidd & Hayden, 2015). Creativity is defined as generating ideas or behaviors that are both novel and useful (Runco & Jaeger, 2012). Uncertainty underlies both constructs; uncertainty and curiosity spark exploration that encourages children to generate multiple ideas and solutions to events and problems they encounter (divergent thinking), which can lead to a creative outcome (Authors, under review). Helping children become comfortable with uncertainty is likely key to promoting curiosity and creativity, and we tested this by first looking at the association between curiosity and creativity in children’s self-reported responses, and then explored whether promoting curiosity or creativity leads to gains in the other constructs across studies.

Methods, Data Sources and Results
To test for an association between curiosity and creativity in children we are collecting children’s self-reported responses related to curiosity and creativity (see Table 1). Preliminary data collection (N=20) shows that the mean scores on the two scales are correlated, R=.650, p=.016, with adequate reliability of both scales (Chronbach’s alpha: Curiosity=.797, Creativity=.821). We will further explore the independence of the two constructs and the association between them with the full dataset. Further, children were also presented with different levels of uncertainty to explore on another task, and we will be analyzing how the levels of uncertainty influence their exploration, and how their exploration relates to their self-reported curiosity and creativity.

We are also interested in the effect of promoting curiosity on creativity. Our prior work identified a framework of ways that teachers can promote curiosity, resulting in two components: 1) promoting children’s openness to and comfort with uncertainty (becoming curious), and 2) supporting children’s information seeking to resolve uncertainty (being curious) (Author et al., 2018). In a study focused on two aspects of promoting comfort with uncertainty - demonstrating that many questions have more than one “right” answer and that it is alright to get things wrong – children (N=98) who were given step-by-step directions and corrections while building a castle were less likely to generate novel ideas on a creativity task compared to children who built on their own or with an adult that encouraged exploration, suggesting that concern about doing something wrong may hinder curiosity and creativity (Author, et al., in prep).

The findings from these and additional ongoing research will be synthesized in support of our framework for promoting curiosity by developing comfort with uncertainty, and how this can support creativity.

Authors

• Natalie Evans, University of Virginia

• Jamie Jirout, University of Virginia

• Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Temple University