Expressions of curiosity and metacognition across socioeconomically diverse preschool classrooms

• In Event: Fostering Children’s Curiosity in Early Childhood

Abstract

Curiosity is an integral feature of early childhood as children question, explore, and learn about their environment. However, it is an elusive topic as research around early curiosity has been relatively minimal given challenges defining the construct (Kidd & Hayden, 2015). Recent work has utilized Loewenstein’s information-gap theory (1994) which is a prominent state-based theory that views curiosity as arising from perceiving a gap in one’s knowledge. In this way, metacognition, or the ability to think about one’s own thinking and thought processes (Flavell, 1979) may be highly related to early experiences of curiosity in that it may be a prerequisite ability for children to perceive a gap in their knowledge. Research has yet to explore the relation between these two constructs or how they may vary across different contexts, such as socioeconomic status (SES).
As such, the current study utilized naturalistic language-level data from preschools from different socioeconomic contexts to explore how talk around curiosity and metacognition may co-occur in the classroom and vary by SES. Given the exploratory nature of this study, we did not have any a priori hypotheses but rather were interested in how these constructs naturally occur in the classroom environment. Transcripts (N = 10; low-SES = 5) that were collected as part of a larger study examining language in the classroom (Kurkul et al., 2022) were utilized.
Utterances (N = 16,134; low-SES = 9,199) were coded first for delivery (question vs. statement) and then for content (i.e., curiosity, metacognition, directing, repetition, and irrelevant). Most utterances were statements (79%, n = 12,733) and there were no significant differences in the proportion of overall questions and statements across SES. There were no differences in the proportion of curiosity across SES but there was slightly more metacognitive talk in mid-SES classrooms (z = 3.73, p = 0.0002, h = 0.06), and more directing utterances in low-SES classrooms (z = -5.75, p < 0.00, h = 0.09). However, these effects were negligible, and the contexts were not differing largely.
In general, metacognitive utterances were rare (N = 192). To explore the relation between curiosity and metacognition, the utterances that directly preceded and followed these metacognitive utterances were identified. Most commonly, they were preceded (57%, n = 110) and followed (63%, n = 121) by utterances that received a code of other. The next most common category preceding metacognitive talk was curiosity (16.67%, n = 32). For utterances following metacognitive language, directing was the second most common (15.10%, n = 29).
This study provides initial support for a relation between curiosity and metacognition in preschools across a range of family socioeconomic status. Such findings are important for considering how curiosity may be spontaneously occurring in preschool, how to foster curiosity in early learning environments, and to inform future research and applied practice for early education.

Authors

• Hannah Puttre, Boston University
  Presenting Author

• Kathleen H. Corriveau, Boston University