Psychoblog

The RTG 2906 „Curiosity“ invites to a Guest Lecture: „Curiosity in the Classroom: Mechanisms, Barriers and Instructional Pathways„. The lecture is delivered by Jamie Jirout from the University of Virginia. Scheduled for November 5th, 2025, 3:30 pm CET via zoom.

Please register here.

What is the lecture about?

What makes learners curious, and when does curiosity truly help them learn? In this talk, I will outline contemporary perspectives on what curiosity is (and is not), and how it can be distinguished from related constructs such as interest or engagement. Drawing on motivational science, I will describe how curiosity arises, how it drives exploration and learning, and how it shapes learners’ future dispositions toward inquiry. Using this framework, I will highlight instructional principles for promoting curiosity in educational contexts, considering both external barriers (e.g., classroom culture, assessment pressures) and internal barriers (e.g., apathy, fear of mistakes). I will close by discussing challenges for research and practice, including how more basic research findings can be translated into complex educational settings and when curiosity may or may not benefit learning.

About the speaker

Jamie Jirout leads the Research in Education and Learning Lab at the University of Virginia. Her research focuses on understanding the development of children’s curiosity and question asking, and on how education can promote both. She also studies the development of spatial skills through playful experiences and the relations between space and mathematics in early learning.

Dr. Aleksandra Bovt
Coordinator  RTG 2906 Curiosity
Web: https://www.uni-goettingen.de/de/681631.html