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Why Is It So? Interest and Curiosity in Supporting Students Gifted in Science

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  • First Online:
Handbook of Giftedness and Talent Development in the Asia-Pacific

Part of the book series: Springer International Handbooks of Education ((SIHE))

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Abstract

Interest, curiosity or a passion-to-know feature in many models of giftedness. Gagné (Talent Dev Excell 5:5–19, 2013) incorporates ‘needs, interests and passion’ as motivational catalysts and psychological energy as a driver for talent development in his differentiated model of giftedness. In his three-ring conception of giftedness, Renzulli (The three-ring conception of giftedness: A developmental model for creative productivity. In: Sternberg RJ, Davidson JE (eds) Conceptions of giftedness. Cambridge University Press, New York, pp 53–92, 1986) highlights task commitment, defined as the energy brought to bear on a particular task, as one important attribute of giftedness. This conception is analogous to the work of other theorists, for example, Alex Luria (Higher cortical functions in man. Basic Books, New York, 1966), who identified aspects of intellectual functioning termed ‘attention/arousal’, and Csikszentmihalyi (Flow: The classic work on how to achieve happiness, Revised edn. Rider, London, 2002) who conceptualised the notion of ‘flow’ to represent a state of concentration or complete absorption in a task. The attribute generating this energy has been described as epistemic curiosity or the need to know—why is it so? All these theories more or less coalesce and explain the desire for gifted students to engage at length and in depth with complex integrated problems. Gifted students are curious, but opportunities to exploit their curiosity in formal classrooms are rare. Although inquiry/enquiry learning is strongly advocated in policy, research evidence suggests that it is rarely adopted in mainstream classes. This state of affairs conflicts with the research on inquiry-based approaches that have shown the benefits for gifted students in undertaking investigations into ill-defined problems. Such investigations also provide opportunities for students to capitalise on their creative traits to make connections among existing ideas to solve novel problems. The outcome is invariably new knowledge. Opportunities for students in science classes to negotiate novel and interesting learning tasks are infrequent, and thus, for many gifted students, learning school science is boring. The focus in this chapter will be on the alignment between curiosity, interest and engagement in inquiry learning in science and proposes that science education needs to capitalise on student curiosity if it is to be successful in attracting the most highly able to pursue careers in science.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Education, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

    James J. Watters

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  1. James J. Watters
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  1. School of Education, UNSW Australia, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Susen R. Smith

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  1. Faculty of Education, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

    James J. Watters

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Watters, J.J. (2019). Why Is It So? Interest and Curiosity in Supporting Students Gifted in Science. In: Smith, S. (eds) Handbook of Giftedness and Talent Development in the Asia-Pacific. Springer International Handbooks of Education. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3021-6_34-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3021-6_34-1

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