The Wonder of Learning

During my 35-year career as a teacher, principal, regional superintendent, and educational non-profit leader, I must have visited thousands of classrooms. We usually focused on alignment (whether what was being taught was aligned with the state and local learning standards,) rigor (how strenuous was the learning,) and engagement (were the learners engaged with what they were supposed to be learning.)

But if I visited a classroom today, I think I would be looking for “learner wonderment” – or the ability of the learner to seek out explanations to why things are the way they are. Maybe 15% of the classrooms I visited during my career offered true wonderment to their learners. Sadly, most failed at “being wonderful” and instead just focused on what often times was dull and boring learning.

Frank Keil, a Professor of Psychology and Linguistics at Yale University, wrote an article back in 2022 for Psyche magazine on the topic of “wonder.” Here are selected excerpts from that article:

“Humans grow up with a powerful drive to learn how things work and why certain patterns and properties exist in the world. Wonder, a word with multiple related meanings, has one sense that captures this desire to know. You employ wonder when you ask questions such as ‘How do fish breathe underwater?’ or ‘Why do air conditioners drip water?’ Wonder, as I describe it here, is more than the sort of curiosity that motivates someone to seek a simple factual answer (eg, ‘What is the biggest kind of dog?’) Wonder moves someone to seek out explanations – especially about the patterns of cause and effect that underlie phenomena. It is also different from “awe,” which can occur as a more passive state of amazement. Wonder involves active thought and engagement. It invokes conjectures about ‘how’ and ‘why’. It might even launch speculations about different possible worlds. Wonder motivates targeted explorations and discoveries.”

“In its most mature forms – in adults who have flourished as lifelong learners – wonder promotes sustained excavation of the rich causal architectures of the world. It helps us to appreciate everything around us more fully. We come to see a more richly textured and dynamic reality. For example, through wondering and learning about how and why songbirds sing, how the first flowers break through the frozen ground, and how animals hibernate, we come to see and experience the first days of spring in more immersive and rewarding ways. Each instance of wondering in turn launches a branching network of new instances and opens a door to the potentially endless joy of successive discoveries. If this sounds overly euphoric, it is exactly how renowned polymaths describe their lives, from childhood to their final moments.”

“Wonder and the learning it encourages enable us to more fully engage with others – not just about topics such as cosmology or evolution, but also pressing current issues such as epidemics and the climate crisis. It can also help provide a shield against misinformation. Even the most schematic understanding of gravity, stars and planets, for instance, can make one more suspicious of causal claims by astrologers. Dubious ideas, including notions about disease or climate risk that run contrary to the scientific consensus, are easier to question if we acquire rough renderings of the mechanisms involved.”

…

“Around the time children enter classrooms, their spontaneous questions seem to plummet. Even worse, this abandonment of wonder can persist indefinitely. This decline happens at all levels of affluence and across diverse groups and cultures, leading some to worry that it is inevitable.”

“Yet some people remain lifelong, joyful wonderers. What makes them able to sustain their wonder? Consider the biochemist Jennifer Doudna, who launched the CRISPR gene editing revolution in biology. She recalls wondering constantly about the plants around her when she was growing up in Hawaii. She became fascinated with how certain plants closed up protectively when touched and, more generally, why and how plants developed ways to survive specific threats. In adolescence, she became fascinated with how genes mediate the adaptations of organisms to their environments. As Walter Isaacson, a biographer of famous wonderers including Doudna, notes:

‘When we are in our wonder years, we always ask these questions – up until some grown-up finally says, ‘Hey, quit asking so many stupid questions!’ But what we have to do is be like Leonardo d Vinci, Ben Franklin, Steve Jobs, and Jennifer Doudna, and now outgrow our wonder years.’”

…

“After more than 50 years involved in experimental research on how both adults and children make sense of the world around them, I have become every more impressed by the ability of young humans to sense something important lurking beneath the surface of things. They quickly grasp that uncovering how something works is especially rewarding. An intrinsic joy is at the heart of what makes this happen. All of us should experience the pleasures of learning through wonder every day of our lives. Through studies in my lab at Yale and countless discussions with other researchers and notable wonderers, I’ve been able to collect a number of practical strategies that can help you revive your wonder and maintain it at levels that become so rewarding that they are self-sustaining.”

“What to do?

Conduct regular introspections…

Embrace the proliferation of wonder…

Adopt diverse ways of wondering…

Looks for anomalies and puzzles…

Explore contrasting cases…

Entertain counterfactuals…

Practice win-win wondering with others…

Create a checklist for wondering…”

For more information on Keil’s “wonder” suggestions above, consult his book Wonder: Childhood and the Lifelong Love of Science (2022).

Whenever I read something like Keil’s ideas on “wonder,” I start thinking what a learning organization might look like if it was built around these component parts of “wondering.”

It’s clear the traditional school space doesn’t offer enough kids the opportunity to “wonder” – most are too busy preparing their students for high-stakes tests. But it would be interesting to use Keil’s “wonderful outline” as the beginnings of learning groups across the country, because if young learners aren’t wondering, then that is truly a sad day.

Til tomorrow. SVB