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Rekindling the Fire of Curiosity within Teenagers
Rediscovering the Importance of Asking Questions
Conducting The Research and Discovering The Results
My Project's Research Methods
Throughout my research process I conducted three methods of research.
Literature Review​
Surveys
Interviews
Focus Groups
Marilyn P. Arnone - "Curiosity is a heightened state of interest resulting in exploration, and its importance in motivating scholarship cannot be ignored."
#1: Literature Review
Before beginning on my research within Christchurch, I needed to fully understand curiosity. My favourite quotation (the one above) encapsulates the goal of my project. The quotation not only explains what curiousity is, but it also explains the importance of it. After understanding curiosity through research and quotations like these, I was prepared to focus on curiosity within the students of Christchurch.
Collecting Data Through a Community Lense
#2: Surveys
Now that I had a basis knowledge of what curiosity was, I could dive into the subject through a local level at Christchurch. With Focus Groups and Interviews planned for the future, I knew that I needed to not only gauge the level of Christchurch students' curiosity, but I also needed to gain the faculties prespective on the student's curiosity. I did so by conducting school wide surveys. These surveys were diverse in age and level of class difficulty. In the end, I discovered a disparity in data between the student's opinion of themselevs and the teachers' opinions of the students. While %91 of students considered themselves curious, the teachers' average curioisty meter (1-10) for students was a 6.
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Clearly, this revealed a problem. My data was skewed. To solve the problem, I had to conduct focus groups and interviews with both students and faculty in order engage with the survey takers and the data on a personal level.
Reaching Out For Data at a Personal Level
#3: Interviews
After collecting data from the survey, I was ready to reach out at personal level in order to discover the defects of my prior research, but also to discover some alternate ideas for the direction of my project.
First, I conducted interviews. These interviews were done over the phone with two teachers in order to disocver the best possible methods for sparking curiosity in teenagers. I first interviewed Mr. Nelson, a math teacher at Christchurch. Mr. Nelson enlightened me with the idea that curiosity is a two way relationship within the classroom. Mr. Nelson explained that if the teacher seems more curious on the subject, the students tend to follow. I then interviewed a past teacher of mine, Julie Zimmerman. Ms. Zimmerman is a high school teacher at the Sage School in Ketchum, Idaho. The Sage School works directly with the idea of sparking curiosity within students through unique experiences. Ms. Zimmerman enlightened me on three major methods that she and her school utilize in order to engage students. By incorporating a social aspect, an aspect of choice on the subject, and an intriguing way of introducing the information people can spark curiosity within teenagers.
Fixing My Project's Problems Through Discussion
#4: Focus Groups
After the interviews, I focused on attacking the problems with my project. I conducted two focus groups to do so: one with students and one with Christchurch faculty. I conducted the student focus group in order to personally gauge their curiosity on a podcast I had chosen for them to listen to. This focus group reveals two problems. First, the focus group was sent to a group of curious people, in turn relieving the difficulty in sparking it in the first place. Secondly, the focus group lacks one of the methods to gauge curiosity which was the aspect of choice. Despite the problems, I saw a massive amount of curiousity within the students, but this finding is worth less due to the problems.
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The faculty focus group provided me with a sense of awareness for my project's problems while also providing me with future plans and ideas. I utilized the faculties experience and relationships in order to gain another prespective on the bias research I collected in my student survey. The faculty disagreed with not only the answers to the questions, but also disagreed on the approach to many of my questions. They provided feedback on how to efficiently ask questions. Along with this, the faculty exposed me to many ideas revolving around curiosity at Christchurch. Ideas such as: handwork vs. curiosity, grades vs. learning, and curiosity vs. compliancy. The last idea is one that will be extremely useful for me as I move forth with my project and it's product. In general, the faculty focus group provided me with new ideas, suggestions, and positive feedback.
Curiosity vs. Compliancy
To What Extent Can Curiosity and Compliancy Coexist in Order to Create Curiosity?