Dr. Lauren Loquasto is an expert in early childhood and elementary education. She currently serves as the Chief Academic Officer for Goddard Systems, LLC, the manager of The Goddard School franchise system. In this leadership role, Lauren shapes the premier educational programming and proprietary curriculum for the Goddard system of nearly 650 schools. In her prior role, Lauren served as vice president of early childhood education for Primrose School Franchising Company, where she supported curriculum development, implementation, and evaluation. Prior to that, she led the early childhood education department for a private early learning and K12 education company, authoring their proprietary early childhood curriculum and leading professional development creation and delivery. Lauren has worked at every level of early childhood education. She has worked as a preschool and elementary school principal for multiple schools and remains actively involved as a voice for early childhood education in various professional associations.
Innate to our humanity is an inherent curiosity. Think of the sheer number of questions you, as an adult, ask Siri and Alexa or type into your internet search bar. Now multiply that exponentially to obtain the number of questions a child asks and how that curiosity drives learning, and you are introduced to the concept of inquiry-based learning.
Inquiry-based learning is an evolution in teaching children that has been validated by research at leading universities like Harvard University and the University of Chicago. The questions young children ask are often used as proof of their focus and efforts to pursue interests. While research varies on the extent of the inquisitiveness of children (Liquin & Lombrozo, 2020), one study of preschool-aged children found them to ask an average of 76 questions per hour when engaged actively with an adult (Chouinard, 2007). Regardless of the number of questions asked verbally, curiosity is seen behaviorally even in infants as noted by gaze patterns, intense expressions, mouthing of new objects, pointing, and trial-and-error behavior patterns. When teachers take this innate drive to learn and use this to drive subsequent learning, children eagerly participate in independent inquiry-based learning experiences and seek others to engage in collaborative inquiry-based learning. Thus, inquiry-based learning does not only accelerate academic skill learning, but it also provides an ideal opportunity for children to practice and develop executive functioning skills and social-emotional skills.
Let’s work through an example. Think of a young child wondering and asking why flowers grow in the dirt. From a single point of curiosity, or inquiry, the child can be led to
- Look at the parts of a flower with a magnifying glass and a clear pot to see the roots;
- Read books about the life cycle of a seed and the role that sunlight, soil, and water play in the growth of a plant;
- Explore color, shape, and dimension in the petals of a flower;
- Write about their learnings;
- And graph the differences in plants.
Throughout this process, the child will likely be naturally prompted to ask an additional handful of questions. This child may seek others to join them in planting their own plants, demonstrating their newly acquired understanding, and using their initial wondering to drive independent and collaborative hands-on learning experiences.
When curiosity drives the learning, even the youngest children have an immediate connection to the learning. They desire to use books, each other, and teachers as learning resources. They test out new ideas, question new learnings, embed newly acquired vocabulary, and are encouraged to think deeply and creatively. The difference is that the child is leading the learning, and the teacher is guiding deeper learning from the side, perhaps even learning alongside the child in a true collaborative experience.
At The Goddard School, a national system of franchised preschools in the United States, we recognize that curiosity drives interest, attention span, relevance, and higher-level thinking even in the youngest ages. Children from infancy through Pre-Kindergarten are immersed in The Goddard School’s exclusive inquiry-based educational program, Wonder of Learning®. Wonder of Learning provides teachers with a scaffold of how to use fiction and non-fiction books along with essential guiding inquiry questions to elicit curiosity and learning in young children. Big questions such as ‘What is kindness?’ and ‘What is a family?’ are leveraged across classrooms and ages to allow for investigation at the age-appropriate level. Wonder of Learning’s inquiry-based approach enables children to ask their own questions and discover the answers to build on their understanding of the world around them. The program is intentionally designed with the flexibility for Goddard School teachers to tailor the instruction to the questions and interests of the children in the class. Best of all, it has demonstrably strong learning outcomes. The most recent data of Goddard School students shows striking results–90 to 98% of Goddard School preschool and pre-kindergarten students are meeting or exceeding standards in nearly every domain, including Early Literacy, Mathematics, Social-Emotional, Approaches to Learning, Science and Technology, and Creative Arts. That is hard to argue with.
Now the challenge is set forth to K12 educators to think deeply and critically about how this proven pedagogical approach and demonstrably effective educational program can be extended into higher grades. The difficulty lies in convincing educators and educational leaders that while historic practices may have worked, new innovative practices are even more effective. Moreover, this requires educators to be willing to give more control to students and engage with each child’s individual curiosities and interests as opposed to a predetermined prescribed line of teaching. Gone are the days of ‘sage on the stage’ and here are the days of ‘guide from the side’ teaching, but only with willing participants. Inquiry-based learning is a paradigm shift that requires educators to unlearn and relearn. The required effort is significant, but it pales in comparison to the transformational impact on students and their development.
When we know better, don’t we owe it to children to do better? For as developmental psychologist Susan Engel said: “Curiosity is, without a doubt, the fuel that drives learning. Study after study has shown that when children want to know something, they learn it faster, more deeply, and more lastingly.”