Getting down into the weeds of creating instructional opportunities that promote and sustain students’ interest or facilitate utility-value connections is time-consuming and requires careful attention to intervention implementation details ( Yeager et al. Various evaluation policies could reward educators who use evidence-based motivational science to inform their curricula and instructional methods, for example, by providing professional development funds, creating organizational teaching awards, and other meritorious recognition for such efforts. The approach required to catch a person's interest is different from the one that’s necessary to hold a person’s interest: catching is all about seizing the attention and stimulating the imagination. Thus, being in a state of interest means that affective reactions, perceived value, and cognitive functioning intertwine, and that attention and learning feel effortless ( Ainley, 2006; Dewey, 1913; Hidi, 2006). Photograph: John Gaffen/Alamy Robin Ince: ‘profound – and funny – reflections on our tiny lives in a massive universe’.

The Importance of Being Interested - Booktopia The Importance of Being Interested - Booktopia

g., a homework assignment that asks students to reflect on how what they are learning might be useful in their lives). Parents can promote interest, as well as customize utility-value information on an individual basis. For instructors, these courses are populated by large, diverse groups of students with varied levels of knowledge, interest, and motivation in the field, making it difficult to promote interest for all students. This could begin, for example, by mandatory inclusion of ratings of the degree of interest in, or utility of, course content in student and peer evaluations of teaching that are factored into annual faculty reviews and promotion decisions.Integrating these two definitions, the four-phase model of interest development guides interventions that promote interest and capitalize on existing interests.

The Importance of Being Interested: Adventures in Scien…

Indeed, some interest triggers merely distract students who already have a well-developed interest in a topic, whereas these same triggers promote situational interest for students in the earlier phases of interest. Interest is a psychological state of engagement, experienced in the moment, and also a predisposition to engage repeatedly with particular ideas, events, or objects over time. Considering students’ pre-existing interest and level of competence for a given topic is imperative. For students, introductory courses are often critical gateways to majors and careers, requiring high grades to continue in a field.

She is increasingly driven by an approach ‘that doesn’t compromise on science, but also doesn’t compromise on respect and compassion, either’. In fact, these students, performed about half a grade point higher in the intervention condition than in the control condition. I have also grown to dislike those sneering T-shirt slogans or memes that say, ‘Science doesn’t care about your opinions’, as if by being a scientist, their feelings and biases are always usurped by their superior brains, which can manage to neatly box their emotions, only occasionally releasing them for birthdays, funerals and screenings of The Shawshank Redemption.