Caitlin Hubbs L&S Social Sciences
Emotional learning: how children's interests influence learning
This project aims to look at the effect of children’s preferences on their engagement and learning about those objects, and how this interacts with the way information is presented: pedagogically, or child-centered, or indirectly through overhearing. There is limited research on preferential learning in children, and some research on how children’s interactions with the topic influence learning. However, current research has yet to explore the differential effects of preference on learning in overheard and pedagogical contexts.
Children inherently gravitate toward certain topics and objects more than others, which may impact learning about these areas of interest. Studying how a child’s preference shapes learning can help educators to shape content to better suit students’ interests and implement new structures into education to make it better suited to how children learn information. In addition, parents can be more informed about development and leverage their children’s inherent interests to scaffold learning. Importantly, this research will hopefully be applicable to many backgrounds, as we aim to recruit participants across levels of socioeconomic status.
Message To Sponsor
Thank you so much for your support of my research project exploring how children's interests influence learning in both child-directed and overheard contexts. I am looking forward to studying how interest and curiosity shapes learning in different environments. Your support allows us to study the nuanced ways in which interest influences knowledge acquisition during development. Thank you again for making this research possible.