Interest Based Learning

Recently a coworker sent the link to this article on interest based learning.  It really got all of us thinking about how our interests impact our learning.  What is an interest?  The author says,

"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. " 

And the article goes on to tell us why we should be allowing students to learn about their intersts in school:

Interest is at once a cognitive state and an affective state, what Silvia calls a “knowledge emotion.” The feelings that characterize interest are overwhelmingly positive: a sense of being energized and invigorated, captivated and enthralled. As for its effects on cognition: interest effectively turbocharges our thinking. When we’re interested in what we’re learning, we pay closer attention; we process the information more efficiently; we employ more effective learning strategies, such as engaging in critical thinking, making connections between old and new knowledge, and attending to deep structure instead of surface features. When we’re interested in a task, we work harder and persist longer, bringing more of our self-regulatory skills into play.

We've all had that student in school who is "obsessed" with one topic - video games, dinosaurs, trains, ponies, cats, whatever it might be.  We are constantly trying to get that child to read and write about a different topic, check out books from the library that are about something else, broaden their interest level.  Turns out we may be holding them back by doing so.

". . . scientists have shown that passionate interests can even allow people to overcome academic difficulties or perceptual disabilities."

I recently worked with a student who is a perfect illustration of this to me.  He has always been passionate about dinosaurs.  He reads about them, writes about them, draws about them, thinks about them, and talks about them all the time.  When he was given the opportunity recently to do a self-designed project in the Makerspace, he chose to center the project around dinosaurs.  I was tempted to ask him to stretch himself, but fortunately I didn't, because the results were wonderful!  He modeled a tyrannosaurus rex out of Model Magic, learned how to program the MaKey MaKey using Scratch, found a royalty free sound file of a roar, and made his model interactive.

This boy learned more during this project than I could have ever imagined, largely because of his level of engagement in the topic.  Would he have done as much if I told him his model needed to be of a farm animal instead?  I feel certain that he wouldn't.  I can't wait to see where this passion takes him next!

Paul, Annie M. "How the Power of Interest Drives Learning." Web log post. Mindshift. KQED, 4 Nov. 2013. Web. 17 Mar. 2015.