Hi Nahum,

see any experimental method or experiential one. In my particular case, for languages, I use simulations and flipped learning. 

www.iconsproject.com

The answer is obviously yes. As for the how to achieve it, it depends on the topic. For some topics it is simplest to start with experimental work and lead them to the definition of concepts; for other topics it is necessary to use animations and modeling; then again what you are doing can also be a very successful approach. I don't feel it is "one size fits all", but rather find the best fit.

Though it's not my teaching area, I think that one way is to use problem-based learning or project-based learning. For example buiding a project of  a car using solar energy can help children understand the concept of solar energy and discuss  about other kinds of energy 

 It important to excite students' curiosity and initiative them in general. The best way to do that is through PBL - Project Based Learning. It is a teaching method in which students gain knowledge and skills by working for an extended period of time to investigate and respond to a complex question, problem, or challenge.

You can find information about it online (for example: http://bie.org/about/what_pbl).

But what is most important is to initiative them through their strongest intelligence, as Gardner argued in 1984. I truly believe in it, and I wrote about it in my article: "The sky is the limit: Being the best we can" and you can download it from ResearchGate at:  https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260675145_The_sky_is_the_limit_Being_the_best_we_can.

In the article i describe a model I developed many years ago. The model of developing excellence in education differentiates between two processes of excellence. The first is a comparable excellence, in which you compare yourself to others and will be referred to in this article as “excellence.” The second is incomparable excellence, in which you develop your own excellence without reference to anything, or to others, and will be referred to in this article as “excel.” This model offers ways for developing incomparable inner excellence, i.e. developing excel.  

Article The Sky Is the Limit: Being the Best We Can

I agree with you that there are many ways and means to pique students' curiosity.  The choice may depend on the purpose of this undertaking.  One, favored by lecturers, is to draw attention, to make an audience to concentrate on the lecture.  For this purpose, even jokes connected with scientists will do.  But what I really had in mind here was exciting students' curiosity to the level of activating their thinking. And I don't mean a momentary thought created in a student's mind by a certain phrase of the lecturer.  I mean a self-sustained activity which lasts for a while and is in fact solving a problem.  But, as you know, not every problem offered to students requires thinking.   For instance, many years ago, before I started research in the history of science, I realized that many laboratory exercises, whether in high-school or in college, concerned with "verification" of laws are useless from the perspective of developing thinking.  Thus, I reversed the assignment: instead of " verifying", say, Ohm's Law students were told to accept the law as proven and to determine causes of discrepancies between their measurements and the theory (see my paper "A Law of Physics in the Classroom_The Case of Ohm's Law') .  And they had to verify their hypotheses experimentally!  At first they were overwhelmed, but then they understood that they had to THINK to solve the problem, and thinking they did!

I would appreciate hearing about specific cases from your experience which you found stimulating students' thinking.

Dear Nachum,

Do you read Hebrew? If you do, I'll be able to show you good examples that my students did in various areas, according to the model i wrote in my above answer. I do recommend reading the article i sent you, and I'm sure it will give you a different perspective.

 Thank you for posting this question. 

I'm an art teacher and a masters student Special Educational Needs. In my years of experience working with so called margin groups, ie youth-at-risk and offenders, I've seen remarkable results when the arts came into play. I've dedicated my research to finding out what exactly it is the arts hold, that motives students. 

It is in fact, the unbiased perception with which students approach their assignments. It depends on the teacher and the specific learning target, but basically the learning proces is the same for learning just about anything.

What works best, as how I witnessed it, is a strategy of laying out the materials they will be working with and project a goal for them that they find useful in their own lives. How they work with the materials, is for them to explore, experiment with and then find the best way to achieve that goal.

If a similar proces is transferred to a cognitive subject, say science, it would work along the line Yael described. The goal is to work with the material 'Ohms Law' and the goal would be to 'materialise the theory'. I guess that's why Yael found the method to be successful.

Learning processes are more or less always the same. First there has to be a need to learn something, which could range from getting a good grade to pleasing parents to a necessary skill for a job or a life skill. The bigger the need, the higher the motivation to learn. The more personal a student relates, the more curious he/she gets. In art, that's easy, in science that's a bit harder, but still doable. For instance, I didn't understand why I needed to learn about Ohm, until I could relate it to the daily use of my electrical appliances. When it comes in handy in peoples lives, they will be more curious to learn about it.

Hi Nahum,

One possibility that shows promise, but still has limited research, is partnering schools and teachers with outside scientists (researchers, engineers, workforce professionals). I recently completed a year long case study with related findings on the role of these outside experts and their influence on the kind of science instruction teachers plan for students. See link to manuscript which is accepted for publication in Teachers College Record as well as article published last month in JSD.

Hope you find them helpful.

Brad

Article Expanding Instructional Horizons: A Case Study of Teacher Te...

Article What we learned from a tomato: Partnering with a content exp...

Hi Nahum. Just a brief comment, concerning the major focus of motivation (exciting) for learning physics. Our experience teaches us that the more proximal the experience of learning is from real life (or professional performance), the better. Students tend to learn meaningfully when they find that what is taught makes sense to them in terms of every day life or a professional career.

The case is different when you are teaching physics to future scientists in the field. However, I tend to think that a student that is in a science education program has an intrinsic motivation, so that "exciting" them is not the problem. 

Best regards. Gustavo

Dear Nahum, please find a few links that may contribute to the discussion. One includes information that relates to skateboarding!

http://corwin-connect.com/2014/06/action-science-relevant-teaching-active-learning/

http://nstacommunities.org/blog/2015/03/10/flipping-tools-for-the-science-classroom/

http://www.ecampusnews.com/top-news/science-education-network-398/

Dear Nahum,

As has been stated excitement and curiosity are important to learning any subject, but I would also add that the teacher/lecturer/professor must also show passion and desire. I would also caution that problem based learning is the end all answer. Yes PBL is a good method but the excitement, passion, and curiosity must be felt by the students from the teacher and this is were the art of the individual pedagogy must be added to the equation.

No cookie book curriculum with a dull and scripted methodology and a lifeless teacher PBL will not over come. It is still the style, passion, and drive the instructor has that from my point of view is what creates the curiosity and excitement in all subject matters.

Douglas

Dear Douglas,

I fully agree with you about the role of passion in a teacher.  Students tend to imitate teachers, and if they see a teacher putting all his/her heart into the subject they respond in kind.  Where I disagree with you it is in contrasting passion and problem-solving attitude:

"Yes PBL is a good method BUT the excitement, passion, and curiosity..."  I don't see any BUT here.  Indeed, there are various ways to excite students, sometimes even a teacher's voice does, regardless of the words spoken.  But what happens when the emotion comes together with an idea?  When a teacher describes Galileo's work and his collision with the  Church as if the teacher were an eyewitness of the events, this will not  fail to impress students. However, what if the "drama of ideas" comes not from imitating past events and other people, but from real life with the teacher as a participant? 

Imagine a student asking the teacher a difficult question in front of the whole class, a question the teacher had never encountered and thus has no idea of the answer.  What should he /she do?  Different teachers react differently, but I'll give you only two examples, which are relevant to our subject.  My wife, a former physics teacher, said: "I have no idea, but I'll find it out and tell you tomorrow."  And she did so, which made a positive impression.  About 20 years later, I found myself in such a predicament, but I reacted differently.  Having gone through motions of deep thought for a minute or two, I said, "I don't know the answer, and I suggest to try solving this problem together" 

The problem was on static electricity, although I don't remember the details. That was the subject of the day, and that is why the question was on that topic.  My students had already done some experiments on static electricity, and were  familiar with a plan of investigations we had used with other problems.  "Let us make a plan of this investigation.  What experiments would you do in the preliminary part?"  They made several suggestions and immediately made the experiments with the equipment available on their tables. "What potential variables do you see in your experiments?"  We agreed on three variables  which appeared more   promising.  "Can you come up with a procedure sufficient to investigate all these three variables?  What will you use as a charger?  As a detector of electricity?  other ideas?"  Having listened to their suggestions I concluded: "Well, we've already solved an important part of the problem, and you'll finish it  at home.  In 3 days you'll tell me the answer."  And so they did (and I did my homework too.)

What is interesting in this case?  First, the question had an emotional aspect, for deliberately or not, it challenged the instructor, who appeared, at least momentarily, embarrassed.  Everyone was paying attention.  Secondly, the instructor managed to transfer his emotions to students.  They were flattered by the offer to answer the question, which the instructor himself could not, and this excitement stimulated them to start working on the answer.   Thirdly, further excitement came from the home work itself, especially from the competition with other students about getting the correct result. Since the correct result in investigative experiments I offer is known to me (an advantage of repeating historical experiments) but not to students, their only way of evaluating a progress they make is by comparing results of different groups throughout a classroom experiment.  Keeping this in mind, the teacher should encourage students to consult one another while doing homework experiments too (incidentally, there is here a separate thread on Home Experiments).  Finally, students made another step towards the ultimate goal of the historical-investigative method: to realize that there is another method of answering a question than by asking a teacher or going through books (or Internet), namely, by experimenting.  The skills obtained in these experiments will serve them well throughout their lives and far beyond physics.

If you are curious about this method, see Rediscovering Optics or various articles on this site.

Whilst it seems reasonable to believe that excitment and curiosity play important roles in encouraging students to learn about science I'm not sure as to the degree that research evidence supports this belief. Indeed, many passionate teachers of physics with whom I am familiar, whose teaching excits and inspires their students, also find it difficult to recruit students to continue with physics post-compulsion. I think it would be important, in order to move this on further, to operationalise what is meant by the term 'passion' in PBL. Without any clear definition of what this means (and how we, or students, would recognise and quantify it - I assume that some teachers are more passionate than others and even the same teacher might not always be as passionate) it is difficult to understand how we can critically engage with the notion of PBL as it remains a very nebulous concept.

Dear Nahum, please find information about a fairly new tool. It is mentioned that "when students think and act like real scientists, instead of just reading about science, they improve their understanding and develop strong problem-solving and critical thinking skills".

http://www.eclassroomnews.com/2015/03/19/science-gets-a-new-mobile-device/

Dear Leona, thank you for your suggestion. I checked the device advertised by PASCO, it probably works as promised, but when costs are concerned it is not in the league with the experiments I popularize. I haven't found the price of the software, but a single sensor from their set of sensors is $99.  I doubt that teachers can afford more than one device per class.

For a comparison, one set of equipment (for a group of 3 students) teachers made in my summer institutes was about $5.  For their independent projects teachers were to make 10 sets.  Teachers carried them to their schools and had a ready new lab (and to that, a historical one) for merely $50.  If you are curious about these institutes, see, for instance, 10.13140/RG.2.1.1255.1201and, say, 10.13140/RG.2.1.4728.5281 

Regards,

Nahum

Hi Nahum, another idea to consider is to work in games to the curriculum. Here are a couple links to descriptions and evaluations of "physics playground" (formerly Newton's Playground). kids of ALL ages love to play (and as a bonus, they learn about Newton's three laws, as well as other physical phenomena. For an overview of the game see: http://myweb.fsu.edu/vshute/pdf/Stealth_Assessment.pdf and for an evaluation of the game re: validity, learning, and enjoyment, see: http://myweb.fsu.edu/vshute/pdf/JER.pdf.

Yes, it is important and I suggest that there exists now quite a few S&T teledocumentary and documentary films that may show this dimension of curiosity and innovation that film making has reached insofar as teaching and motivating and at the same time presenting matters  clearly, modernly and precisely. It is not seldom that Historical facts are shown in the exact context of such films.

I don't believe excitement and curiosity are always "necessary" because I can easily see students learning simply out of fear of failing or some other form of avoiding pain.

However, I do believe they learn much more effectively when they are curios or excited, which can be transferred from the lecturer.  One study that comes to mind was by Amory Danek etc all. In 2014, where they used magic tricks to investigate insight experiences.  These are the experiences when everything comes together suddenly (I.e. a Eureka! moment).  They found that happiness was the aspect most associated with the experience out of the variables they measured.  Hilas & Politics also did a study on these type of experiences in a computer networks course and it ended up being the highest rated course in the department!

So the short answer is: I don't think it's essential but definitely optimizes their learning and makes the learning process a lot more enjoyable.

PS apologies for lack of citations or typos. I wrote this quickly on my phone.

Oui, il est important d'exciter la curiosité et l'initiative des étudiants pour tout apprentissage significatif car cette curiosité allume l'attention de l'étudiant , attention qui est la première étape de la mise en action de la mémoire avec ses différentes facettes. Comment faire? on peut poser un problème au groupe c'est l'approche PBL, on peut rebondir sur un problème d'actualité comme par exemple le réchauffement climatique, la couche d'ozone, le carbone...et demander aux étudiants ce qu'ils en pensent. A partir de leurs conceptions plus ou moins erronées on peut alors préparer le cours ou continuer dans une approche PBL en demandant aux étudiants d'aller effectuer des recherches et l'on se retrouvera pour la synthèse.

I agree that having students wanting to learn does enhance curiosity. That brings to mind having a "growth mindset" and the work of Dr. Carol Dweck. Students with an growth mindset are not afraid to take risks, while those who have a closed mindset may be quite bright, but are afraid of stepping out and looking incompetent. So, maybe creating an environment where students feel it safe to step out of the comfort zone is as important or maybe more than being excited about a topic. What are your thoughts?

I Agree With Nahum Kipnis