Webinar | The Spark of Curiosity: What if We Stopped Making Learning Harder for Children?

About Dr Naomi Fisher:

Dr Fisher is a clinical psychologist and author who writes about the intersection between education and ChildPsychology. She has written two books on #SelfDirectedEducation, "Changing Our Minds" and "A Different Way to Learn".

She runs popular webinars for parents on helping children with their mental health and specialises in trauma, autism and alternative education.

A Talk by Dr Naomi Fisher at the #InspireEducationSummit 2024.

Children are born full of curiosity, ready to learn about the world. They explore and interrogate people around them, driven by their desire to understand and participate. Then they go to school, where they are told to sit on their bottoms and that learning is something which happens when you follow instructions.

By the time they are teenagers, the spark of curiosity has gone. Learning is no longer something they seek out. The question they most often ask is ‘Is it on the test?’. The adults around them despair. They are going through the motions.

This is not inevitable. We know from self-directed teenagers that that spark of curiosity doesn’t have to be extinguished. It can grow as children grow up. But that requires the adults to think differently about school and learning. It requires us to let go of many of our most fondly held beliefs about what education should be, and instead focus on helping children learn.

In this talk, Dr Naomi Fisher will talk about the psychology of children’s learning, and how #schools could reorganise to take advantage of children’s unique strengths and capacity for learning.

About the Event:

The ‘INSPIRE Education Summit: The Pathway to Transformation’ ran from 18-25 November 2024, and was a collaboration between Progressive Education and Limitless, in celebration of the launch of their membership platform for start-up schools and learning communities.