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4 - The Quest for Comprehension and Learning

Children’s Questions Drive Both

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2020

By
Henry M. Wellman
Edited by
Lucas Payne Butler ,
Samuel Ronfard  and
Kathleen H. Corriveau
Lucas Payne Butler
Affiliation:
University of Maryland, College Park
Samuel Ronfard
Affiliation:
University of Toronto Mississauga
Kathleen H. Corriveau
Affiliation:
Boston University
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Summary

Two crucial human cognitive goals are to understand and to learn. Both goals often require active management, actively questing for knowledge. Children’s questions, both purposeful and incidental, both verbal and nonverbal, do this. Questions start early in life, change in nature and influence, but powerfully impact cognitive development all along the way. Often they do so as an antecedent and a consequence of children’s investment in explanatory understanding. I use my research and the research of my collaborators to address these topics as well as describe several of the steps and processes whereby questions and explanations drive the development of children’s comprehension and learning.

Keywords

childhood questionschildhood explanationsrequests for explanationlearning from questionslearning from explanations
Type
Chapter
Information
The Questioning Child
Insights from Psychology and Education
 , pp. 51 - 72
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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