What does the "REAL" lab do?
The Research in Learning and Education Lab studies the way children's learning, curiosity, and understanding of their world.
Meet the Professor
Dr. Jamie Jirout is an Assistant Professor of Psychology and the director of the Research in Education and Learning Lab. Dr. Jirout′s research focuses on two areas of children′s learning: 1) children′s curiosity and question asking, especially in the preschool and early elementary years, and 2) children′s spatial reasoning skills. Her current work investigates how both question asking and spatial thinking can be improved in young children. She is especially interested in how they can influence and be developed by early science education in formal and informal settings.
Current Studies
Curiosity
Children’s motivation to learn plays a crucial mediating role in the ultimate success of any instructional effort, and one important motivator is children’s natural curiosity (Stipek, 2002). In our work on curiosity, we first created an operational definition and measure of children's curiosity by assessing their exploration. Now that we have that, we can study the development of curiosity, and use the measure to explore other related questions. Learn More... Spatial Reasoning Spatial reasoning is how we think about things like location, shapes, size, distance, and our relative position within each of these. This is important in every day life, but is also an important skill for children's success in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) learning. Research suggests that children's spatial thinking develops from play with materials that involve spatial relations, such as building with blocks or putting together puzzles. In our work, we study the specific ways in which these activities can improve spatial thinking, with hopes that this knowledge can be used for practical purposes, like designing toys and instruction. Learn more... |