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deprivation sensitivity—recognizing a gap in knowledge the filling of which offers relief. This type of curiosity doesn’t necessarily feel good, but people who experience it work relentlessly to solve problems.

joyous exploration—being consumed with wonder about the fascinating features of the world. This is a pleasurable state; people in it seem to possess a joie de vivre.

social curiosity—talking, listening, and observing others to learn what they are thinking and doing. Human beings are inherently social animals, and the most effective and efficient way to determine whether someone is friend or foe is to gain information. Some may even snoop, eavesdrop, or gossip to do so.

stress tolerance—a willingness to accept and even harness the anxiety associated with novelty. People lacking this ability see information gaps, experience wonder, and are interested in others but are unlikely to step forward and explore.

thrill seeking—being willing to take physical, social, and financial risks to acquire varied, complex, and intense experiences. For people with this capacity, the anxiety of confronting novelty is something to be amplified, not reduced.

we all seek the sweet spot between two deeply uncomfortable states: understimulation (coping with tasks, people, or situations that lack sufficient novelty, complexity, uncertainty, or conflict) and overstimulation.

people become curious upon realizing that they lack desired knowledge; this creates an aversive feeling of uncertainty, which compels them to uncover the missing information.

nstead of asking, “How curious are you?” we can ask, “How are you curious?”

How can organizations help people make the leap from curious to competent?

complexity and breadth of the opportunities they’d been given,

It enhances intelligence

It increases perseverance, or grit

And curiosity propels us toward deeper engagement, superior performance, and more-meaningful goals

leaders can encourage curiosity

when our curiosity is triggered, we are less likely to fall prey to confirmation bias (looking for information that supports our beliefs rather than for evidence suggesting we are wrong) and to stereotyping people (making broad judgments, such as that women or minorities don’t make good leaders). Curiosity has these positive effects because it leads us to generate alternatives.

My own research confirms that encouraging people to be curious generates workplace improvements.

When we are curious, we view tough situations more creatively. Studies have found that curiosity is associated with less defensive reactions to stress and less aggressive reactions to provocation.

curiosity encourages members of a group to put themselves in one another’s shoes and take an interest in one another’s ideas rather than focus only on their own perspective. That causes them to work together more effectively and smoothly: Conflicts are less heated, and groups achieve better results.

he groups whose curiosity had been heightened performed better than the control groups because they shared information more openly and listened more carefully.

Hire for curiosity.

most people perform at their best not because they’re specialists but because their deep skill is accompanied by an intellectual curiosity that leads them to ask questions, explore, and collaborate.

“What is the one thing I should do to make things better for you?”

hen we demonstrate curiosity about others by asking questions, people like us more and view us as more competent, and the heightened trust makes our relationships more interesting and intimate.

But focusing on learning is generally more beneficial to us and our organizations,

A body of research demonstrates that framing work around learning goals (developing competence, acquiring skills, mastering new situations, and so on) rather than performance goals (hitting targets, proving our competence, impressing others) boosts motivation. And when motivated by learning goals, we acquire more-diverse skills, do better at work, get higher grades in college, do better on problem-solving tasks, and receive higher ratings after training. Unfortunately, organizations often prioritize performance goals.

rewarding people not only for their performance but for the learning needed to get there.

Leaders can also stress the value of learning by reacting positively to ideas that may be mediocre in themselves but could be springboards to better ones.

Organizations can foster curiosity by giving employees time and resources to explore their interests.

Employees can also broaden their interests by broadening their networks. Curious people often end up being star performers thanks to their diverse networks,

Leaders can also boost employees’ curiosity by carefully designing their teams.

What if…?” and “How might we…?”

To encourage curiosity, leaders should also teach employees how to ask good questions.

Organizing “Why?” days, when employees are encouraged to ask that question if facing a challenge, can go a long way toward fostering curiosity.

5 Whys

We think and learn about things that matter to us, that are emotionally relevant because we perceive them as important to our physical or social survival and well-being.

Motivation, engagement, perseverance, creativity, optimism, resilience—pretty much all the so-called “soft skills”—are rooted in emotion.

If students’ programs of study include significant, meaningful opportunities for them to follow their expanding and changing interests during their many years in school,  motivation and perseverance will spontaneously combust because, as some students told me, “my interest and involvement in my studies became personal. I felt like my school had meaning, like there was purpose.”

regression is essential to learning because each time the learner rebuilds the network, the more stable and automatic it becomes. Regression is not failure, although it is often treated as such.

natural process of learning—building, regression, rebuilding

So what matters to students? What are they learning in school that forces them to focus on what matters to adults?

Because emotional goals motivate and direct people’s thoughts and behavior, as Immordino-Yang suggests, understanding students’ goals can provide insight into what they are likely to learn and help educators understand how they might change their practices

Engagement in school does not always reflect engagement in the sort of deep, meaningful learning—developing intellectual skills and conceptual understanding—that educators value.

how to rethink school designs and create a new conceptual model for schools—a model that combines and finds an effective balance among the goals that adults have for students and the needs that students have for themselves, a balance between what matters to students and what matters to adults.

more effective model will offer real opportunities for students to pursue personally meaningful interests and questions

we don’t need to try to make all students masters of all disciplines.

Instead of insisting that all students collect identical promotion and graduation credits by meeting minimal standards to “pass” anywhere from five to seven courses each year in discrete, unrelated subjects, educators might be more successful ensuring that all students work each year on a body of specific essential skills—perhaps communication, collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving, which are getting so much attention today—that can be learned while working in any subject area.

Some of the changes that make this new model possible involve significantly reducing the number of traditionally required courses, creating individualized rather than rigidly standardized courseloads, giving students more control of the subjects they study, and establishing graduation requirements based on skill development.

Many contributors agree that a competence is a complex construct, comprising knowledge, skills, attitudes, values, etc. But in the actual listing of the competences, they mix competences with their constituent elements.

Lack of evident interaction across elements of competences:

Lack of a common starting point:

Varied taxonomies:

Lack of a common language and common concepts

Unclear standards and developmental progression:

Lack of consensus on the structure of curricula:

While there is consensus on the need to transition to competence-based curricula, views on the structure of curricula remain divergent between the maintenance of traditional subjects and learning areas interwoven with competences, and the more radical view that curricula should be restructured around competences.

Feasibility of implementation:

Managing the transition:

Weak or unshared tracking of impact:

However, the world still lacks a global normative instrument that can be used as a global reference point for curricula transformation.

Competence is herein defined as the developmental capacity to interactively mobilize and ethically use information, data, knowledge, skills, values, attitudes, and technology to engage effectively and act across diverse 21 st century contexts to attain individual, collective, and global good.

Distinguishing Attributes of a Competence-based Curriculum

A competence-based curriculum is grounded in the understanding of the demands of the learners’ context.

In contrast to competence-based curricula, subject-based curricula are mostly grounded in an understanding of the subject matter content or the disciplines. They generally prepare learners to know the subject matters and to gain a deep understanding of advancements in the field. They don’t necessarily emphasize immediate use of acquired knowledge. The application is often deferred to real life situations that learners may confront later in life, forcing them to apply what they had learned. Because of insensitivity to context, it is often easy to have the same curriculum across different contexts, mostly borrowed from what are considered to be advanced contexts. The risk of irrelevance of the curriculum is also higher.

A key consideration is how best to facilitate curriculum specialists to gain an in-depth understanding of the learners’ current and future contexts, and how to identify competences, which should be reflected in curricula.

Learner centeredness:

Competence-based curricula emphasize the ability to use what is learned. Acquisition is important but not sufficient.

Emphasis on outcomes or impact:

A key consideration is how to support educators to reach for the deeper impact of learning, and how to assess it.

Emphasis on trans-disciplinarity:

Especially at the post-primary level, a key consideration is how to enable educators to master their specific disciplines, and at the same time, to have adequate knowledge of other disciplines enough to make transdisciplinary linkages. Another challenge is how to design curricula in a way that makes linkages across subjects and learning areas.

Competence-based curricula are structured around competences and not around subjects, and progression relates to the competence rather than subject matter difficulty.

As the last word, competence-based curricula are not against subject matter content. Effective application of content across disciplines actually requires a high level of mastery of the content.

seven macro competences that are considered relevant across contexts. These are: (i) Lifelong learning; (ii) Self-agency; (iii) Interactively using diverse tools and resources; (iv) Interacting with others; (v) Interacting with the world; (vi) Multi-literateness; and (vii) Trans-disciplinarity. Because of their universality, macro competences are quite stable. They allow for curricula stability across transformations and reforms. They are the bigger picture and the overarching "why" of a curriculum.

Knowing how to learn is the most critical future competence.

The 21 st century requires people to be self-actualized agents.

Responsible use of tools and resources is also at the heart of responsible consumption and sustainable lifestyles, which contribute to sustainable development.

It demands collaboration to resolve complex problems and create integrated solutions across contexts.

This competence enables people to be local and global.

Different contexts will demand different types and levels of literacies.

Increasing complexity requires ever more sophisticated solutions that integrate knowledge from multiple disciplines and from domains of knowledge.

This framework therefore balances the need for dynamic change in curricula with the equal need for stability.

the more experience Google has with hiring, the more inclined they are to hire people with no college at all

Increasingly, controlled research studies are also showing no correlation, or even an inverse correlation, between college GPA and innovative orientation or ability.

Ironically and tragically, rather than adapt our educational system to the needs of our modern times we have doubled down on the old system, so it is harder today than ever before for young people to retain and build upon their natural curiosity and creativity

The tyranny of school maths lies in the false promise that stuffing oneself with facts and procedures prepares you for creativity. The act of creativity is deferred to an unspecified time — presumably it is for older, more knowledgeable people.

Young age is no barrier — my most impressive students are also the shortest; it only takes a well-crafted maths problem to unleash their innate creativity.

There are obvious benefits to going deep in a particular area and I always offer a gracious nod to the fluency and fundamentals of mathematics. But mathematics at its most fundamental is an integrated body of ideas, replete in patterns. The patterns and connections are what makes it mathematics. Let that be your next headline.

Scientists should stick to two projects—having only one can be boring; having three can overextend you.

R&D leaders need to hire people who are willing to join multiple projects and to move from one to another as needed. Call them ambidextrous; call them system thinkers. These are people who want to solve problems that matter and that take them from invention to final product