1. Understanding Children’s Curiosity and
Exploration through the Lenses of Lewin’s
Field Theory: on Developing an Appraisal
Framework
AMY CHAk

2. Main point ….
 Curiosity as a motivational factor
 Adults are important mediators
 To motivate children’s curiosity and exploration
 Micro level process analysis by using Kurt Lewin’s field
theory as a framework to appraise children’s momentary
state of curiosity and exploratory behavior
 The proposed framework argues that a parent can be a source
of barrier in hindering a child’s exploration or a facilitator to
remove barriers.

3. Kurt Lewin’s field theory
 Two levels of analysis: child-stimulus situation and
childstimulus- adult.
 Adult’s sensitivity to the child’s perspective is emphasize

4. The underlying assumption is that …
Given the opportunity children will explore on their own.What
role do adults play in this knowledge acquisition process?
Curiosity is a motivational force that is linked with knowledge
acquisition.
 However, fleeting curiosity may result in the acquisition of
scattered information but may not promote systematic
investigation.
 Curiosity as a motivational force and exploration as its behavioral
manifestation are essentially intertwined (When someone is
curios, they will explore, that’s why it is related)

5. Curiosity to knowledge acquisition …
 lie in one’s ability to sustain this motivation and subsequently
to develop short term attractions into long term interest
 The Question … How to sustain such curiosity towards the
children?

6. What is curiosity?
 Curiosity is often described as a conspicuous characteristic in
children.Whether a child decides to engage with a stimulus
depends on how attractive it is to him or her. Novelty,
complexity, ambiguity, incongruity are some key attributes of
a stimulus which are likely to arouse curiosity.
 Affective and social factors also affect one’s exploratory
behavior.
 Anxiety is a known psychological force which hinders
exploration

7. The function of stimulus …
 A stimulus has an optimal range of attractiveness to a person,
 A weak stimulus results in boredom,
 An extremely strong stimulus which may be too novel or
complex, arouses anxiety or frustration and instead of
exploration can lead to withdrawal.
 Attachment theory asserts that a secure parental base
provides a child with the confidence needed to meet the
challenges of exploration

8. According to Lewin’s …
 Contributed in the field theory and more well known in
social psychology.
 He characterized field theory as a‘‘method of analyzing
causal relations and of building scientific constructs’.
 He developed a system of topological concepts which are
broad enough to represent psychological situations
encompassing behaviors, emotions, thoughts process, values
and social relationships

9.  Lewin had used the field-theoretical approach to explain
concepts such as frustration, level of aspiration, regression.
 He also used field theory to explain the dynamics of reward and
punishment from the child’s perspective and described
 The adult’s position as a power field

10. What is field theory?
 ‘‘behavior has to be derived from a totality of co-existing
facts where they are mutually interdependent, and therefore
a psychological situation must be analyzed as a whole.
 Specifically‘‘the effect of a given stimulus depends upon the
stimulus constellation and upon the state of the particular
person at that time’’

11. Two types of a person’s life space
1. General life situation encompasses a broader sphere of, for
example, one’s experience and disposition.
2. Momentary situation such influence vary in different
momentary situations. Lewin emphasized the significance of
the momentary situation, where action takes place, over the
general life situation.

12. Lewin’s principle of contemporaneity …
 only the present situation can influence present events. It
follows that‘‘any behavior or any change in a psychological
field depends only upon the psychological field at that time’’
 The present psychological field views, in which action takes
place, contains also simultaneously one’s past and future
perceptions.

13. From the psychological perspective,
 Lewin meant that a situation must be understood‘‘in the way
in which it exists for the person at that time’.
 A teacher will not succeed in giving proper guidance to a
child without learning to understand the psychological world
in which the individual child lives
 He highlighted the subtle significance of attending to a child’s
perception of a situation

14. Summary
 Lewinian perspectives offers a framework to incorporate
multiple dimensions in a person-environment interaction
analysis.
 The concept of total situation include multiple factors
mutually influencing dynamic relation between the child and
his or her environment. Moreover, it takes into account
simultaneously both background information (e.g., a child’s
disposition, interest, developmental abilities) and situational
information (e.g., various types of stimulus)