Interest Development as a Condition for Learning

Can an interest to travel places, spark an interest for a teenager to plan the week long family travel to another country, plan the itinerary, accommodation, food and organise everyone around it?

Yes, it is, with parent support, is the answer for my (not so) little 15 year old!!

It all started when my husband and I gave her this opportunity.

Her eyes lit up at the thought of travelling to a faraway land, leading her to ask more questions.

She wanted to investigate, make connections and suddenly, she was deeply involved. It took her a lot of time to ask our preferences, budgets and ask us for help for her to make decisions. It paid off and gave her the opportunity to do what she loves, travel and photography.

In my work, I see these moments of deep participation as the development of interest and not merely enjoyment alone.

What I witnessed with my daughter's engagement and success in planning this trip is that interest development can change a learner's relationship with learning.

The more I have explored the research around this area, the more I believe that interest development deserves to be considered a condition for learning.

Interest is more than enjoyment

Educational research has explored interest and learning for more than a century. Dewey (1913) wrote about the relationship between interest and effort, while later researchers such as Hidi (1990) and Schiefele (1991) examined how interest can influence attention, learning strategies, comprehension and the quality of the learning experience.

What I find particularly interesting is the distinction between individual interest (something a learner has developed over time); and situational interest (which can be sparked by the learning experience itself). This matters enormously in education.

A child doesn't have to arrive in our classroom already interested in science, history, reading or mathematics.

Interest can develop. Without interest, nothing can develop.

We can create opportunities for interest to grow

Hidi and Renninger's (2006) influential Four-Phase Model describes how interest can develop from a moment of triggered situational interest, through maintained and emerging interest, towards a more enduring individual interest.

That suggests something important for educators: we don't simply need to discover what children are already interested in. We can create experiences that invite interest to emerge and develop through:

• A fascinating question.

• An unusual object.

• A problem that needs solving.

• A connection with something the child already knows.

• Time to explore.

• A choice about where to take an investigation.

These can become entry points into learning. And sometimes, a fleeting moment of curiosity becomes a lasting interest.

Interest can open the door to learning

Interest doesn't make learning effortless, and it certainly doesn't mean that education should always be entertaining.

Learning requires challenge, effort and perseverance.

But interest can help us want to stay with something that is challenging.

Hidi's (1990) review found evidence that interest influences how we select and persist in processing information. Schiefele (1991) linked interest with deeper comprehension and the use of learning strategies.

More recent evidence strengthens the picture further. Jansen, Lüdtke and Schroeders (2016), analysing data from 39,192 German ninth-grade students, found a positive relationship between interest and achievement across five subject areas. Interestingly, the relationship was evident not only between students, but within students: the same student tended to achieve more highly in subjects in which they were more interested.

And the relationship may work both ways.

Interest can support learning, while learning can create further interest.

That gives us a powerful cycle:

Curiosity → Interest → Exploration → Learning → Knowledge → Deeper Interest →Curiosity

This matters particularly in the early years and primary education

Young children often show us their interests before they can articulate them.

They return to the same activity, ask the same question again and again or collect, investigate, build, draw, talk and experiment. Our role isn't simply to follow every interest wherever it leads. It is to notice, interpret and thoughtfully build upon it.

A fascination with insects, for example, can become an opportunity to develop vocabulary, classification, counting, drawing, observation, scientific thinking and collaboration.

The interest isn't the curriculum. To posses interest or to develop it, can be the doorway into the curriculum.

Recent early-years research by van Aswegen and Pendergast (2023) is particularly compelling. Their three-year design-based study involved 57 children aged four to five in Australia. They found that interest sat centrally within the learning process, supporting awareness, exploration and new knowledge, and creating repeated engagement with a topic.

This resonates strongly with what I have observed in classrooms.

What if we thought about interest differently?

Perhaps instead of asking only:

"What do I need to teach?"

we could also ask:

"What might make this learner want to know more?"

And:

"How can I help an emerging interest develop?"

This doesn't mean lowering expectations or allowing children to learn only what they already like.

Quite the opposite.

One of the great possibilities of education is helping a child discover an interest they didn't know they had.

That is why I increasingly see interest not simply as something inside the learner, but as something that develops through the relationship between the learner, the learning and the environment.

This idea finds resonance with the pupil-voice research by Hopkins (2008), working with 180 pupils aged 7–11, who explored the classroom conditions that children believed enabled them to enjoy and achieve. The study identified eight conditions, reminding us of the value of listening to children when we ask what helps them learn. Active participation and owning the learning was what children wanted which is impossible to achieve without the presence of an interest in the activity.

Interest as a Condition for Learning

My research work on educational leadership has led me to think about learning through the idea of Conditions for Learning: what needs to be present for learning to flourish?

I believe interest development belongs has an indispensable place in this conversation.

Not only because children should only learn what interests them or because interest replaces effort or challenge.Most importantly because interest can help direct attention, stimulate exploration, sustain engagement and create a desire to know more.

Sometimes the shift is very small:

"I have to do this.” becomes "I want to know."

And perhaps that is one of the most powerful shifts we can create in education.

Development of Interest alone may not promise success without effort, but acts as a pre requisite for learners to apply effort. It is a condition that opens the doors of learning.

References

Dewey, J. (1913). Interest and Effort in Education. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Hidi, S. (1990). Interest and its contribution as a mental resource for learning. Review of Educational Research, 60(4), 549–571. https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543060004549

Hidi, S. & Renninger, K. A. (2006). The four-phase model of interest development. Educational Psychologist, 41(2), 111–127. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15326985EP4102_4

Hopkins, E. A. (2008). Classroom conditions to secure enjoyment and achievement: The pupils' voice. Education 3–13, 36(4), 393–401. https://doi.org/10.1080/03004270801969386

Jansen, M., Lüdtke, O. & Schroeders, U. (2016). Evidence for a positive relation between interest and achievement: Examining between-person and within-person variation in five domains. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 46, 116–127. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2016.05.004

Schiefele, U. (1991). Interest, learning, and motivation. Educational Psychologist, 26(3–4), 299–323. https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.1991.9653136

van Aswegen, E. C. & Pendergast, D. (2023). The impact of interest: An emergent model of interest development in the early years. Early Child Development and Care, 193(13–14), 1335–1349. https://doi.org/10.1080/03004430.2023.2245575

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