Susan Engel

Senior Lecturer in Psychology and Director of the Program in Teaching, Williams College

Susan Engel is Senior Lecturer in Psychology and Founding Director of the Program in Teaching at Williams College. Her research interests include children’s narratives, play, the development of curiosity, and more generally, teaching and learning. Her work has appeared in journals such asCognitive Development and the American Education Research Journal. She is the author of four books: The Stories Children Tell: Making Sense of the Narratives of Childhood, Context is Everything: The Nature of Memory, Real Kids: Making Sense in Everyday Life, and Red Flags or Red Herrings: Predicting Who Your Child Will Become. She is a founder of an experimental school in NY State, where for fourteen years she served as the Educational Advisor. Recently she oversaw a project, in conjunction with the Spencer Foundation, to develop new ways to measure what children learn in school. She is currently writing a book on the development of curiosity.

Participant In:

Ignorance and Curiosity

Saturday, April 27th
2:30 - 4:30PM

Past Event

Physics Nobel laureate David Gross claims that the most important product of science is ignorance. Science is the quest not just for knowledge, but for better questions, and we’re generally more engaged by questions than by answers. Thus, ignorance drives science and curiosity is its engine. How do we know what we don’t know? Why… read more »