Susan Engel

Susan Engel is Senior Lecturer in Psychology and Founding Director of the Program in Teaching at Williams College. She specializes in the development of curiosity, children’s narratives, play, and more generally, teaching and learning. She is the author of seven previous books, including The Hungry Mind: The Origins of Curiosity in Childhood (2015) and, most recently, A School of Our Own: The Story of the First Student-Run High School and a New Vision for American Education (2016) which she co-wrote with her son Sam. Her essays have appeared in journals such as Cognitive Development, Harvard Educational Review, and the American Education Research Journal, as well as in media outlets such as The New York Times, The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly, Salon, The Huffington Post, and The Boston Globe. Susan is one of the founders of an experimental school in New York State, where she served as educational advisor for eighteen years.

Tune in to Susan Engel’s episode on the Choose to be Curious podcast:

• “Why Should This Be So? with Susan Engel”

Want to teach Susan Engel’s Curiosity Studies chapter? Consider pairing with:

• Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (1959).

Read and listen to more from Susan Engel on curiosity!

• “Interview on Curiosity and the Hungry Mind,” Video interview, Schooled: Conversations About Education (July 28, 2016).
• Susan Engel, “The Hungry Mind,” Brainwaves: Video Anthology (April 5, 2016).
• The Hungry Mind: The Origins of Curiosity in Childhood (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015).
• “The Case for Curiosity,” Educational Leadership 70.5 (2013): 36–40.
• “Children’s Need to Know: Curiosity in Schools,” Harvard Educational Review 81.4 (2011): 625–645.
• “Is Curiosity Vanishing?” Journal of American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 48.8 (2009): 777–779.
• “The Hungry Mind: The Origins of Curiosity,” Public lecture at Williams College (August 18, 2011).