September 13, 2021
Associate Professor of Cognitive and Developmental Science, Dr. Wendy Ostroff's new article "Losing Track of Time: The Young Child's Meandering Path to Deep Learning" has been published in the Bridging Research and Practice Series of the journal Exchange.
During the shelter in place restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic, many children discovered that, for the first time in their young lives, they had plenty of unstructured free time. Suddenly, their daily experience was much like that of their grandparents and parents, for whom childhood was brimming with open time. And something really interesting happened after kids consumed every movie, show and video game they were allowed: they became extremely bored. And because we adults had so much of our own work and caretaking to do, we did not rescue them from their boredom. They had to figure it out. After what seemed like an eternity, boredom (as it is wont to do, if we can just get past our discomfort with it,) allowed children to slow down and get carried away–opening up realms of creativity and ingenuity." -- Dr. Wendy Ostroff