Home

Research at the Active Learning Lab (ALL) at the Department of Psychology at Lancaster University broadly concerns knowledge acquisition, transformation and transmission in active learning. We study active information-seeking and information-giving, curiosity, play and creativity across development.

These distinct but connected lines of research allow us to better understand how, from very early on, people effectively learn about the world through both independent active inquiry skills and reliance on information supplied by others. Equipped with these competing strategies, not only do children seek new information, be curious and wonder about it, but they are also able to creatively modify and transform it, as well as teach others about what they learned or created. We are interested in understanding the relations between curiosity, creativity and social knowledge exchange.

We use behavioural, eye-tracking and physiological experimental methods, as well as naturalistic observation and surveys, and study a range of age groups, from infants in their first year of life to children in formal school settings. With these lines of research, we aspire to contribute to transforming educational practices through developing evidence-based pedagogical recommendations.

You can learn about our ongoing projects and published work on Research page.