Key Points:
- Curiosity in the classroom looks like a teacher approaching interactions with their students with an intrinsic, open-minded interest in what’s going on in their brains and lives.
- Curious questions can help strengthen student learning
- Curious feedback can help teachers build strong relationships with students
- A curious mindset could ward off teacher burnout
In my 12 years of teaching, I’ve become increasingly convinced that curiosity is a teacher’s greatest superpower. Psychologists don’t all agree on one definition of curiosity, but I prefer to think of it as “an intrinsic desire for information”. There are many ways that a teacher engages in information-seeking throughout the day, such as questioning students during instruction, analyzing assessment data, searching for useful curriculum resources, and talking with colleagues. With each of these tasks, our motivations can be quite varied. For example, sometimes we’re analyzing assessment data to determine if our instruction was effective or to see if a particular student needs intervention. We might question students during instruction to see if they’re on-task or to uncover misconceptions. All of these motivations are valid and important parts of being a good teacher. Yet I’ve found that the greatest student learning comes when my motivations for information-seeking are based on curiosity: Are my students getting this concept? What misconceptions do they have? Does my colleague see a different side of this student? What’s the emotion or experience behind this student’s behavior? Curiosity in the classroom looks like a teacher approaching interactions with their students with an intrinsic, open-minded interest in what’s going on in their brains and lives.
One place that we teachers can shift our mindset towards curiosity is when giving feedback. When we write a comment on a student assignment, for example, we could be motivated by a few things: justifying a grade, helping the student notice a mistake, or evaluating the work against assessment criteria. For feedback to be the most impactful to student learning, we want the student to engage with the feedback, adjust their understanding of the relevant concepts, and improve the quality of their work. This requires that the bulk of the cognitive load is on the student. A curious approach to giving feedback will look more like asking questions than correcting mistakes. Say a student made a common error in punctuation. We could just circle the mistake or write in “missing comma”. A curious teacher might instead ask, “What made you punctuate this sentence in this way?” Now the student has to think about and re-evaluate their punctuation choices and the teacher gets insights into student thinking.
Curious feedback has a second benefit in addition to strengthening student understanding: it helps build relationships. A strong relationship between students and their teacher can improve student motivation, engagement, social skills development, learning, and behavior. Curious questioning signals to our students that we care about them, what they think, and how they make decisions. Where pointing out mistakes can come across as judgmental, asking questions can help our students remain open to adjusting their thinking. Building time for students to engage with and respond to their feedback is critical for this strategy to work.
A curious mindset might also have protective effects on teachers themselves. Psychologist Todd Kashdan researched how curiosity affects people’s relationships and mental health. He found that the most curious people have a high tolerance for uncertainty, can navigate difficult social situations, form stronger relationships, are less affected by rejection, are more resilient in the face of negative life events and stressors, and are more innovative. In a world with increasing amounts of teacher burnout, curiosity might be just the anecdote.