Can Curiosity Be Taught?

Think about a child who keeps asking, "Why?" They ask why the sky is blue, why leaves fall, why birds fly, and sometimes even why adults have to go to work. We often laugh and say, "This child asks too many questions." But somewhere along the way, many of those questions disappear.

So, what happened?

Was the curiosity gone, or did we slowly teach people to stop asking?

Curiosity is simply the desire to know more. It is that feeling that makes someone open another tab while reading, pause a movie to search for an unfamiliar word, or take apart an old radio just to see what is inside. It is the little voice that says, "I wonder..."

The interesting thing is that research suggests curiosity is not something only a few lucky people are born with. It is more like a plant. Some plants grow naturally in the wild, but even they grow better when they have good soil, enough water, and sunlight. In the same way, curiosity grows when people are in the right environment.

One of the first researchers to explain this was Daniel E. Berlyne (1960). He found that curiosity grows when people come across something new, surprising, or slightly challenging. Imagine giving two puzzles to a child. One has only three pieces, while the other has a thousand tiny pieces. The first puzzle is finished in seconds and becomes boring. The second feels impossible and the child gives up. But a puzzle that is just challenging enough makes the child want to keep trying. That is where curiosity begins to grow.

Another researcher, George Loewenstein (1994), explained curiosity using what he called the Information Gap Theory. Think about watching a movie trailer. It shows enough to catch your attention but not enough to tell you the ending. Suddenly, you want to watch the whole movie because there is a gap between what you know and what you want to know.

Learning works in the same way. When students realize they are missing an important piece of information, they naturally want to find it. Instead of immediately giving answers, teachers can ask questions that make students think, investigate, and connect the dots themselves.

Research by Susan Engel (2011) also reminds us that children are naturally curious. If you have ever spent time with young children, you know they can ask dozens of questions in a single hour. However, as they move through school, many begin asking fewer questions. Engel argues that this may happen because schools often celebrate getting the right answer more than asking a thoughtful question.

Imagine being in a classroom where every wrong answer makes everyone laugh. After a while, you would probably stop raising your hand. The same thing happens with curiosity. If people feel their questions are not welcome, they slowly stop asking them. That is why classrooms should feel like places where wondering is just as valuable as knowing.

Another important piece of the puzzle comes from Carol S. Dweck (2006) and her research on the growth mindset. Imagine two students who both fail the same test. One says, "I'm just not smart enough." The other says, "I haven't understood this yet."

The first student is likely to avoid difficult topics because failure feels like proof that they cannot improve. The second student is more likely to ask questions, try again, and explore different ways of learning because they believe they can get better. Simply changing the way people think about mistakes can make them much more curious.

This connects closely with Jerome Bruner's (1961) idea of discovery learning. Instead of handing students every answer, Bruner believed they should have opportunities to figure things out for themselves.

It is like teaching someone to bake. You could give them a finished cake and explain every step, or you could let them mix the ingredients, make a few mistakes, adjust the recipe, and finally pull their own cake out of the oven. The second experience is usually more memorable because they were part of the discovery.

Even neuroscience supports this idea. Matthias J. Gruber and his colleagues (2014) found that when people become curious, the brain prepares itself to learn. Their study showed that curious people remembered information better, including information they were not even trying to learn. It is almost as if curiosity opens the brain's door a little wider, making learning easier to walk in.

Looking at all this research, one thing becomes clear. Curiosity is not a magical gift that only a few people are born with. It is something that can be nurtured.

Teachers can nurture it by asking better questions instead of giving every answer immediately. Parents can nurture it by welcoming children's endless "why" questions instead of rushing to silence them. Learners can nurture it by seeing mistakes as part of the journey instead of signs that they should stop trying.

Curiosity is a bit like a fire. If no one feeds it, it slowly dies out. But if people keep adding small pieces of wood through questions, challenges, encouragement, and opportunities to explore, it keeps burning.

Perhaps the real question is not, Can curiosity be taught? The better question is, Are we creating environments where curiosity has the chance to grow?

References

Berlyne, D. E. (1960). Conflict, Arousal, and Curiosity. McGraw-Hill.

Bruner, J. S. (1961). The act of discovery. Harvard Educational Review, 31(1), 21–32.

Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Random House.

Engel, S. (2011). Children's Need to Know: Curiosity in Schools. Harvard Educational Review, 81(4), 625–645.

Gruber, M. J., Gelman, B. D., & Ranganath, C. (2014). States of curiosity modulate hippocampus-dependent learning via the dopaminergic circuit. Neuron, 84(2), 486–496.

Loewenstein, G. (1994). The psychology of curiosity: A review and reinterpretation. Psychological Bulletin, 116(1), 75–98.