EDITORIAL: is curiosity an emotion?

FEBRUARY 2025

’What do you think will happen next?’

This is one of the great questions in any teacher’s repertoire. For maximum effect you have to get the timing right, but if asked well, it can mark the point at which you hand over full responsibility for learning to an individual or a group, triggering speculation, questioning and discussion.

Whether you are asking young ones to predict plot and character development in an early years picture book, or Grade 12s to think through the significance of changing a variable in a Physics experiment, it involves the same, timeless process.

Being ready for the next step is as important as your initial timing: having sparked off what you hope will be a flood of conjecture, you will want to encourage the flow as you monitor the room and listening in on conversations. With any luck, there will be a real buzz of excitement!

And then you ask the killer question as you invite students to narrow things down and consider why some lines of speculation might be more fruitful than others:

“Why do you think that?”

More speculation follows, evidence is compared and discussed, maybe conclusions are reached and the class arrives at a point when someone is ready, even anxious, to explain to the others how they got there. It is then up to the listeners to make an informed judgement about the evidence presented – informed because they too have had a chance to think about what they think might happen next.

As this approach is repeated through a school year and the years that follow, the process of developing a well-reasoned answer is enjoyed for its own sake. And, of course, sooner or later, a student also realises that most answers – even if they seem ‘obvious’ at first – are almost always provisional. There will be other perspectives and new evidence to come. Always.

The whole discursive process is enjoyable, exciting and frustrating often in equal measure and driving everything forward is the curiosity to find out what comes next.

So – is curiosity an emotion? I asked myself this question after reading Alexandra Dragomiscu’s excellent article Education on Fire. She wondered what makes TikTok so appealing and addictive. Not a user herself – she tried it out and discovered a heady mix driven by curiosity and excitement about what comes next. She then wondered what would happen if she were to design a lesson that resembled a TikTok feed. Not surprisingly, perhaps, it worked. How did she plan that lesson? Well, AI was involved, and of course, we all want to know what comes next with that as it becomes part of the mainstream.

And yes – curiosity is an emotion. The bots say so, so it must be true.

Discuss.