Plant the Question: Why Curiosity Belongs at the Heart of the Classroom
What if one of the most powerful things we could give students wasn't an answer?
What if it was a question? A curious question?
Why does that happen?
Where did this come from?
What would happen if…?
How could we find out?
Curiosity is more than simply wanting to know something. It can be the spark that moves students from receiving information to actively participating in their own learning. And research suggests that creating space for curiosity in the classroom matters.
Curiosity Is Part of Learning
Researchers Jamie Jirout, Sharon Zumbrunn, Natalie Evans and Virginia Vitiello developed the Curiosity in Classrooms Framework to better understand how teaching practices can encourage or unintentionally suppress student curiosity.
Their work describes curiosity as a desire to seek information when something is unknown. In other words, curiosity often begins with an information gap:
I know this…but I don't know that.
That gap creates an opportunity for learning.
Instead of immediately filling it with an answer, teachers can give students opportunities to wonder, predict, investigate, discuss and discover.
The researchers identify classroom practices that can help cultivate curiosity, including:
giving students time to think, question and participate;
encouraging students to generate their own questions;
helping students identify what they know and what they still don't know;
welcoming different ideas and approaches;
providing opportunities to explore ideas and materials;
helping students learn how to find information; and
responding positively when students ask questions.
The important shift is subtle.
Instead of always asking:
“Do students know the answer?”
we can also ask:
“Do students want to find out?”
Make Room for the Unknown
Curiosity needs uncertainty.
When every learning experience immediately provides the question, procedure and correct answer, there may be very little left for students to discover.
Curiosity-friendly classrooms make some room for the unknown.
A teacher might show students an unfamiliar object before explaining what it is.
Present an image and ask, “What do you notice?”
Introduce a problem and ask students to predict what might happen.
Place several materials on a table and ask, “What could we investigate with these?”
Or simply say:
“I don't know. How could we find out?”
These small moments communicate something important to students:
Not knowing is part of learning.
Questions Can Be More Powerful Than Answers
One particularly interesting idea from the Curiosity in Classrooms framework is the importance of helping students become comfortable with uncertainty.
Students don't always need adults to immediately resolve uncertainty for them.
Sometimes they need permission to stay with a question long enough to explore it.
That means changing some of the language we use.
Instead of:
“Here is how it works.”
Try:
“How do you think this works?”
Instead of:
“That's not the answer.”
Try:
“What made you think that?”
Instead of:
“Let's move on.”
Try:
“What else are you wondering?”
Instead of immediately answering a student's question, try:
“How could we find out?”
These aren't complicated instructional strategies.
They're invitations to think.
Agriculture Is Made for Curiosity
Agriculture provides an incredible environment for this kind of learning because it connects to almost everything students encounter in their daily lives.
Put a handful of soil on a desk.
Where did it come from?
What's living in it?
Why is one soil darker than another?
How does it help grow our food?
Show students a loaf of bread.
Where did the ingredients begin?
Who grew them?
How did wheat become flour?
How many people helped move that loaf from a farm to our table?
Place an apple in front of the class.
Why are there different varieties?
How does an apple tree produce fruit?
Why do we need pollinators?
Could apples grow everywhere?
Agriculture can lead to science, geography, economics, careers, technology, environmental studies, food systems and community. That's the beauty of agriculture as a learning context.
Agriculture doesn't just provide topics to teach. It provides questions worth exploring.
Curiosity Doesn't Require Another Lesson
Teachers already have more than enough competing for classroom time.
Supporting curiosity doesn't necessarily mean adding another program, unit or activity. It can simply mean approaching existing curriculum differently.
Start with the mystery before giving the explanation.
Ask students what they notice before telling them what they should notice.
Let them predict before revealing the outcome.
Encourage multiple possibilities before identifying the answer.
Give students opportunities to ask their own questions.
And occasionally leave something unanswered long enough for students to want to investigate it themselves.
Plant the Question
At Ag for Life, we believe agriculture education can do more than provide students with facts about farming and food.
It can help students notice the world around them.
It can help them make connections.
It can encourage them to ask better questions.
And it can give teachers real-world contexts for turning curriculum into discovery.
Because before students can discover something new, something has to make them wonder.
So perhaps our job isn't always to plant the answer.
Sometimes, it's simply to plant the question.
And give curiosity room to grow.
Research
This article was inspired by Development and Testing of the Curiosity in Classrooms Framework and Coding Protocol by Jamie J. Jirout, Sharon Zumbrunn, Natalie S. Evans and Virginia E. Vitiello, published in Frontiers in Psychology in 2022.
