Stimulating curiosity to enhance learning

Curiosity is an aspect of intrinsic motivation that has great potential to enhance student learning. Theory and evidence describing curiosity are discussed, focusing on psychological and pedagogical literature relating to adult education. In particular, the concept of ‘information gaps’ as a source of academic curiosity is explored. In addition, the concept of curiosity in two disparate sample disciplines; second language learning and medical education are considered. The role of inquiry based learning approaches are also discussed as potential modes of stimulating student curiosity, as well as simple classroom techniques, which could be applied to almost any academic discipline and based on the theories should act to enhance student curiosity.