BRIDGING KNOWLEDGE GAPS WITH CURIOSITY

Abstract

Content knowledge is an important pre-requisite for students to develop their thinking abilities, serving as a foundation for higher order cognitive processes. However, the ever-increasing focus that education systems place on these cognitive processes forces content knowledge to take a backseat, resulting in a conundrum that places educators in a dilemma. This study hopes to contribute to solving this issue by investigating the opportunities that gaps in knowledge can actually bring, such as inducing greater curiosity in students. Participants were made to pose questions of their own as a measurement of their thinking skills used after reading a passage about the “Curse of Knowledge”. Their trait and state curiosity were also measured. We hypothesised that greater curiosity, along with moderate knowledge gaps would lead to Higher Order Thinking Skills being used. Our study found that while state curiosity indeed elicited Higher Order Thinking Skills amidst differences in knowledge gaps, trait curiosity did not. Our results highlight the potential benefits state curiosity can achieve in classrooms and the need for further research with regards to the underlying mechanisms of curiosity.