Curiosity in classroom discourse

Curiosity, regarded as a fundamental inherent impetus and a pivotal stimulant impacting human conduct, is recognized as an inclination to know unfamiliar matter. Correspondingly, within the realm of education, curiosity manifests as an aspiration for knowledge. It impels students to actively pursue knowledge, serves as a noteworthy motivator for student learning, and can additionally translate into positive learning and investigative behaviors, thereby enhancing learning efficiency and yielding superior academic achievements. Thus, facilitating curiosity among students throughout the process of learning assumes significance. Nevertheless, subsequent to students' enrollment in schools, there is an obviously reduction in the manifestation of their curiosity. This phenomenon suggests a waning of the innate motivation that contributes to the process of learning. Consequently, how to arouse and sustain students' curiosity within scholastic environments emerges as a pivotal concern in contemporary education.

Based on this current situation, the current study undertook in-depth research on the relationship between classroom discourse and student curiosity. After coding the types of utterance and emotion between teachers and students that occurred in a total of 28 discourse sessions in a knowledge-building physical classroom, a network analysis called directed acyclic graph was used to extract and infer the directional relationships between them. The findings ultimately underscore that the existing curiosity exhibited by students wields a direct and substantial impact on re-arousing their curiosity. Additionally, the inquiry identified three types of teacher utterance that manifest a high potential for stimulating students' curiosity, which is conveying information (GI), giving a positive response (NS), and teacher's reiteration of a student's opinion with uncertainty to seek confirmation from the student (RV).

The study affords a valuable finding in comprehending the relationship between classroom discourse and student curiosity, understanding which types of utterance are most effective in stimulating students' curiosity, thereby helping students to engendering a heightened impetus for knowledge acquisition and fostering an elevated motivation to engage in the learning process. Additionally, this study furnishes a theoretical underpinning that guides educators toward the judicious selection of utterance strategies capable of efficaciously kindling student curiosity in a scientific manner, creating an environment conducive to enhanced pedagogical outcomes and augmented student achievements.