Curiosity 

'The important thing is not to stop questioning.'

Albert Einstein 

Curiosity is wanting to learn lots about people, places and things.  It means asking lots of questions and trying to find out their answers.   For the benefit of teachers, curiosity can be divided into two types – Epistemic and Diversive.

Diversive curiosity is driven only by novelty. It is shallow and strives for instant gratification, which over time is dulled because the novelty wears off. This type of curiosity controls people, unlike epistemic which is controlled by the person.

Epistemic curiosity drives us to learn for learnings sake; to dig deep and think hard on a topic. It requires will and effort, but is often repaid through deeper learning and understanding, which is joyful. By exposing children to the effort and joyful rewards of epistemic curiosity, we aim for them to habituate these behaviours also.

We can start by being curious about the things and people we see everyday.  At first they might seem ordinary, but curiosity and concentration can lead us to discover interesting things we never knew before!  By being curious we can keep discovering, becoming specialists and experts ourselves.

We can also refer to curiosity as: searching; asking questions; digging-deeper.  The opposite of curiosity is not being interested or always needing novelty to stave off boredom.