What does curiosity look like in the classroom? It could be the student waiting eagerly to find out the solution to a tricky maths problem, and learn if they have solved it correctly. Or it might be the class holding its breath as the final pages of a gripping novel are read aloud.

Most teachers would say that moments like these are some of the most inspiring that happen in lessons; instinctively, they would probably therefore agree that cultivating students’ curiosity is a worthwhile endeavour.

But what do we mean when we talk about curiosity in schools? I think we are referring to a couple of different things: motivation to learn and the desire to acquire knowledge.

Anecdotally, we know that when we ignite our students’ curiosity, they will be more engaged in the lesson and will be more likely to remember what we are teaching them.

Yet we are not talking about moments of magic, here. There is plenty of scientific evidence to support the power of curiosity to stimulate motivation.

For instance, in a 2019 study published in Nature, researchers Garvin Brod and Jasmin Breitwieser explored how to generate curiosity - and therefore increase motivation around maths tasks. In their study, “Lighting the wick in the candle of learning: generating a prediction stimulates curiosity”, the pair tested whether making a prediction or producing an example for a given number task created the highest levels of curiosity before seeing the correct answer.

The researchers found that the students who made predictions displayed higher levels of curiosity (measured by looking at pupil dilation) about the task than those who produced examples. They also found that being curious made students more likely to remember the correct answer.

So, what can teachers infer from this experiment? Firstly, if we want to motivate students, then trying to generate curiosity does indeed seem to be worthwhile. Secondly, when it comes to methods of sparking that curiosity, allocating lesson time to making meaningful predictions should be a good bet.

According to the researchers, making predictions has multiple benefits. In order to make the prediction, you must first activate your background knowledge and connect it to a new task or context, resulting in what they describe as “meaningful learning”.

For example, making predictions about a maths problem forces students to rehearse the problem, while drawing on their prior learning. Making a prediction about a text similarly requires students to form a mental model of that text and to connect up their ideas about what they are reading.

Making predictions is a common reading comprehension strategy - and one that has been shown to have a positive impact on reading attainment. Indeed, it features highly in all of the Education Endowment Foundation’s literacy guidance reports.

Making predictions isn’t likely to transform students’ attitudes in the classroom, or make all learning memorable, but it is a manageable and meaningful starting point for teachers.

Alex Quigley is national content manager at the Education Endowment Foundation. He is a former teacher and the author of Closing the Reading Gap, published by Routledge

This article originally appeared in the 5 November 2021 issue under the headline “Harnessing the power of prediction”