ABSTRACT: bell hooks writes that “teachers rarely talk about the role imagination plays in helping to create and sustain the engaged classroom.” Mastering chronologies and events and privileging the lecture-model does not leave much room for a student to imagine. I want to add to bell hooks’s observation about the engaged classroom by centering curiosity. This essay offers a preliminary case for the act of curiosity being a radical approach in curricular design. Curiosity provides a reorientation to imagination, especially in the history classroom. At times, a student might feel stigmatized by not having the same kinds of imaginations as others. Curiosity provides a fundamental reorientation to a process of thinking. Anecdotally, when I ask the following question to students, “what is the story of the Ottoman Empire that you know?” the invariable answer is that the sixteenth-century realm of Sultan Süleyman is mentioned before the empire’s abrupt ending after World War One. The empire is a footnote to other world historical events. Centering curiosity as a pedagogical practice entails a consideration of the engaged classroom beyond more traditional approaches.
G. Carole Woodall (Sat,) studied this question.