Amidst widespread concern about engagement with supercomplex, and often unpredictable problems of a world characterized by poly-crisis, curiosity, defined broadly as the desire to obtain new knowledge, has been increasingly recognized as a desired outcome for undergraduate education. The purpose of this survey-based study is to discern the cognitive, affective, and social dimensions of curiosity exhibited by current U.S. undergraduate students. This cross-sectional, exploratory study utilized Kashdan et al’s Five Dimensional Curiosity Scale Revised to determine how current undergraduate students enrolled in general education courses (n = 650), perceived themselves spanning multiple dimensions of curiosity and to explore the factors that may affect how they engage in self-directed learning that is motivated by curiosity. The findings suggest that these students are differently curious, not only from each other, but also when compared to similar populations in the past. These insights have implications for how universities embrace student curiosity as a 21st century skill, a desired motivational disposition, and a multi-stage learning process.
Cruz et al. (Wed,) studied this question.