Curiouser and Curiouser: What Alice helps us see about who should teach

This article follows on from my earlier piece, Who should work with young children?, where I explored how the dispositions we value in those who work in early childhood education, shape not only who enters the profession, but how the work itself is imagined. This is where that thinking has brought me.

 

If I had to choose one disposition that matters most in education, one that serves children, teachers, and the future of the early learning profession, it would be curiosity.

 

Not patience.
Not passion.
Not even care, at least not when care is understood as a personal trait rather than a professional, relational, and ethical practice.

 

Curiosity sits at the centre of how humans learn. It is what propels children forward, what sustains teachers over time, and what allows teaching to remain responsive in a world that does not stand still. More than a mindset, curiosity is a professional orientation.

 

Down the rabbit hole

 

Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland offers a useful way of thinking about curiosity. Alice survives Wonderland not because she understands it, but because she questions it. She notices contradictions and challenges authority when it speaks nonsense. Alice adapts, not by mastering the rules of a strange world, but by remaining curious about it.

 

Alice is not a model for teaching, but she does model something essential to do it well: a willingness to sit with uncertainty, to question what is presented as normal or inevitable, and to keep thinking even when the ground shifts. These are not childish habits; they are professional ones.

 

Teaching across all age groups takes place in conditions of uncertainty. Learners navigate unfamiliar ideas, social worlds, and expectations that rarely align neatly. A curious teacher does not rush to impose order or prematurely close questions, instead, they linger in complexity, support learners to make sense of contradictions and test possibilities together.

 

Where learning begins

 

Learning does not begin with answers but rather with noticing, wondering, and questioning. Humans learn because something does not quite make sense to them, because there is a gap between what we know and what we want to understand.

 

Young children demonstrate this instinctively. They ask “why”, not because they necessarily want a correct response, but because they are testing ideas, probing logic, and mapping the world. When learning is reduced to right answers, outcomes, or predetermined trajectories, curiosity is often the first casualty.

 

For teachers, curiosity shifts the focus away from delivering content and towards responding to learners. It values questions and invites uncertainty into the learning process, recognising that meaningful learning is rarely linear and that understanding often emerges through detours rather than direct instruction. 

 

In my own teaching practice, entrusted with the precious cargo of pre-service teachers, I take a lot of detours. These are not distractions from learning, but evidence of it.

 

Curiosity across contexts

 

Pre-service teachers often arrive having learned that education is primarily about compliance: meeting criteria, locating the “right” answer, and performing understanding rather than developing it. The questions they ask frequently echo those we hear from very young children in learning environments.

 

Instead of “What do you think?” or “What happens if…?”, the question becomes “Am I doing this right?”

 

Instead of “Why does it work like that?”, it becomes “Is this okay?”

 

These questions are not signs of disengagement or deficit. They are signs of learning cultures where curiosity has been quietly replaced by approval seeking. When certainty is rewarded, and risk is penalised, learners quickly learn to stop wondering.

 

When I intentionally centre curiosity in my teaching practice, inviting students to question ideas, sit with uncertainty, and explore tensions in practice, the quality of learning shifts. Conversations deepen. Students take intellectual risks, and assessment becomes a site of thinking rather than proof.

 

The age of the learner changes, but the mechanism of learning does not. Curiosity remains the driver.

 

When curiosity becomes contagious

 

Curiosity is also contagious.

 

Learners, whether they are four years old or twenty-four, do not become curious because we tell them to be. They catch it from teachers who genuinely wonder, who model thinking aloud, and who treat learning as something alive rather than something to be completed. 

 

Some of the most powerful learning moments in my teaching have emerged not when I had the clearest explanation, but when I was willing to pause and follow students’ questions somewhere unexpected. These moments rarely appear in unit modules or learning outcomes, yet they are often where understanding deepens, and confidence grows. 

 

When curiosity is shared this way, learning shifts from compliance to engagement. Ideas are allowed to evolve rather than requiring everyone to move in lockstep towards a predetermined end point. Importantly, this kind of curiosity is not politically neutral. It creates space to question whose knowledge is valued and which practices are taken for granted.

 

Curiosity as sustenance

 

Curiosity matters not only for children, but for teachers themselves.

 

One of the quiet contributors to burnout in education is the expectation that educators always perform certainty: to know the answers, manage complexity smoothly, and deliver learning efficiently within constrained systems. Curiosity offers a different way of being professional, one that legitimises uncertainty, change and growth.

 

A curious teacher remains intellectually alive to their work. They are able to change their mind, ask better questions over time, and notice when established practices no longer serve learners well. This stance sustains intellectual engagement and protects against the exhaustion that comes from performing expertise without room for learning.

 

In a sector grappling with workload pressures, retention challenges, and questions of professional identity, curiosity restores dignity to the work by recognising teaching as intellectual, ethical, and relational labour.

 

Settling the question

 

In my earlier writing, I questioned the dispositions we have come to treat as inherent to teaching in the early learning profession. This article is where that questioning has led.

 

Curiosity is not a personality trait or an add-on. It is a professional orientation that shapes how learning is understood, how teaching is practised, and how educators are sustained. 

 

If we return to the question of who should teach, the answer is not those who perform certainty or compliance most convincingly. It is those who are willing to remain intellectually alive to their work: those who can sit with uncertainty, notice when things no longer make sense, question what is presented as inevitable, and stay open to being changed by what they encounter.

 

If education is to be taken seriously as intellectual, relational, and future-focused work, then curiosity must sit at its centre. Like Alice, teachers will not always know exactly where they are going, but without curiosity, they will be far more likely to stop asking whether the path itself still makes sense. 

 

Author

 

Karen has a background in teaching, academia, consultancy, and writing. Her work focuses on pedagogy and the design of environments that foster curiosity, dialogue, and deep engagement with practice. She has a particular interest in infant and toddler environments and the possibilities they offer for democratic participation.