Investigating the Correspondence between The Official Curriculum for The Sixth-Grade Elementary School and The Curiosity-Based Curriculum

Curiosity is a form of increased interest, that can lead to exploration. Nowadays nurturing the curiosity of learners is a challenge, facing education professionals. The purpose of this descriptive-survey research was to investigate the extent to which the official curriculum for the sixth-grade elementary schools is compatible with the curiosity-based curriculum, so far as the teachers’ and students’ perspectives are concerned. Participants in the study were 26 teachers and 242 male and female sixth grade students, who were correspondingly selected using consensus and stratified random sampling techniques based on Cochran formula. To explore the compatibility of the official curriculum with the curiosity-based curriculum, a researcher-made questionnaire was designed by converting the elements in the curriculum-based curiosity to items. The questionnaire was then distributed among the participants. Data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The results of the study revealed that so far as the teachers’ and students’ viewpoints are concerned, the formal curriculum enjoys a compatibility of more than average level with the curiosity-based curriculum. Thereupon, based on the findings of the study, it can be argued that the purpose of the sixthgrade curriculum is to increase students' curiosity and desire to do more research. In other words, by strengthening the spirit of curiosity, the new educational system appears to have been partly able to overcome the defects of the previous system, which is still active in high schools.