  Curiosity is a vital metacognitive skill in educational contexts, leading to
creativity, and a love of learning. And while many school systems increasingly
undercut curiosity by teaching to the test, teachers are increasingly
interested in how to evoke curiosity in their students to prepare them for a
world in which lifelong learning and reskilling will be more and more
important. One aspect of curiosity that has received little attention, however,
is the role of peers in eliciting curiosity. We present what we believe to be
the first theoretical framework that articulates an integrated socio-cognitive
account of curiosity that ties observable behaviors in peers to underlying
curiosity states. We make a bipartite distinction between individual and
interpersonal functions that contribute to curiosity, and multimodal behaviors
that fulfill these functions. We validate the proposed framework by leveraging
a longitudinal latent variable modeling approach. Findings confirm a positive
predictive relationship between the latent variables of individual and
interpersonal functions and curiosity, with the interpersonal functions
exercising a comparatively stronger influence. Prominent behavioral
realizations of these functions are also discovered in a data-driven manner. We
instantiate the proposed theoretical framework in a set of strategies and
tactics that can be incorporated into learning technologies to indicate, evoke,
and scaffold curiosity. This work is a step towards designing learning
technologies that can recognize and evoke moment-by-moment curiosity during
learning in social contexts and towards a more complete multimodal learning
analytics. The underlying rationale is applicable more generally for developing
computer support for other metacognitive and socio-emotional skills.
