Why we need inquiry more than ever - A Conversation with Trevor Mackenzie

Welcome to the Future Learning Design Podcast.

You know, it's not about efficiency. It's not about, you know, mining down the lesson to a matter of seconds. It's responding to what you're seeing within the lesson with an agile lens. We need to check our biases and our feelings at the door to allow for some of that space for our students to engage in richer inquiry.

Hi everyone, welcome back. Thanks for joining me for another episode. My name is Tim Logan and the podcast is brought to you in partnership with Notosh. All the talk about systems change in education is great, and it's a topic we cover a lot in the podcast, but the current reality for many educators might feel very removed from such visions. And yet, when you get into the details of what really deep and energized inquiry looks like with curious and questioning young people in classrooms, the two worlds start to feel a lot closer. And there are few people that know the specifics of what great inquiry-based learning looks like in theory and practice better than Trevor Mackenzie. So it was fantastic to be able to sit down with him this week to chat about it. Trevor and I talk about teacher dispositions, question routines, provocations, levels of structure, and also the way that an inquiry stance can show up in all cultures in different ways as humility and curiosity, characteristics that I think we all need more of. Trevor is first and foremost a classroom teacher in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. But in addition, he's a bestselling author, consultant, and researcher. He's also a highly regarded speaker known for his heartfelt storytelling, kind demeanor, and student-first philosophy. Trevor's books are Dive Into Inquiry and the Inquiry Mindset series, including elementary and assessment editions. These are soon to be joined later this year by an Inquiry Mindset Questions edition, which we discuss in the conversation. Hey Trevor, how you doing? Hey, I'm good. Well, yes, let's dive in. Thank you, Trevor. This is such a pleasure. I've been really aware of your work for a long time through all of the amazing stuff you do with inquiry-based pedagogies, and I feel like you've really opened up a lot of the language around inquiry-based learning in really accessible and really important ways. For people. I've done quite a bit of work with different schools and it's often your name comes up as someone that really resonates with teachers doing the work and really trying to get to grips with inquiry and all the challenges and complexities and interesting stuff there. So yeah, thank you very much for taking the time to chat today.

Likewise, honored and, uh, looking forward to having the conversation and connecting some dots and, uh, sharing some of the practice. So thanks for the kind words, Tim Logan.

Awesome. Great. Well, I thought we'd, in terms of where some of the inquiry start in the way that you, you work with educators. It starts with the provocation, right? And that feels like a really important— maybe that's a good place for us to start. But I think there's also something really powerful about how that hook is kind of provided for learners, for, for the educators, because obviously we'll get into some of the specifics around inquiry and why it's so important. I feel, I feel strongly that it's really important now, particularly, but let's start just, yeah, just with the idea of why are provocations such a kind of an important initial intro to this kind of exploration?

Yeah. Well, I suppose, Tim, if we were to back away from provocation for a moment and just consider the power of curiosity and, and why starting from a lens and a stance where we're genuinely curious, there's a sense of wonderment. Questions are bubbling up, you know, that's really gasoline to the fire. Some of the research we do in schools I support is we actually ask students to reflect and self-assess, how curious were you about your, your learning and your studies? And when kids self-assess high on the curiosity scale, we see all these amazing markers, right? And some of them are traditional markers, academic achievement, attendance, you know, those things improve when kids are more curious. But, you know, one that I'm really keen on and exploring more is that sense of belonging, that sense of relevance, that sense of importance. And so, you know, curiosity in and of itself is a target for us. And sometimes kids walk into classrooms full of curiosity and we just need to listen and put on our noticing goggles and lean into the curiosity. And so provocation sometimes isn't even necessary, to be quite honest, because kids come in with a lot of curiosity. But If we're feeling the need to spark curiosity in our learners, if we feel like some aspects of our curriculum are, dare I say, stale or uninteresting, provocation is a critical move. And this is one thing that I plan with schools, I plan with teams of teachers. What is that entry point into the curriculum where, again, the intent is to get the kids curious about those objectives, but even more importantly, begin asking questions that we can then harness and leverage and, and kind of spread out our unit design and, and actually have student-generated questions guide the learning. And I know that sounds nebulous. It, it's not. It provides a really clear roadmap as to where we are, where we're gonna go, and how we're gonna go about getting there. So like you mentioned, Tim, provocation is, is critical. If we were to back away from provocation, curiosity's the point.

Yeah.

Sometimes kids come with, it's almost a fork in the road. It's, Are they or aren't they? If they are, let's lean into it. If they aren't, how could we generate curiosity through the tool of provocation, if you will?

Yeah, I really appreciate that because I think there's something— the magic is the intrinsic, right? And it's like, that is always the thing that we're— the educators want to, in whatever way they feel passionate about this job, they want to try and do is light that fire or whatever metaphor you want to use. But as you say, these young people are coming in with that fire already lit about certain things. And there's always an interesting balance between, yeah, how can I follow that? Can I harness that? Or do I need to take them into, do I need to show them something else? Do I need to kind of, is the curriculum asking me to point their attention towards something else? And there's always that kind of, that dance between those things, I think, for educators.

That is the work. You know, sometimes teachers ask me about that balance as though they're, they're trying to avoid it. Like, How do I not have to do that now? That's precisely the work. That's the job is we come in and we have this, hopefully a rich curriculum full of opportunity and a really nice kind of set of guidelines of where we could go. But gosh, how we go about exploring that, it really depends on the students in the room. And for us to come in each and every day with a plan, but with a playful disposition where we're, as I mentioned earlier, listening and noticing, and we're teetering there, you know, what are they interested in? What are their identities? What are their curiosities? And what is our curriculum and how could we tighten that fabric a little bit more in each and every moment, in each and every interaction. And so for teachers listening, you know, we're not trying to avoid that balance. That is exactly the line we need to straddle. And the more we get comfortable with that, the better we are at the work that we do, to be quite honest. You know, we don't want to avoid that. It's not a, you know, a distraction from the work. It is precisely the work we need to engage in as educators.

I love that. And it, it's always the crass caricature, the kind of stereotype of inquiry-based learning that it's just basically a free-for-all and the kids are off, you know, exploring whatever they happen to be curious about today. And it's just like, it couldn't be further from that in many instances, right? It's, it's, of course there's a role for less, I don't even wanna say less structure, or more opportunity for them to follow their own questions. But what I love about your work is the way that you articulate the different levels of structure, let's say, that can be utilized in different moments. Or so, I don't know, maybe you could speak to that a little bit, because I think that you've got your, the swimming pool analogy. And I think there's something, that's a really important piece of this because I think there's so many misnomers and stereotypes about what inquiry is and isn't that I, I've, I really appreciated that differentiation in your work. Thank you. Yeah.

And to be frank, Tim, you know, we'll just be honest on the conversation. Okay. And so to be really frank, you know, that is an old narrative that inquiry is a free-for-all that We pose these ungooglable questions and just give kids devices and have them figure it out. Like everyone who hears that narrative would say that's not the reality. And so, you know, this kind of juxtaposing spectrum of what teaching can look like from that kind of bad narrative to the overly structured, overly demanding, you know, teacher-centered space. We know neither ends of that spectrum are great for learners. And so finding that middle ground where inquiry has structure and has routines and has specific outcomes, but also as rich in agency and a partnership with our scholars. I'd say that is the heart of my work, but it's also what the research tells us is best for kids. It's not an either/or, it's a both and more. And so one way that I've begun to frame that conversation to help teachers enter the conversation is through a swimming pool analogy. It's a fantastic graphic that a colleague of mine helped me create. And if we can imagine a swimming pool of differing depths from the shallow end, slowly, as we know, we walk from the shallow end and the pool drops beneath our feet and it becomes a little bit deeper. And then finally, we're, we're treading water in the deepest end. If we can imagine 4 levels of differing depths from the shallow to the deep, that would be 4 different types of inquiry from the shallowest end being structured, somewhat really teacher-directed and teacher-designed with the lens of our students before us. And then slowly we relinquish certain parameters around learning where our students take on more and more ownership over those parameters. And we can get really specific around those parameters, you know, whose questions are shaping the learning, right? Who's choosing the resources? How are we showing our learning? What are the skills our students are actually sharpening to successfully traverse across those differing types of inquiry? How are we actually helping them be more capable learners through skill development? This analogy just helps us break down some misconceptions around what inquiry is and what inquiry isn't. It's not a free-for-all. Certainly that skill development is critical, just as it is We learn to swim through flexing certain muscles to improve our swimming technique. Learners have to flex certain, you know, my colleague Guy Claxton calls them learning muscles, right? They exercise these skills, these competencies, these dispositions, and slowly they become more successful with taking on agency over learning. So the swimming pool graphic, it's a lens, it's a structure that we can plan to and look at inquiry through. To help in part break down misconceptions, but also just a better plan for agency for our students, if you will, Tim.

Yeah, no, and I really appreciate it because there's a real intentionality about that. And I think, like you say, that is the work, right? That is the work of the educator is working with the constraints they have that the learner is bringing in, that the curriculum is demanding, that, you know, the context is. And sometimes, as educators will know, from experience, there will be situations where the learners need more structure in this particular topic or with this, you know, the complexity of this particular thing that we're inquiring into. Other times they'll need less structure. And it's about that ability to, yeah, kind of dance with those different contexts. Dance, yeah.

Dance and have that swimming pool analogy almost be— you remember the overhead projectors with the transparency we'd bring over and it would project the image up onto the front board, right?

Yeah.

It's almost like the swimming pool analogy is that transparency that we slide over top of the curriculum and we look at the curriculum through and what, where in our curriculum comes through those 4 different types most beautifully. Like where in our curriculum would be best utilized more of a structured inquiry, where the objectives and the outcomes would be more inclined towards a teacher-directed inquiry. And where in our curriculum would there be more robust and beautifully aligned space for greater agency? And just that move alone to help teachers look at their curriculum through the lens of agency. Let alone skill development, you know, what skills do our students need in these different types of inquiry, is transformative when it comes to teachers authentically and successfully implementing inquiry experiences for their students. So teachers listening, educators listening, I beg of you to consider that move. Look at your curriculum through the lens of the differing types of agency and inquiry and plan accordingly from there. I think if you take anything away from this podcast episode, that would be one powerful move to make.

Absolutely. Yeah, no, that's fantastic. And it, it makes me think of, there was a great conversation I had with Keith Davids, who's a professor in, at the University of Sheffield in the UK. He works in sports science and it's all about motor learning and skills for, for, for sports, but using a constraints-based approach. So thinking about this idea that every situation we're in, we are just, we are working with the affordances and the constraints of the situation. And those can be physical, but they can also be emotional and, and conceptual. And that's so much of the work of the educator and That's one of the reasons why I feel strongly when, you know, with all the tech conversations and these kinds of conversations where the role of the educator is sometimes sidelined as though not, again, the caricature that the teachers will be replaced by the tech. Clearly that's not gonna happen, but I just, I think there is sometimes an undervaluing of the role of the educator in that space, pointing people towards the certain things that are important to be shown, right? We don't know what we don't know. So there's a role of the educator there, but there's also the role of the educator to kind of to work with those constraints and the structures that are available to afford young people that space for the agency. Like, I think it's such a critical role.

Yeah, you know, you've really got me thinking, Tim, about the powerful role the teacher has if we have a lens on the right things. Well, exactly. In your quotes, right? You mentioned conceptual understanding, you know, that's alluded to deeper thinking. We're talking about skill development and competency development. Like, if we're planning for those things, if we're planning for those experiences, gosh, we have great opportunity to formatively assess and give powerful feedback and really tune into students' thinking and them tune into their own thinking. If that's our plan, if that's our lens. Sadly, if that's not our lens and it's that rote memorization, it's that assign and do and regurgitate and assess and we're stuck in that model, well, the powerful position we have is not very powerful after all. And so if we're planning for those things and if we're looking for those things and if we're reflecting on those things, gosh, we have powerful opportunity before us for sure.

Yeah, absolutely. I guess I would also reflect though that there is just a valuing of certain things. I mean, the teacher who is doing that more didactic move, is still working with the constraints of the space and they want to minimize cognitive load and all these different things that they might talk about. They're still working with those same constraints. They're just using them differently because they value different things. And I think there, there's an interesting thing there. Cause I think again, sometimes the conversation gets kind of polarized a bit too quickly. And actually, you know, because I, I think again, there's like a, I've been having this conversation as well with multiple people, but just around the cognitive science and the science of learning. There's been these kinds of, there's still a lot of misconceptions about the way that learning happens and how agentic it is actually when you really start understanding it rather than the world out there. And all we need to do is just input enough information about the world, you know, into our prefrontal cortex and our short-term memory and blah, blah, blah. You know, it's, it's, there's still that very cognitivist narrative within a lot of the, not all, but a lot of the science of learning. And so I think there's still a ton of that stuff that we need to be grappling with to help really get a deeper understanding of what actually learning is, as well as what makes enriching personal experiences for the learners as well. Right?

Yeah. Yeah. You know, I referenced Guy Claxton earlier and, and, you know, Cath Murdoch and two critical friends of mine and you know, I've been reading some of their reflections around quote unquote the science of learning. And, and I suppose I echo their recent thinking and sharing with everyone now, if we hear the phrase science of learning, we need to ask some questions, you know, what science of learning are we talking about? Exactly. What you mentioned values, and I couldn't agree more. What is our sandbox that we're playing in when we hear, you know, the science of learning? And I think the fact of the matter is there's no specific science of learning. Right? There's different schools of thinking, different faculties, different research. And so when we hear science of learning, we really need to ask some deeper questions. You know, additionally, the work around values focus is so important. It's, it's critical. You know, when I work with larger organizations and school districts, we really do start with values. What do we value? What are we trying to nurture when we mine down learning to the student experience? And And so typically schools and organizations, they find a few values, like a handful of values. Maybe agency is on there, right? Maybe competency development or equity or social-emotional learning, whatever those values are, we need to clearly identify those. Those are our North Star. That's our direction. I know, Tim, this is nothing new to you, but after the values, we begin to kind of really get specific to what are instructional design structures and frameworks and protocols that align with those values and which misalign with the values.

Right.

Like how we teach, how does it align with those values? How we teach, how does it misalign with those values? And this is where teacher training and professional development come into play beautifully.

Yeah.

Are our teachers actually adopting practices that align with those values? And if they're not, how can we support them in seeing these structures and protocols and understanding them more deeply? So eventually we can start to support our students in experiencing those values Totally. But the gatekeeper is the teacher, right? Does the teacher hold the same values? Have we come to terms with those values together with teachers? Have we co-constructed those? What do they look like in the classroom setting? So values are so important. And then aligning values with teaching practices, instructional design, that's a move schools and organizations need to make.

100%. And so often there is so much cognitive dissonance around that because there is a misalignment, right? I mean, You see that so often, and that's why the values conversation sometimes becomes a bit empty because they become values that are published in different documentation or are spoken about at parents' evenings, or, you know, these are the things we value, but then you actually see what's going on. And there is, there is not always an alignment, as you say, within the specific teaching moves that the teachers are making. Like, do you really value agency? It says you do. But then what the choices that you're making pedagogically or in terms of the curriculum, that misalignment, it causes a lot of cognitive dissonance for people, I think, young people particularly.

Yes, yes, absolutely, Tim. And I've really embraced it in my role supporting schools and teachers teaching towards these values. I've really embraced the understanding that if teachers aren't teaching towards the values, it's not that they don't have the same values. It's that they don't know the moves to make, right, demonstrate the values in the classroom. And so that's where we really get to those structures, those protocols, you know, the things that we expect to see in an inquiry environment on the walls, the things we expect to hear, the interactions in the class, you know, what's the student-to-student discourse as opposed to teacher-to-student discourse. We should see, feel, and hear different things. And very rarely do I come across a teacher who says, I don't value agency or I don't value equity.

It's the opposite.

They say, I want those things and I don't know how to do them given the confines of the systems that we teach under. And that's where Trevor or someone like Tim Logan or some of the other thinkers that we are familiar with come into the school and help that transition of implementation, right?

Completely, because I think that's when they become truisms, right? Of course we want these things. But as you say, they need, there is a real need, and I think this is what you do really well, is like get down to the fine-grained behaviors and specific moves that you can make in order to enact the things you care about. And it like, I think that bridging, that translation work is not always there from even people who would profess to kind of be supporting educators in schools to do these. I think that's really important.

It is, it is, Tim, and there's, there's no hiding from the work, you know. One aspect that we, we do in schools I support is we call them learning labs where Trevor will come in and he'll co-plan lessons with teachers, and then I'll go and I'll co-teach the lesson. And we've got the technology to do this where we record the lesson from all angles.

Nice.

And then after, in the weeks after— it does take weeks, it doesn't take days— we edit that footage down to these little condensed, digestible little artifacts of the structures and protocols. And then you could hear all that nuance in the lesson. You could see Trevor take a knee beside a student and model the questioning and model the interaction. So, you know, it's really hard to say from the outside of a school looking in, you should do it this way. Yeah, you've got to get into the school. You've got to be a side teachers and a side scholars. And then you have to model the work. And then what has sustainability is can you capture the work so that it can live on in your absence? Can other teachers learn from those particular lessons?

Yeah.

When they weren't in the classroom. And so we have the technology to do this. We have the willingness to do this. It's just changing a little bit of the model and the thinking around how we spend time in schools, if you will.

No, completely, because that's the real work of getting your hands dirty, right? It's very easy to be staying in the dogma of, you should, as you say, you should do this and this is good, don't do this, bad practice, good practice, all of that kind of stuff. And it's like, that's all context-free, right? It's like, you don't know our context unless you've been with us. In these classrooms with our learners, what are the kinds of challenges that we are working with on the ground? Like, until you've really seen that, I, that's one of the things I really care deeply about is that it is so context rich, the work of education, because these are specific young people coming in with specific backgrounds and mornings that they've had or breakfasts that they haven't eaten, or, you know, and the context of the school, the culture of the school, there's so much contextual richness. It doesn't even come into the question when you start talking in shoulds and shouldn'ts, right? Yeah.

You know, that's the puzzle that we're trying to piece together in my partnerships with schools is, you know, I'd say 90% of the work I do with schools and organizations is ongoing, right? Like I rarely do a conference. I'm invited all the time, but I'm, you know, humbly, but I rarely do the conference landscape. It's school and district and organization focus. And slowly over months, together we're piecing together what is happening here. And in my absence, but also in my presence, how are we beginning to see the overarching, the landscape of learning across an organization?

Yeah.

I mean, that's imperative, you know, it's the most important work to do is figure out the context. It's the puzzle we're trying to map out together.

Yeah, I think it's worth highlighting you are also still teaching your own classes in your own school in Victoria, half-time while you're doing this work. And I think there's a real, again, just modeling the learning for the other people you're working with that's really important there because you are also doing the work week to week.

Yeah, you know, I, I do have bandwidth, Tim, for sure. Like, there's only so much I could do in a week.

I don't know how you do it, honestly.

But, you know, systems are so important, and I have an amazing school district that grants me some release time. It's unpaid time that allows me to go visit schools and Gosh, I spent a good chunk of my spring break at a partner school, right? So I make sacrifices and my family makes sacrifices to have this work thrive. And I travel over our summer break to schools. I'll be in Australia again for the month of July. And so my teacher year looks different because of the authorship and research and consultancy I do. But that's the decision I make. That's what I value. Coming back to values, I value doing both and one without the other right now is not Trevor time.

No, good. Amazing. And so there's one curious I have just in relation to the structure piece, if I can briefly, is about inquiry cycles, because quite a lot of, I know obviously Cath Murdoch and many other people, sometimes that turns into a bit of a recipe or an algorithm where it's like, we've done this step, now we go to this step. And I just wondered what your take on that was as a useful structure that affords something, or do you dispense with that quite quickly when you're working with educators?

Yeah, it's really necessary. You know, for listeners, you can't see it, but beside me I've got a cycle, right? I actually have Kath's cycle beside me. I use it often to help new-to-practice teachers plan towards inquiry. You know, structure is critical. It's so important, especially as a planning guide, because what we're doing is we're looking at the curriculum through a different lens. And teachers who are new to this work, an inquiry cycle is so helpful. You know, we're going to see kind of that, you mentioned recipe, we're going to see some of that behavior as teachers begin to adopt the cycle as their own. But slowly what we should see is a strengthening of teacher dispositions, you know, dispositions in which we're noticing, we're listening, we're modeling, we're questioning, where the cycle really softens. We kind of see ourselves bouncing around the different phases of inquiry and not lockstep going through them because that felt really comfortable and safe initially. As our own dispositions strengthen, the cycle becomes a little bit of a, more of a guide and more of a space that we can bounce around in. So for teachers who are familiar with the cycle, that would be something Trevor would, would nudge you towards is it's not just a lockstep. It's something that we flow a little bit more through depending on where we are in learning, where our scholars are at, and then where are we going next in terms of the learning. So So structures are important, Tim, but gosh, overstructure can be problematic for sure.

Yeah. No, and then, and in a way, that's kind of another reinforcement of what we were saying earlier about just kind of moving with the constraints. And, you know, you, that journey from novice to mastery, you might, you will use more scaffolding with people who are new to something, right? With the novices who are not so, you know, that's, that's just, everyone's gonna do that. It's useful. It's like the training wheels on your bike. It's necessary at the beginning, right? Yeah.

And, you know, we can't gloss over my little brief mention of teacher dispositions. It's, you know, there's a lot of work that we need to do there to become more agentic ourselves in terms of how we teach. We want these dispositions and these competencies for our scholars. Yeah, well, we need to be flexing them ourselves to be able to teach more authentically from an inquiry stance. And so slowly what we see in schools is that teachers begin to relinquish control over the learning as those dispositions are becoming a part of their repertoire, as they're becoming more aware of them and reflective towards them and they're sharpening them themselves, we end up seeing more authentic inquiry in the classroom. So there's deep school of thinking and research around teacher dispositions. I think of the work of Ron Ritchhart, Judy Halpert, Linda Kaiser, Cath Murdock, you know, the references to these colleagues who have done a lot of work around teacher dispositions, you know, Art Costa, Bena Kallick, the list goes on. You know, how we show up in the classroom has a huge impact on the inquiry that unfolds before us. So I just, I didn't want to gloss over that dimension of dispositions without really scratching more for listeners to go deeper into that realm because it is important to align that work with the work we hope students engage in.

Yeah, no, I really appreciate that. And it's not something that just gets kind of switched on. It's something that you might need to develop over time, right, through practice.

Absolutely.

So if we can, and you mentioned questioning briefly as just one of the examples, but I know you've, you've been working and thinking more deeply about questioning specifically and high impact questioning and how, how that's just, you know, such a critical piece, tool in the toolkit or whatever metaphor you want to use for educators. In fact, I would say whatever they value in terms of their pedagogical approach or, you know, questioning is, it transcends all of that, I think, as a really, really important move that educators make. Yeah, so I know you've been working on that. So what are you— yeah, have you got a book that you've been writing? Yeah, on that.

Yeah, my fourth book, it will come out in a few months. It is about question routines, right? You know, we've identified 10 what we call high-impact question routines that we've been using in schools around the world for the last few years. So the book itself has 10 routines, but embedded in each routine are a series teacher reflections at the schools of which have adopted these. So teachers are talking about what I did, how it went, what I noticed, et cetera. So it really is a nice roadmap to these 10 structures. And if we can go back to your very first question, actually, Tim Logan, which was around provocation and curiosity, the reason I wrote this darn book is because so many teachers would ask me questions or say, okay, I have questions from kids. Now what? Or my kids are really curious and I don't know what to do with it. Or my kids are really curious and I set them on their way and it was a colossal dumpster fire. And so, you know, how we harness those questions, like gather them and then begin to sort them and almost categorize them or have them be a little bit of a roadmap towards subsequent steps through the inquiry cycle or subsequent decisions we make. That's really the point of these question routines. And so. Each one has its own little frame of structure where we organize student questions within the structure. And then as we're doing so, students begin to take on more and more agency over their learning, and teachers have rich opportunity to provide feedback and formatively assess in the questioning phase of inquiry. And the questions don't really end, you know, as students are exploring more questions and spiraling through learning, more questions are likely to bubble up. So we revisit the question routine and begin to shift our plan, which is just so authentically rich. It's so what happens quote unquote in the real world. You never ask one question and the question takes you to the destination. Likely other questions are gonna surface because the learning is becoming deeper. It's, it's more relevant and agentic, and students are reflective on where they're going, why they're going there, and how they should shift. And so the question routines are imperative to the work there. There are other question structures that I absolutely love. I think of the Question Formulation Technique by Dan Rothstein and Lou Santana. Yeah, I think of thinking routines and Mark Church and Ron Ritchhart. And there are certain questioning-focused thinking routines that I deeply admire and I use. And in my work, I just have seen the need for more specific support of teachers in developing structures around how we harness questions and sort them. So this publication really focuses on that. I'm really excited to release it. I think it's going to be really applicable and transformational in classroom.

Nice. And I, I think there's a, just from what you were saying, there's such an important metacognitive piece there as well for learners, cuz you are, when you see young people reflect on the way that their questions have changed, I think there's a really, I mean, that's just one example, but there's a really important piece of learning, as you say, of looking back at the types of questions they were asking and now what they know and what they've understood and what they've inquired into and the types of questions they're able to ask now. And I think there's a, there's a really visible growth in between those two things.

They can quite literally see it. That's one, one benefit of question routines is the metacognitive, the reflective, and how visible that side of the learning is. You know, another benefit is there's, there's a physicality to the question routines. And what I mean by that is kids actually move around the classroom. They stand, they bump elbows, they, they get up to the whiteboard. They're actually physically moving things, and we need that. Our our scholars, especially our boys, they need movement. And, and with that physical movement comes another benefit, which is a lot of rich skill development. Like, as they're physically moving, they're collaborating, they're listening, they're making connections. That those competencies that we want to see surface in the IB— we're talking about the ACLs— they bubble up because of the structured way the question routine allows them to bubble So those are 3 benefits that we have seen from, from the routines, the metacognitive, the reflective, the physical movement within the learning. And then of course the skill development, let alone the sharing of agency, like the question routine allows me to partner with my students more and have their questions and our curriculum kind of come together in a more beautiful and aligned way. Yeah. So those are some reasons why the question routines get me really, really excited, Tim.

Amazing. And the, again, not to gloss over it as you did with the teacher dispositions, but to go back to it, the embodied piece for me at the moment, that is something that is so important because I think the more and more I am learning and understanding about learning, it is so deeply embodied. And we have, in so many instances, we have really underestimated how our humanness and our kind of the organism that we are is designed to move, right? We are, that is what life is somehow, is our ability to move within environments and shape environments. And the idea that we're just teaching a bunch of disembodied brains in a classroom is so antiquated and, and I think a really dangerous misapprehension now, the more we understand.

Yeah. You know, I'm so blessed, Tim, the last 2 and a half years I, I've had an educational assistant work with me in my classroom, and he's the most overqualified educational assistant in the history of EAs. And he actually taught in London for 25 years and, okay, and for a number of life, you know, circumstances found himself here in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, and found himself as a retired British teacher because he couldn't get certified here. So he became an educational assistant. And, and as you do, as you meet people, you ask questions and you get to know their passions, you get to know their interests and, and his interests. His passion is around mindfulness. It's around an embodied experience. And so every day over the last couple years, I've had the rich opportunity to have him as a co-teacher, him as, as a colleague in arms and a fellow guide of learning. And it's something that him and I have discussed frequently is how are the systems around us of which schools operate through creating opportunity for embodiment? Or limiting, or even more dangerously, really squelching just being present and grounded and aware. And something I've noticed from Chris— is his name Chris Reck? Chris and I are— we enter the classroom ready, grounded, just still and present. It's the softness of which the lesson begins, the invitation to the learning. It's the self-awareness throughout the lesson. How are you feeling? How are you feeling? How can we reflect on our feelings and move forward? I know that sounds airy-fairy, but it's something often overlooked is I have 30 kids before me. I have to control these 30 kids and we have to move, move, move, move, move. And that's actually the worst thing we could do. We need to slow right down, get into our bodies first before anything upstairs— and I'm pointing to my brain— can bubble up or be richer than what it currently is. So getting into the body, it's, it's really important work for us to reflect on again. With us as teachers and then how do we model or create safe conditions for our students to understand themselves better?

Yeah, no, 100%. And you know, again, it goes back to your point about Guy and others talking about the science of learning because it really does, it does matter where you're looking and what your values are in terms of the science that you're looking at because there is really compelling science that really confirms this is not airy fairy stuff, right? This is deeply rigorous science that is demonstrating that we are born to move. We are born to learn our environments. Through movement, through action and inference. I mean, it's strong and increasing, I would say. So it's, you know, I think it's really important that it's not seen as this airy-fairy thing. It is how do we design environments actually that foster that rather than, as you say, squelch it, you know, remove it.

And you know, a simple move for teachers to make just to test it out and say, oh, how did that go for my kids? How did that go for my scholars? Is to just take the learning vertical. Put some poster papers up around the room, you know, maybe 8 poster papers. Send groups of 3 or 4 kids per poster paper. Give them a compelling question or a mathematical problem to try to attack together and solve. And then walk through the room and, and listen to the conversations. Lean in and coach a little bit. Observe the learning. And I beg of you to notice different behaviors from your scholars. You know, how one student typically responds to a math equation, how are they responding differently since you took the learning vertical. And so that would just be a simple shift. Just try it on for size, take the learning vertical and see what happens. And I know what's going to happen, Tim. You're going to see students who were disconnected or disenfranchised or struggling with a concept previously all of a sudden demonstrate capability. And, and it wasn't that the scholar wasn't capable initially, it was that the structure we were utilizing didn't reveal capability.

Yeah.

So teachers, just having a listen, try that simple vertical aspect on for size and They give you just to reflect, what do you notice? What did you see different? And then what do you want to do more of afterwards, essentially?

Yeah, completely. And the thing that I struggle with so often with the response to that from some people, which is there is inefficiency in that because you are taking the learning vertical, you're wasting time because they're moving around and then, you know, you've gotta get them all back to their seats again and their minds are not on.

False, false, false.

And it's exactly, completely. Yeah, false.

Sorry to be direct.

No, it's, it's, yeah, 100%.

False answer. We're going to do something different. It's going to take more time, but we get a different return on investment from that that we couldn't get any other way.

Completely.

So yes, it's going to feel different for us. Like, yeah, oh, I'm giving up time and it's a little bit messy, or I don't know what's going to happen here. But guess what? You get a different outcome because you put in a different input. And that's something teachers— that's why I said just take a risk and try it on for size and trust Trevor that you're likely going to see something different.

Trust Trevor.

You get different returns on investment and it's a return on investment that we can't get in other ways. Like that one student who wasn't demonstrating capability in the 8 previous lessons, you do one thing different and all of a sudden, sure, confident, they're capable, they're successful. And all kids are competent, capable, and successful. All is a little bit of a broad stroke, forgive me. Why wouldn't you do it a little bit differently to get that outcome?

Completely. But I would also, and I appreciate your frankness, because I would also call out the efficiency logic, right? There's this, like, I don't know if you've seen the lessons in certain contexts which are filmed, which are about regimented routines where every single second is about a meaningful minds-on activity. And it goes from one thing and it's a relentless teacher-led routine. And it's such a kind of narrow efficiency logic that is not the logic of life, right? And that sounds, but maybe that sounds airy fairy, but it's just fundamentally not, right? Efficiency is not a value in the real alive world. It's in this human kind of productive narrative that we've created. And actually back to what we were saying about value, what do we value? All of the things that are going on, as you say, when they're bumping elbows, that is all sorts of learning. Embodied learning happening in those spaces, right? As well as the return on the investment that you're talking about with the specific questions they're asking about the specific concepts that you're working with, right, in the lesson. But there's all that, all these other things going on as well that I think we should value.

Yeah, you know, Tim, when, when I sit down with teachers and we begin to co-plan this lesson, right, and they feel that, oh, efficiency, they begin to get a little bit tight or squirrely. I, I ask some questions such as, What behaviors are you not okay with from your students? Like, what behaviors are non-negotiable? So we're going to propose a structure, vertical learning, for example. What behaviors are you not comfortable with? And when teachers really reflect on that, it becomes, well, I'm not comfortable if my kids are unsafe, if they're pushing each other or hurting each other, if they're rude to one another.

Yeah.

So we map out those, like, this is our baseline. If we see this, we need to interact right away. These, this is our baseline. Okay. Then I ask them, what behaviors are you going to allow to simmer a little bit in class? You're going to notice it and it may feel for you a little uncomfortable, but what are you going to allow to simmer and how long are you going to allow it to simmer for?

Yeah.

And so then they say, okay, you know, it may get a little bit noisy over there or, you know, one student may go to another group and be off task. And I say, how long are you comfortable letting that go for? And then they say, 60 seconds.? And then I say, what are you going to do? What's your guide? What's your question? What's your nudge to get them back? Yeah, to kind of nudge them back. So we, we really begin to unpack like their discomfort in doing something different through asking some of these questions. And then in the lesson itself, I get to see teachers adopt these strategies. Like I'll watch a teacher get uncomfortable in the summertime. Like I could just see them, you know, tighten up a little bit. And then I'm looking at my watch and I say, They said they were going to sit here for 60 seconds and then I know their next move. They're going to ask a question. And then right on cue, the teacher at 60 seconds pauses the class and asks that thinking question. And then their next move is to notice how do the scholars respond to my thinking question? And then this— the teacher is the student. The teacher is in learning, thinking, how did that move work?

Yeah.

Did the simmer time provide me the conditions that allowed the students to have right conditions for agency and learning. Those conversations matter so much in terms of the planning because, you know, it's not about efficiency. It's not about, you know, mining down the lesson in a matter of seconds. It's responding to what you're seeing within the lesson with an agile lens. And in doing so, we need to check our biases and our feelings at the door to allow for some of that space for our students to engage in richer inquiry.

I love that because it's, as you were saying, it's just about that dispositional development of the teachers and that sometimes that's uncomfortable at the beginning. And, you know, as you say, you're just coaching them through that. So no, I really, really appreciate it. I'd really love to ask you just about the cultural piece because I was really interested to see and happy to see that how many different languages your inquiry mindset work is being translated into. And I know Ali Azadini, who's translated it into Arabic, I think, with you and That, that just sparked a question for me in terms of how do you see inquiry showing up in different cultural contexts? Because, you know, as we both have worked in many different cultural contexts, sometimes with international schools in those kinds of contexts, but also in with local schools with different curriculum working in different languages. And I just wondered, I'm, it's just my own curiosity as an anthropologist myself, just like, how have you seen that show up and how have you seen the different cultural takes, if you like, on the inquiry approach?

Yeah, it's such a rich question and I really want to explore it with you, Tim. And I suppose I just want to give myself some grace that in talking about cultural context, I certainly don't want to give some broad generalizations.

Sure.

No, I appreciate that. I don't want to step into places where the audience is going to say, Trevor, what did you just say? You know, it's been amazing to see the work get translated. It's been amazing to see the work land in countries and contexts and cultures that I never anticipated being classroom teacher, and I never thought would take me so far and have me in classrooms, quote unquote, that I never dreamt. So, you know, some specifics, you know, the Arabic translation has been amazing because what we've begun to see in schools in that region is that the Arabic-speaking teachers are actually better equipped or more authentically teaching from an inquiry stance than some of the Western teachers who have moved to the region and are bringing their understanding of inquiry to the region. Region. It's fascinating. I, I had a call recently with a school in Bahrain, and the heads of the school were saying, Trevor, you know, if we were to put our teachers on a spectrum of authentic inquiry and kind of getting started inquiry, our Arabic-speaking teachers are more aligned.

Okay, interesting.

More authentically teaching from an inquiry stance, which is like, is that all it took was to get a resource in their language with local contextual examples? Because that's something Ali did beautifully in that translation. Is he turfed all my Western examples, as he should, right? Like, why would we show Arabic-speaking, you know, contextual examples from the Western world to areas and schools in that region? So, you know, just with that transition and that transfer of understanding, we've seen a greater uptake and a greater impact on student learning, which begs the question, like, how do we onboard Western teachers to a different culture where they're checking their baggage at the door and really tuning into the local language? So another partnership is, is in Northern Canada. Tim, I tell you, this is the most important work I do. It's as north as you can get in North America. 3 of their schools are on the Arctic Ocean. Like, wow, they have daylight for 11 hours a day, you know, 22 hours a day. It's fascinating the context that these teachers teach in. And quite literally the most common denominator, common factor in the region are the local people, place, and cultural teachings of the Indigenous peoples. 95% of the students they serve are Indigenous. 95% of the teachers are white Southern settler teachers who fly up. They last 3 years, they do some great work, but then they fly away.

Yeah.

And so what we've been really mindful of are creating resources and entry points where teachers from the South don't unpack their teacher suitcases. They land and they begin to teach from a stance in which honors the local place and the local people. That's been 3 years of hard work, challenging work, but the most meaningful work I do because teachers are actually becoming learners. Like right away, they don't unpack their pedagogy or their teaching practices from the South. They're really immersed in this welcoming and inviting space where here's a resource, here's a resource, here's a resource. To more culturally responsibly teach from. So those are just two examples. Like, I could talk about examples in, in Japan and in Manila and the schools I support there and how the culture impacts the need from parents on what the learning looks like in the classroom.

Sure.

Really critical discourse around, well, maybe we need to value something different, and then the teaching looks a little different. So I'm curious what your convictions are based on that sharing, Tim.

So, I mean, I found that completely fascinating because I think So in different ways. So the, with the indigenous example, there's something, and this is, I kind of intimated at the beginning of the conversation that there's something for me really quite profound about inquiry as a stance on the world, right? It's not just the latest pedagogical innovation, right? It's, there's something really deep and that transcends culture in a way about being human and kind of showing up in a place, in a context, Noticing, relating, figuring out who we can be in this place together. Who am I with? What, what's needed here? All of those kinds of really just very basic questions. They are kind of an inquiry stance, right? So there's something, I think, I find that really interesting that, and I can imagine it's very easy for educators inadvertently to fall back into kind of colonial approaches because it's like, well, you know, we've been trained over here and this you know, these are the latest moves. And so I'm gonna bring this, as you say, in the suitcase, and I'm gonna just unload it in a way on whoever I'm now teaching. And it's like, no, there's something about the deep responsiveness to the place in which we're in, which comes with humility and it comes with, yeah, all sorts of, I think, really important, like increasingly important dispositions. Yeah. As we face global challenges, climate emergency and all of these kinds of things, like we're being asked. Ask some pretty profound questions about how do we, in inverted commas, control environments, or actually how has that really backfired in all sorts of incredible ways? Like, what's another way of showing up? And I think so that there's something really quite important there for me and the kinds of things that inquiry gestures towards, right?

Yeah. You know, one essential agreement that was made with my partners in this school district in, in Northern Canada right away was is nothing that Trevor provides the district is going to be a lockstep transfer to teacher practice. It's all going to be vetted and reflected on and unpacked by local Indigenous peoples. And so they have some amazing educators, Indigenous educators who have looked at everything Trevor has proposed. And some of it's my work and some of it isn't my work. You know, the inquiry cycle by Cath Murdoch that I referenced earlier.

Yeah.

That was something that got completely redesigned through an Indigenous lens.

Interesting.

The colors, the symbols, the language is all recognizable to the local people. And it doesn't stop there. You know, any thinking routine through Ron Ritchhart and Mark Church that I was asking teachers to engage in, we redesigned those thinking routines through the lens of local symbols and local language. And so there's one amazing thinking routine. It's called the siknik, and the siknik is Indigenous for the sun. It's local language for the sun. And so the symbolism of the sun for the learners locally, it's massive. Like, the sun is sustenance. It's life. It's there for months of the year and it's gone for months of the year. We have— you have these amazing photos where the first time the sun rose on the horizon when kids were in school in the season, they all ran to the window to watch the sunrise. So we don't adopt structures blindly. With this partnership. We really, we listen, we take advice and guidance and mentorship from local elders and Indigenous voices so that anything teachers bring in their classroom, it has the student quite literally baked into the design of that structure. And that's transformational. It's like, you know, sometimes there's that square peg round hole feeling where Trevor's coming in and trying to force, and that's not a hallmark of my work at all. It's, yeah, especially with this partnership in the North. It's designed locally, designed with the people in place in mind.

It's exciting work. Fantastic. That's amazing. And in a way, and it's similarly with the Arabic example, that's what it made me think is that just the very simple act of translating into a language, and that might be a verbal language in terms of English to Arabic, or it might be a symbolic language like you were just referring to. It's just the act of connecting with the way that people in that situation are understanding the world, like I say, whether that's just in Arabic or English, it just unlocks a whole load of other learning, right?

It's massive. And who knows the local context most beautifully in that example? Is it the Western teacher flying in, or is it the local teacher who literally knows the language, knows the culture, knows the scholars? Of course it's the latter. And so why wouldn't we put resources and wraparound support of the local teacher and then have the teachers who are flying in be really keen to listening and being guided and advised and mentored to kind of bring everything together in a tighter fashion. That's a critical move.

Absolutely. But I guess I would also say that there's also an important collaboration as well in terms of understanding how other people do things differently. And, you know, I think part of it's about how that relating and how that collaborating happens. With humility and with grace and with, you know, with all of those things rather than, you know, this is not about the kind of localization of everything because clearly, you know, I mean, I had a fascinating conversation with Jonathan Jansen in South Africa recently, and he was saying that actually English is really fundamentally important in South Africa because it transcends tribal differences between the local languages that get—

Fascinating.

That get very difficult, right? Politically. Of course. And so actually English is, of course you're gonna miss a whole load of things, but you're also going to allow for communication in a way that transcends these other things going on. And I think, so I think there's, of course, not about one size fits all and just localization is better and all of those kinds of things, but so much of it's just about, I think for me, like I say, showing up in any spirit of inquiry and wanting to learn, right?

Yeah. Yeah. There, there's a reciprocity. That really is being nurtured in that context. And you mentioned collaboration, in my mind went right to reciprocity. And, you know, Guy Claxton, and I've heard him say this dozens of times, you mentioned humility, Guy says it's an academic humility, right? It's we can come in with our pedagogy and our teaching practice and from a stance of which we don't know it all. And we don't have it all figured out. And we're not a master practitioner. And we're always on this learning journey together. And gosh, you know, those teachers who are coming up to the North and we don't want them to unpack their suitcases yet. You know, we know there are some great things in those bags. I need a leader who just liberates them and says, you're not supposed to have it all figured out. In fact, we've created all these resources here and these people that are going to give you wraparound support, and we want you to try your best to do some things differently and to soak it in and to be a learner first because your students are going to benefit from that. So the impact of leaders in creating that reciprocity It's huge.

It's huge.

As you know, that leader nurturing and creating the conditions for that reciprocity is important to the work.

Yeah. But again, just to make a connection back, I think that epistemic humility that learners are allowed to develop through inquiry-based approaches are in a way more generative to the world that we need right now than who's got the right answer, who's, you know, who's figured it out quickest and You know, irrespective of the context they're in, you know, they've got this propositional fact that they're gonna wield in all sorts of ways, some of which are quite damaging potentially in the future. You know, it's like, yeah, again, I don't wanna caricature it, but I think there is something important in that epistemic humility that comes with asking questions, leading with questions, like, you know, wanting to inquire. So, yeah.

One outcome that we really wanna nurture in inquiry classrooms is that students show interest in one another's interests. And their ideas, and the teacher is actively doing that. And we lean in with interest and vigor and excitement. And so if I'm sharing my learning with another student, I know that student is going to lean in and show me interest, and then I'm going to do the same thing with them. And that kind of is getting to that humility point there. If we want that humility as students leave our structures and our schools and our organizations, how do we mine that down specifically to something we can nurture and how we're designing learning. This is showing interest in one another's ideas. It is huge. Once you get that kind of excitement around the classroom and, and around the learning and around the sharing and in the discourse, you could really go places with such dispositions like humility. Your humility could look awfully overwhelming for a teacher given all the objectives of their curriculum. If you just engage in that high-interest interaction and conversation constantly, you spiral back to that, humility is going to be an outcome that you're more likely to achieve because that constant focus on showing an interest in one another's ideas and leaning into those interests.

Yeah. Amazing. Thank you, Trevor. That's, I mean, there's lots of other questions I have around assessment and all sorts of things, but maybe, maybe we'll do a part 2. Another conversation.

The tail that wags the dog.

Assessment.

Yeah, we should come back and talk assessment.

Thank you. And I know I really, really appreciate all the stuff you do and just for taking the time today to chat about it. I hope we can continue the conversation.

Absolutely. It was a joyful conversation, Tim, and I look forward to more. So thank you for your time.

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