Doing science as explorers, students observe, wonder and question the unknown, stretching their experience. To engage students as explorers depends on their safety in expressing uncertainty and taking risks. I create these conditions in my university seminar by employing critical exploration in the classroom, a pedagogy developed by Eleanor…

One of the most important questions I ask as both a cultural anthropologist and a university teacher is: How do people come to know what they think they know? In this article, I adopt a narrative approach to processes of learning and discovery in two very different locales, an indigenous society in the South Pacific, and a senior seminar on…