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…

The authors of the three papers in this issue discuss and analyze the practice underlying "critical exploration," a research pedagogy applied in common within their separate art, science, and teacher education classrooms. Eleanor Duckworth developed critical exploration as a method of teaching by involving students so actively and reflectively…

A teacher narrates from activities and discussions that arose among undergraduates and herself while doing critical explorations of mirrors. Surprised by light's behaviors, the students responded with curiosity, losing their dependence on answers as the format of school knowledge. Inadequacies in how participants supposed light works emerged in…

Challenges the belief that high stakes tests are the keystone of students' educational attainment, describing a series of exploratory workshops, developed in reaction to this issue, in which teachers (as essential preparation for developing students' curiosity) deepened their understanding of the principles of physics by playing with light. Such…