• Home
• What is Enquiring Minds?
• Why do it?
• Try it
  • Making changes
    • Getting started
    • The role of the teacher
    • Time, space and resources
    • Next steps
  • Our approach
    • Initiating and eliciting
    • Defining and responding
    • Doing and making
    • Communicating, presenting and evaluating
  • Map of progression
  • Activities
    • Initiating and eliciting
    • Defining and responding
    • Doing and making
    • Communicating, presenting and evaluating
  • Digital tools
  • Online workshop
  • Professional development materials
• The guide
• Our research
• About the project

The role of the teacher

Enquiring Minds is demanding teaching. It requires a shift from teaching your subject as well as you can, to empowering students to develop their own understanding, question received knowledge and change, develop or build on this knowledge.

“It’s made me reflect a lot about the way I teach - allowing students a lot more freedom within a lesson... in order for them to gain ownership over what they’re doing”

Teacher

The ‘good’ Enquiring Minds teacher has the following characteristics:

• a thorough understanding of how knowledge is produced, and a desire to learn about how ideas and knowledge are produced in subjects other than their own
• an ability to produce knowledge - to research topics and to make connections between ideas
• an understanding of the social context in which they are operating
• insights into the lives of students and a willingness to engage with aspects of students’ cultures.