The power of inquiry, curiosity and questioning

My guest today, Trevor MacKenzie is an experienced teacher, author, keynote speaker and inquiry consultant who has worked in schools throughout North America, Asia, Australia, South Africa and Europe. 

Trevor’s day job is as a high school English teacher in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, He teaches from an inquiry stance, guided by specific values and beliefs. In addition, Trevor is also an author, speaker and consultant, travelling worldwide to help schools implement inquiry-based teaching structures and frameworks. 

Trevor’s new book Inquiry Mindset Questions Edition is out imminently and because questions are a favourite subject of mine, I had to invite him onto the podcast to talk about it. 

I’ve known Trevor for a few years now since we connected on social media through shared interests and enthusiasms.

Trevor is an advocate and champion for inquiry-based learning, generously supporting the work of many educators in the field, including me, and he is well known for his kindness, alongside his expertise. 

Today we talk about the power of inquiry-based learning and what it means to teach from an inquiry-based stance. We discuss the key principles and values that guide his work, drawing from his extensive experience and his new book, ‘Inquiry Mindset Questions Edition.’ We talk about generating question confidence and competence, the importance of both open and closed questions and the 10 high impact question routines in his new book and how they can be used to promote inquiry. We also talk about using images, photos, and art as provocations to spark curiosity and engagement. 

There’s so much in our conversation from fostering curiosity, agency, active listening and the connections between Trevor’s work and our work in museums. What can we learn from each other? Where are the crossovers? 

Read or listen to our conversation to discover more about the power of inquiry, curiosity and so much more. 

All links are listed below after the transcript.

Transcript

Art Engager 130

Claire Bown: Hello, and welcome to The Art Engager podcast with me, Claire Bown. I’m here to share techniques and tools to help you engage with your audience and bring art, objects, and ideas to life. So let’s dive into this week’s show.

Hello, and welcome back to The Art Engager podcast. I’m your host, Claire Bown of Thinking Museum, and this is episode 130. Today, I’m talking to inquiry champion, Trevor MacKenzie, about the power of inquiry. Before our chat, don’t forget in last week’s episode, I was talking to Cecilie Scøtt about how to engage students with the music of Carl Nielsen through philosophical questioning and slow listening.

If you haven’t listened to it yet, do go back and listen to episode 1 2 9.

And don’t forget that The Art Engager now has 130 episodes to choose from. You can take your pick from the back catalogue of different episodes to brush up on your skills, be inspired and learn new techniques.

And if you’d like to shape future episodes, get in touch. Maybe you have a question for the show, an idea for a theme we haven’t yet talked about, or if you want to suggest a guest, don’t hesitate. to reach out. I’m always happy to hear from you, especially if you’re an educator doing innovative work, engaging with art objects and audiences in museums and heritage.

And finally, if you’d like to support this podcast and help it to thrive into the future, you can buy me a cup of tea on buymeacoffee. com forward slash Claire Bown. All right, let’s get on with today’s episode. My guest today, Trevor MacKenzie, is an experienced teacher, author, keynote speaker, and inquiry consultant who has worked in schools throughout North America, Asia, Australia, South Africa, and Europe.

Trevor’s day job is as a high school English teacher in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. He teaches from an inquiry stance, guided by specific values and beliefs. In addition to his day job, Trevor is also an author and consultant traveling worldwide to help schools implement inquiry based teaching structures and frameworks.

Trevor’s new book, Inquiry Mindset: Questions Edition, is out imminently. And because questions are a favorite subject of mine, I had to invite him onto the podcast to talk about it. Now I’ve known Trevor for a few years now, since we connected on social media, through shared interests and enthusiasms, and Trevor is such an advocate and champion for inquiry based learning.

He generously supports the work of many educators in the field, including me, and is well known for his kindness alongside his expertise. today we talk about the power of inquiry based learning and what it means to teach from an inquiry based stance. We discuss the key principles and values that guide his work, drawing from his extensive experience and his new book, ‘Inquiry Mindset Questions Edition‘. We talk about generating question confidence, the importance of both open and closed questions and the 10 high impact question routines that are in his new book and how they can be used to promote inquiry. We also talk about images, photos and art and using them as provocations to spark curiosity and engagement.

There’s so much in our conversation from fostering curiosity, agency, active listening, and the connections between Trevor’s work and our work in museums. What can we learn from each other? Where are the crossovers? So listen in to discover more about the power of inquiry, curiosity, and so much more.

Here’s our conversation. Enjoy.

Hi Trevor, and welcome to The Art Engager podcast.

Trevor MacKenzie: Excited to be here, Claire. It’s been too long. And really excited to reconnect with you on today’s topic and focus and hear about your work and find some aligned threads between ours, right?

Claire: Brilliant. So, perhaps for the benefit of our listeners, could you tell us who you are and what you do?

Trevor: Thank you. Yeah, I’m a teacher. I teach high school English here in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. I teach from an inquiry stance and so I have certain values and beliefs that shape the time that I have with students and I’d like to say that’s my day job because I’m an author and a consultant and I visit schools around the world and implementing structures and frameworks so other teachers can teach from an inquiry stance.

So, I feel like I have the best job in the world, a little bit of both teaching students and in fact teaching teachers as well and working with schools and adults and in implementing those inquiry frameworks and protocols, Claire.

Claire: And you’re just back from a trip, are you not?

Trevor: Yeah, lots of trips, but one to Bangkok.

There’s an amazing event that I get to be a part of annually, it’s called the Kaleidoscope of Inquiry, where colleagues from around the world come together to share their expertise and passion for inquiry based learning. And the goal of the Kaleidoscope series is to bring together, multiple perspectives on the same focus.

And gosh, the conversations, those in attendance, coming together to engage in a common conversation around inquiry, it’s just so vibrant, so invigorating, so fulfilling.

So, really quick trip, but really fulfilling trip, absolutely.

Claire Well, one of these days our paths will cross as we’re traveling around sharing the word. Now I’ve known your work for a number of years.

I can’t think back to exactly when we first met. I think it might’ve been on Instagram, but I think we met through shared interests.shared topics that we were talking about, there was a click there. So you’re an advocate and a champion for inquiry based learning. What inspired you to pursue this approach?

Trevor: Yeah, the light bulb moment for me was really dissecting my own practice and how I was sharing the landscape of learning with my students, was I getting in the way of their learning or was I getting aside them and behind them to support them in their learning?

And that’s a big idea, but in a really practical sense, it looks like and sounds like and feels like, helping students make decisions over the parameters of learning. And so that was a big one for me early in my career. It just didn’t feel great standing at the front of the room, talking to a room full of students.

It didn’t feel engaging for them. It didn’t feel engaging for me. And that really set me down the path of exploring what agency means in a schooling setting and how schools and systems and structures either stifle agency or lift it up and honor it. And beyond agency, I’m really keen on curiosity as you are, right, Claire?

I love being in a room where others are curious about what we’re talking about and what we’re interrogating and what we’re learning about. And I’m a curious guy. And so, to be in that space where we’re kind of huddled around that curiosity fire, so to speak it’s deeply exciting. And once you go down this path, you really can’t go back.

Like the landscape of learning feels different. It’s exciting. It’s relevant. It’s contextually meaningful. And you’re building ideas upon ideas in the room and it’s not just the teacher at the front of the room’s ideas that are the most important. It’s this collection and this experience of connections and weaving together threads and exploration and surprises.

So, it’s hard for me to pinpoint one specific moment in my practice that, was that first domino to topple over. But you know, those are a few values that when I look back on my career, they bubbled up early. You know, sharing the landscape of learning, i. e. agency for students, and then curiosity, and through curiosity, finding relevance and meaning in our time together in a classroom setting.

Yeah.

Claire Yeah, and you’re ringing bells for me as well, thinking about those moments. that perhaps have been significant, And I know for me, one of the, one of those occasions was. Way back when delivering a guided tour and just hearing the same words come outta my mouth two days in a row at exactly the same time.

And it was a real shock to find myself doing that. I’d become on autopilot and I thought, there’s more. to this job than this, and as you said, once you kind of choose this path. You can’t really go back, can you?

Trevor: Yeah. In my first year of teaching, I remember a mentor teacher, this brilliant history teacher.

He had won all the accolades and awards in our region, in our province, in our country. He was just so well established and well known. I was just so lucky to watch him teach throughout a semester and I remember early on in that relationship, looking at the binders on his shelves, his notes and his lesson plans and he was so generous in his time and in his giving of resources.

And I remember thinking, ‘God, I’ve struck a goldmine here. I get all of his binders, right?’ And then what I quickly noticed was that he didn’t use them at all. He wasn’t going back to resources. He wasn’t going back to previous lessons. He was building understanding in the classroom with students. And so it was in the magic of watching him teach that I learned so much of how I wanted to teach myself.

And it wasn’t the binder that I thought I needed. It was just watching him create an experience with students that was so much more than just giving them what he knew. It was creating an experience where connections were happening in the room. So definitely, I didn’t want to go down that autopilot route that you’re describing.

I didn’t want to just teach from the binder. I wanted to learn how to weave together story and narrative and create curiosity in the room and build on that excitement and understanding with a group of people, with a group of students. So yeah, looking back at it all, those moments were definitely early moments towards where I am today.

Claire And I’ve heard you in the past talk about Inquiry being a stance. So this is something that is part of us, part of our practice, part of who we are. It’s not something that we just put on and take off at a moment. So can you perhaps just tell us a little bit about what it means to teach from an inquiry stance?

Trevor: Yeah, well, when we say a stance, we’re really meaning we, we embrace and sharpen and flex certain dispositions ourselves. We care about the dispositions and competencies of our students, but the stance in which we teach from allows that sharing of the learning landscape with those around us.

So. Gosh, really slowing things down and being patient and settling into the learning. That’s the disposition. I know teachers around the world really feel pressured with their curriculum or their mandates or their standards, but going slow to go fast and just really settling into the learning. Really modeling questioning and being curious.

There’s some great research around cultures of curiosity and how when we’re around other curious people, we in turn feel more curious. We have more questions. We feel more excited about the learning when we’re around other people who are really curious about the learning. So modeling that, I often say teachers need to model the model.

If we want curious kids, we need curious adults. And so really settling into questioning and Getting interrogative about what we’re looking at and studying and learning about, and then I can’t help but think of just being a noticer, being an observer, and being a listener. And again, modeling those skills, we want students to slow down, we want students to observe and learn.

You know, point their finger at things and ask questions and they’re more likely to do that if we’re modeling that. And so those are some of the dispositions I really value. And again, there are protocols and frameworks that allow us to model those and allow students to feel those and experience those and in turn sharpen those and embrace those themselves.

And so, I’m a really practical author in terms of how I write and what I propose teachers do with regards to these structures and protocols and frameworks so that. It takes a little bit of the uncertainty out of the equation when we talk about, well, what do we mean by planning for curiosity?

And what do we mean by planning for opportunities to slow down and listen and notice? And so those frameworks and protocols are deeply important in the work that we do. And I know Claire, you engage in something very similar, just a little bit different of a setting, where you slow right down, you ask those around you to take notice, observe, ask questions, listen, and those experiences really do transform the experience for everyone.

You, the students, the adults and that transcends any objective that’s in a curriculum or in a standard. So those are some of the dispositions. I saw you nodding your head the whole time I was sharing them.

Claire Very

Trevor: similar in your work, isn’t it?

Claire Yeah, so I was going to actually ask, what are some of the techniques in your work that cross over?

And you answered that question for me without me actually having to ask it. So there are lots of things that are in alignment here, The slowing down, the noticing, that awareness that we can develop about ourselves as facilitators in the museum. But also awareness for who we’re with, the group we’re with and how we’re connecting with them.

And also that curiosity as well, it’s noticeable when someone, a museum facilitator, museum educator is teaching with that infectious curiosity, when you can actually see it happening in front of you, you can see it spreading to the group.

It’s just lovely to watch. So yes, there are lots of things that I was nodding along to there. And you mentioned your books as well. So three books already. I love your books. there’s so many things in your books that I can take and apply into museum education practices as well.

Trevor: So.Tell me a little bit about your kind of journey as an author. Yeah. Well, the journey of an author and you said a magical word, you said awareness, self awareness. The journey for me as an author was really deeply exploring my practice and trying to communicate to others what it looks like, sounds like and feels like to be in my shoes with a group of students, and to visit the schools that I’m fortunate enough to be invited to go visit, just really clearly communicating what those experiences look like. And so to teach differently requires us to unpack our past, to unpack our biases, to unpack how we’ve always done things.

And so I found a surefire way to help teachers unpack their biases, and what we’ve always done, is to show them what could be done, to show them what the landscape could look like on the other side of the fence, so to speak. And so my writing, has always been, really clearly painting the portrait of what teaching from an inquiry stance looks like through Trevor’s shoes.

And the theory of inquiry, that’s important, but the application, The implementation, the steps we take, that allow that flexible mindset and that flexible approach that you reference. Deeply valuable for teachers. And then when I go visit schools that I support, we have really clear evidence of what’s happening in classrooms, what’s working, what’s not working because we’re able to examine those structures and frameworks and protocols. We see evidence on classroom walls. We see evidence on whiteboards. We see digital evidence. We see evidence in student conversations. So that the protocols and frameworks that I write about are deeply important. And I’ve always really embraced trying to communicate again, what it looks like and sounds like, and feels like from a really practical stance.

It’s a surefire win for teachers when they could take something and apply it after reading the chapter, not even tomorrow. It’s like after lunch, they go and they put something in the practice, which is really gratifying.

Claire I wholeheartedly agree. I’m nodding away again. Everything that I talk about on this podcast and write about as well, it’s very much with a practical lens.

How might you apply this in your practice? And that self awareness you talked about as well, that you were reminding me a couple of years back, I continued my professional development and did a coaching certification. And that for me was a real eye opener in terms of expanding that self awareness and digging into those areas of my practice where I had some assumptions perhaps about where some of my strengths were. I thought I was a good listener. I knew nothing until I’d completed my coaching certification. It really changed the way I thought about listening, the way I actually implemented listening into my programs. And so Actually taking that time to work on yourself as a teacher, as an educator, is incredibly important in our work, isn’t it?

Trevor: It’s so important. Just hearing you share, Claire, I think about wait time. You know, I often call it simmer time for teachers. How long are you willing to let something simmer and just sit on your hands, put your hands in your pockets and in thinking about that experience. How long are you willing to just sit and listen and let things simmer,

We also consider, well, what could you do after you let it simmer? What are a few more nudging questions? What do you expect those around you to do when you let things kind of lay on the table for a little bit longer? And gosh, what we find is when we help teachers kind of sit in it a little bit longer, the return on investment, the yield is so high because we’re just giving people time to make connections.

To ask questions, to become noticers and observers. And so that self awareness, that work where we’re kind of reflecting on, looking at our watch and thinking, Ooh, I’m impatient. I got to get going now. Allowing teachers just to crack that open a bit and reflect on that. Really important work in supporting teachers and implementing inquiry frameworks and protocols again.

Claire Yeah, and I think often in my work and the people I work with, we’re talking about very short time spans as well. So we’re often with groups in the museum for an hour and a half, if we’re lucky, So time is very much of the essence. And I often talk about thinking about time as something you can play with and experiment with.

Don’t see time as something you’re constrained by and time is something that’s running out. So making the time for noticing, for observation, for looking, also being intentional about pauses, like you said, leaving things there on the table, waiting through that painful silence and see what happens, what bubbles up, they’re all things that we can play with and experiment with as educators, for sure.

Trevor: Yeah, and there’s two different experiences. There’s one where someone’s guiding a group through a museum and rushing through because we only have them for an hour and a half, and trying to get to the next exhibit and trying to get to the next piece.

And then there’s the really simple move of just inviting the group to notice, to wonder, to make a connection, to ask a question. That little switch of inviting the group into the experience and slowing down ever so briefly, it has huge yield on the other side. It is a transformative experience.

So even when we’re pressed for time, because we always are going to be pressed for time, there’s never enough time. But when we transform the experience through simple invitation and notice and wonder Again, simple moves and they have high yield, don’t they, Claire?

Claire Oh, absolutely. And that’s when you get your really memorable experiences that can sometimes even be those transformative experiences, which people remember for years to come, or they’re changed in some way as a result of that experience.

I brought you onto this podcast to talk about questioning as well.

So talk to us a little bit about your fourth book due to be published in the next few months .

What inspired you to focus on questioning for your fourth book?

Trevor: Well, something that we really care about when I support schools is leveraging curiosity or sparking curiosity. So that’s a domino we have to push over. We want those that we’re working with to be really curious. We want them to see the learning as relevant, as meaningful.

And so an outcome of curiosity Of course it’s questions, right? We want student generated questions to be at the forefront of classrooms. We want those that we’re working with to be asking rich questions. And to be honest, Claire, I was just seeing a lack of really helpful question frameworks. There were a few that I was using all the time.

There are a few that I just like, Oh, that’s a question frame. That’s a question structure. And then what I was realizing over the years is, I didn’t have enough. You know, my students would get too used to a structure or routine and they’d kind of want to wipe their hands with it. Or it wasn’t continuing to build the question competence in the students that I was hoping for because it wasn’t a different exercise.

It wasn’t a different flex of a muscle or a flex of an experience. And so slowly over time, I just started to tinker with different frameworks in my classroom and schools around the world that I support. And we started to see a great return on investment.

We started to see student generated questions begin to shape more of the ongoing learning experience. Meaning, if we spread learning across several weeks, we could see that the student generated questions were really authentically guiding subsequent steps across those weeks. So it wasn’t just this questioning activity or lesson we did for fun, it was that the questions actually led to learning in building a roadmap for ongoing learning. And then over time we started to see student generated questions improve. And there’s no such thing as a good question or a bad question. We just started to see more sophisticated questions being asked from our students, which was fascinating. It was like, The more question structures they experienced, the deeper the array of questions they were asking, the more of an understanding of the role questions play in learning did they start to demonstrate.

And so, you know, if I look way back at when I started to build question routines into my practice, it was because I needed more. I just I needed more for my students to experience so they could take the learning to a more authentic place and a deeper place with me and so gosh that was maybe four years ago now I started to tinker in my own classroom with a few question routines and then with the great opportunity to go visit schools I started to give them some of these routines and then it’s just been It’s been a beautiful learning experience where I’m seeing these routines at schools around the world and hearing from teachers how they’re going and how students are responding to them and now that’s kind of encompassed in this next publication, Inquiry Mindset Questions Edition, where we share 10 high impact question routines that schools have been using for the last number of years, Claire.

Claire Now, I’m so excited to hear that there are 10 new question routines that are going to be out into the world with the publication of your new book. And I was lucky enough to read a small excerpt from the book and get a taste of what you’re writing about. Now you introduced me to the Question Pencil.

Perhaps you could tell our listeners a little bit more about this question routine and how it might be used.

Trevor: Yeah, so the Question Pencil is just a really simple framework. If you can imagine a visual of a pencil posted on the wall, maybe a five foot long pencil, and then within the pencil there are broken up columns of different question stems, and each question stem allows students to post a question underneath it that allows them to think about what type of question am I asking?

What purpose does it serve? And how could this question lead to next steps? And in doing so, they’re kind of categorizing their questions. They’re reflecting on their questions. They’re justifying what they’re doing. Why they’re placing their question underneath each question stem underneath or within each question column.

And we actually, I designed this Question Pencil for the younger years. I thought it’d be great for younger students to, to visually see the different colors of the pencil and see the question stems. And then what I’ve noticed with the creation of this book and that last few years of these routines really getting in the schools is that I can’t box up routines to a specific setting.

I can’t say this routine is great for the younger years and this routine is great for, the high school years or for adults. It’s every routine really serves, a purpose in creating question competence. And so if you hear a Question Pencil and you think, oh, that sounds really cute, but that’s not for me.

I think in reading the routines and seeing them in action you’ll see that they really transcend context. They really transcend ages and grade levels and they transcend subjects. They could be used in a variety of settings with regards to concepts. Another piece that I love, Claire, is these routines allow students to stand up and get physically active in their learning. You know, they get students out of their seats and they get them collaborating. They get them communicating, working together, justifying their thinking, justifying their questions. And that’s a transformative experience. When we begin to get kids physically active, they become cognitively active in the learning.

So the Question Pencil, as you can imagine, it’s posted on the wall and students are all working and sharing their learning and sharing their ideas at the wall. And that visibility is so helpful for us to make connections and give feedback and guide some next steps. So that’s kind of the Question Pencil in a nutshell.

Claire I love it. I can’t wait to use it. I do a lot of work around questioning with educators and getting them to brainstorm questions, open questions, closed questions, different types of questions they might generate from an artwork, that might be the provocation for it. And then we spend some time thinking about sorting, formulating, categorizing, but really being very reflective about our questioning practice.

What do we notice about the types of questions we’re leaning towards, the types of questions we’re generating? What does it tell us from a five minute exercise when All the questions that we could think of were about observation or description. What does it tell us about our practice and the way we formulate questions?

So I love the idea of there being a question routine that can help with this, that can actually make us think about what categories our questions may fit into, and then have that kind of collaborative process where we’re sharing and talking about our questions with others as well. It just sounds fantastic.

Trevor: Yeah, I love that you mentioned creating an understanding of the difference between closed ended questions and open ended questions. And that’s a chapter in the book where we walk teachers through and readers through how they can facilitate that learning, how they can facilitate that conversation.

And we also add in some questions around how do closed ended questions make you feel? Like, students tell us the darndest things. They actually really love close ended questions, Claire, which is kind of contradictory to what teachers tend to think, is, kids get bored with the close ended stuff, but students love close ended questions because they’re easily answered.

They build confidence. There’s an easy yes, no, right, wrong. There’s black, white, there’s no gradient. They love that kind of boxing up of the learning. And when they share their feelings around open ended questions, they share things like, Oh, it makes me feel a little uncertain, makes me feel a little anxious, makes me feel a little worried.

All that self awareness for the student and for the teacher is so helpful because of course we want them to get to that deep learning place where open ended questions are guiding the learning. Gosh, understanding how they’re going to feel, understanding that kind of rollercoaster of research and discovering more information to guide our questioning.

So important to add in questions about our feelings and in terms of anticipating what the response could be for all of us, deeply important work.

Claire And you talk about closed questions and open ended questions there. And it’s so interesting because, I think they’re quite often categorized as closed questions are ‘bad questions’, in inverted commas, open ended questions are the good ones, we should be encouraging more of them, but it’s more about.

The right questions at the right time for the right occasion and being very aware of the types of questions that you’re using. You talk a lot about question competence, but I’m noticing also that it’s a question of question confidence as well in your students, that’s what you’re trying to generate.

Trevor: Question confidence, absolutely. With the feeling aspect, we want them to get more comfortable in the discomfort of not knowing. And in doing so, as they categorize questions, as they justify, as they revise, as they share and make connections across their questions and others, they’re going to become stronger questioners themselves.

They’re going to understand the pivotal role that closed ended questions play to take us to open ended. and how open ended can anchor the learning, can take us deeper. It’s a both and more mentality and mindset towards closed and open questions and the idea that many curricula around the world sadly shifts learning towards the closed ended end of the spectrum, right?

Where, gosh, without that open ended, without the depth, the concept the meaning, the context, we’re really only taking the learning so far. So the notion of question competence really is helping students understand how different questions serve different purposes.

You said, Claire, at different times, I couldn’t agree more. And we want them to be able to see how their questions lead to next steps. I think that’s a good indicator of question competence is how this particular question, I could find information or go here, or that’s going to lead me to this place over here.

That deeper awareness of the role questions play in next steps is an indicator of question confidence, for sure.

Claire Wonderful. I was very lucky to be able to contribute the very small parts to an early chapter in the book where we’re talking a little bit about the power and purpose of provocation.

And I contributed a little bit about images, photos, and art as provocation. So perhaps you could explain a little bit about what a provocation is and how images, photos, art could serve as effective provocations for inquiry.

Trevor: Yeah. Provocation is very much an inquiry word, isn’t it? And provocation refers to planning with intentionality as a start point of curiosity.

You know, we’re going to show or give space for students to get curious about something. And that could be a piece of art, that could be a photograph, it could be many things. It could be an artifact, it could be a sculpture it could be an experience, it could be getting outside and looking at things in nature or architecture or design.

It could be a compelling text, a compelling statement, a compelling speech provocation can be many things, but the point of introducing provocation is to generate curiosity, and as we said earlier, an outcome of curiosity should be questions. So in a classroom setting, you know, when we look at our curriculum, we want our students to get curious about the standards, about the outcomes, about the curriculum.

A lot of curriculum is really dry. It’s really stuffy. It’s written by teachers. It’s not written for students. And so the pivotal move, a provocation plays that get our students curious about the curriculum. So important. In your setting, Claire, we’re Walking into a museum, seeing an exhibit, seeing artwork, seeing sculptures, it that’s just like dripping in provocation. Provocation is in life, it’s around us it’s in galleries, museums, but it’s also just flexing that disposition of getting curious and being a noticer and observer.

So I’m honored that you said yes, but also you’re just really well versed in provocation through the lens of art, museums, exhibits, et cetera. So

Claire Oh, I was delighted to another of my favorite subjects, using art as a spark, using museum objects as a natural provocation to promote curiosity.

Trevor: Absolutely loved writing about it. So thank you for the invitation. And this book you have contributions from quite a few others as well. Yeah, you know, a key piece of the book is, and this is something unlike my other publications, a key piece has been these question routines have been in schools for the last number of years.

Just really quietly, we’re not sharing them on social media, we’re not writing about them anywhere, other than gathering data, gathering evidence from teachers. How are they going? How are students responding? What advice would you give another teacher who is implementing the routine that you’ve just implemented?

And each teacher got invited to contribute a little vignette, a little reflection in the book. So there are over 30 teachers who have just penned a short little description submitted photos of their students engaging in these question routines, and I find that so helpful. It’s helpful for me, selfishly, as I Again, share these with schools around the world, but it’s so helpful for readers to see the routine, but then to see it in action and to hear from a practicing teacher what went well, what didn’t go well, what advice would you lend someone?

So that’s a really special component of the book. And I’m just so grateful that so many teachers were willing to give a contribution to the book, Claire.

Claire Yeah, and that’s such a special part of any book that’s explaining a framework, a strategy, a protocol for doing something is to give the practical application.

A lot of my work is explaining and going to museums and sharing ideas for how educators may use certain routines or frameworks in their own practice. Have you thought about trying it this way? So to have teachers actually spell that out in the book is wonderful because it sparks off ideas straight away.

Trevor: Yeah. And the photographs that are in the book, I’ve never published a book that has so many photographs. And again, these photographs are provocation for readers to have a look and see, evidence of, How I could do this in my setting. How could I take this photo and this evidence of what it looks like in that classroom?

What could it look like in my space? And so, yeah, I, I just can’t wait. You know, we were talking off air about where the book is and when does it go to print, and it’s at that moment where you just want to kick it out the door. You want to say, go live your life, you’re ready and I just can’t wait for readers to get it, and to see it, and to begin implementing these strategies.

Claire Yeah. Perfect. So that’s a wonderful note to end on. Can you perhaps share with listeners how they can find out more about you or reach out to you as well?

Trevor: Yeah, thank you. Yeah, trevormackenzie. com is the easiest place. That’s the hub for all things that I’m creating or involved in and producing, schools I support and then I’m very active on social media.

We met, I think, on Instagram. Very active on LinkedIn and Twitter as well. And gosh, I really just love connecting with other people who are curious. Right. And so if there’s a question, a connection, I just want to encourage people to reach out. And Claire, thank you for hosting me. Like I’m an avid listener of your podcast.

You posted something on social media just yesterday about the power of curiosity and how do we not stifle it? How do we leverage it? And, gosh, aligned values galore between your work and mine. And I just really appreciate what you’re doing to push this conversation further globally. So thank you for having me.

Claire So a massive thank you to Trevor for joining me on the podcast today. Go to the show notes to find out more about Trevor’s work, his new book, Inquiry Mindset: Questions Edition, and to get in touch with him too.

That just about wraps up this episode. Thank you for tuning in. I’ll see you next time. Bye! for listening to the Art Engager podcast with me, Claire Bown. You can find more art engagement resources by visiting my website, thinkingmuseum. com And you can also find me on Instagram, at Thinking Museum, where I regularly share tips and tools on how to bring art to life and engage your audience.

If you’ve enjoyed this episode, Please share with others and subscribe to the show on your podcast player of choice. Thank you so much for listening, and I’ll see you next time.

Episode Links:

https://www.trevormackenzie.com

https://www.trevormackenzie.com/posts/2024/4/14/announcing-inquiry-mindset-questions-edition

Trevor MacKenzie on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/trev_mackenzie/

Trevor MacKenzie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevor-mackenzie-37103b261/

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