Inquiring Minds Want to Learn

“Inquiring Minds Want to Learn is a masterpiece that focuses on higher-level thinking and how students can develop curiosity, investigative skills, and creativity through inquiry and questioning. Francis even uses his own methodology in building topics around questions for all chapter titles and headers. I will certainly add this book to my must-have resources in this marvelous contribution to my never-ending goal of moving education from a prescriptive didactic pedagogy to one that focuses on inductive, investigative, and inquiry modes of learning.”

“In Inquiring Minds Want to Learn, Erik Francis supports educators by enhancing their ability to provide a profoundly deep learning experience that truly values the role of the student as intrinsic to the development of knowledge and deep thinking. It’s about time someone leaned into a conversation about the nexus between questioning and depth of knowledge in such an easily digestible and applicable way. These pages offer an invigorating approach to embracing student agency and authenticity through a commitment to the true meaning of inquiry.”

“In Inquiring Minds Want to Learn, Erik Francis explores the power of inquiry and questioning in education. This is an invaluable resource for educators looking to cultivate a culture of curiosity and critical thinking in their classrooms. It offers practical strategies and insights that empower teachers to unleash the power of inquiry-based learning. This is a must-read for anyone committed to fostering a lifelong love of learning in students.”

“Inquiring Minds Want to Learn will advance educators’ thinking about the power of inquiry in schools. Erik Francis’s Inquiring Minds Framework lays out a clear path for teachers to go from just asking questions to developing inquiry-based classrooms that not only build students’ knowledge and learning but also the skills they need to be successful in college, career, and the workplace. Readers will appreciate the numerous examples, question stems, and engagement ideas shared throughout. If schools thoughtfully commit to these ideas, this book can be a game changer.”

“In Inquiring Minds Want to Learn, author Erik Francis demonstrates stunning acumen for both inquiry learning and questioning techniques while creating a compendium of questions, stems, starters, and prompts for progressively deeper thinking. Erik gets to the heart of inquiry’s disposition, instructional design, and affective components for students, thoughtfully responding to the educator’s plea, 'Show me what it looks like.' He also opens the whole experience for teachers, as they reflect on practices and make improvements. What a transformative treasure to have in hand, and what a pedagogical bulwark against passivity, indifference, and just going through the motions: Here we have the tools and guided path for keeping critical thinking, intellectual agility, engagement, and efficacy our truth north.”