The word inquiry comes from the Latin words in, or “inward,” and quirer, which is the verb “to question.” So inquiry is not just asking questions, it is questioning into something. Inquiry entails the perception of depth. It has the quality of penetrating into something, going deeper, so you can see what you haven’t been able to see before.When you begin an inquiry, you are deliberately setting out to search for what you don’t know. You have to have the confidence—perhaps even the arrogance—to say that you might be able to figure it out for yourself. And in that process, you get a sense of real excitement and energy. That energy is both part of, and contributes to, what we often call “engagement.” But in order to use inquiry to answer your question, you have to become good at knowing what you don’t know. I would argue that that’s exactly the opposite of what happens in schools. Classrooms focus on what you do know (or are supposed to know) and leave you unprepared to deal with the things you don’t know.In some ways, we are all surrounded by a bubble of the known. When you “know” something, you identify how your model of the world fits with, and explains, what you see. Living in the bubble of the known is comfortable and comforting. You see what you know, and you know what you see. But to do inquiry, you have to get good at always looking for the boundaries of your knowledge, and at the limitations and contradictions within what is known. That is what scientists do. They are always looking for the limits, the boundaries, the points at which their theories fail to explain the world. Scientists, in essence, are always looking for that “door” from the known to the unknown, where they can press forth and push and, in a sense, expand the bubble of the known. Inquiry is the action you take when you deliberately challenge the limits of your knowledge.To do an inquiry well, you have to know what to focus on, and how to address what you don’t understand. You have to be able to continually discern what the next step should be as you push into the limits of what you know. You have to know what is likely to be productive inquiry, and what is not. That’s the real art, and it is an art we almost never teach to children. How do you learn to expand your knowledge? You have to be able to recognize what you don’t know, and become fearless in going beyond that boundary.In his book The Year of the Greylag Goose, for example, zoologistKonrad Lorenz says:Whenever I sit for a couple of hours on the gravel bank… with my flock of geese, or in front of my aquarium with tropical fish at home… the time rarely goes by without my observing something unexpected. I never have an explanation at hand for these novel observations. Rather, they lead me on to new questionswhich require further observations and, very frequently also, experimental investigation….