Today I want to talk about something that might sound a little strange in education.
Not knowing.
More specifically, not yet knowing together.
Because in many education systems there is a quiet expectation that teachers should know. We should have answers ready. Lessons should move efficiently toward clear outcomes. Questions should lead to explanations, and explanations should lead to understanding. But sadly it often stops at explanations lead to memorising facts for a specific length of time, and sometimes understanding.
But if we pause for a moment and watch children carefully and respectfully, something else becomes visible.
Learning rarely begins with certainty.
It usually begins with a moment of confusion, fascination, or wonder.
A strange insect on the playground.
A pattern in the sand.
A puddle that froze overnight.
A question that nobody planned for.
And in that moment, something powerful appears.
Curiosity.
Children live inside these moments all the time. Their daily experience of the world is full of things that are not yet understood. They also do not feel shame that they do not understand - allowing them to be open to be curious.
The real question for educators is not how quickly we can replace that uncertainty with answers, or shaming children for not knowing.
The real question is this:
Can we stay in that moment long enough to explore it together?
This is where the idea of not yet knowing together becomes a powerful pedagogical strategy.
Instead of positioning knowledge as something the teacher already owns, the classroom becomes a place where curiosity can circulate between everyone present.
Now this doesn’t mean teachers suddenly pretend not to know things. Teachers still bring knowledge, experience, and responsibility to guide learning. It is how we can ask productive questions instead of redundant ones - questions that fuel the children’s curiosity and does not allow them to get out of their depth - which is a sure fire way to trigger the brain not to waste energy on things beyond them.
We can also allow ourselves to say something very simple.
“I’m not sure either… how could we find out?”
That small shift changes the atmosphere in the room.
Because suddenly learning is not about performing knowledge. It becomes a shared exploration.
And when learning becomes shared, something democratic begins to emerge.
Democracy in education is not only about classroom votes or student councils.
It is about participation in sense-making, meaning-making and world-making. It is about recognising that understanding the world can be something we nurture together.
When a group of learners enters a space of not yet knowing together, several things begin to change.
Questions become valuable in their own right.
Learners start listening more carefully to each other, because someone else’s idea might move the investigation forward.
The teacher becomes less of a gatekeeper of answers and more of a guardian of curiosity.
The classroom starts to feel less like a place where knowledge is delivered… and more like a community that is thinking together.
This is something I’ve seen many times when working with the Original Learning Approach.
One of the core ideas in Original Learning is that learning, teaching, and play are deeply interconnected processes.
Children do not simply absorb knowledge that adults provide. They investigate the world through curiosity, experimentation, and play.
And often the most powerful learning moments begin when something unexpected happens.
In my book I describe involving a broken shell. Where I used wonder and curiosity to lift the weight of a child’s shoulder for breaking it. We decided to grind it into sand.
Other children joined in, questions started appearing.
How do we take turns fairly?
Is all sand made of shells?
What would happen if we pressed it, soaked it, scraped it?
Should we grind more shells?
That tiny object became the centre of a long exploration. Children tested ideas. They compared textures. They asked questions about materials, forces, and patterns.
Mathematics appeared.
Science appeared.
Language appeared.
Social negotiation appeared.
But none of it began with a planned lesson.
It began with a moment of not yet knowing for most of the children who joined us, but as an opportunity to heal for the first child - who then dared admit his mistake.
And my role as the adult was not to rush in with the explanation.
My role was to hold the space.
To protect the time.
To stay curious alongside the children.
To place materials nearby that allowed the investigation to continue.
Loose parts.
Tools.
Objects that might extend their thinking.
The children’s curiosity drove the exploration.
Their collective autonomy shaped the direction.
And the learning that emerged was deeper and more connected than anything I could have scripted in advance.
This is why the idea of not yet knowing together is so important for both preschools and schools.
When uncertainty is shared rather than hidden, classrooms become more inclusive. Because it allows children to participate from different perspectives, for different reasons, and gain knowledge, experience, comfort etc depending on their needs at that moment in time. It also allows children to share their different knowledges and experiences to expand the experience - because we don’t all have to be doing the same thing.
Different kinds of contributions matter.
A careful observation.
A story from personal experience.
A drawing that expresses an idea.
A question that reframes the problem entirely.
In these environments, knowledge does not belong only to the fastest thinker or the most confident speaker.
Knowledge emerges through relationships.
And this is where the connection to democratic learning becomes very clear.
Democratic societies require people who can question, collaborate, listen, and imagine possibilities that do not yet exist.
Those capacities are not developed simply by receiving information.
They grow when people experience what it feels like to explore the unknown together.
When learners experience not yet knowing together, they begin to understand something very important.
Not knowing is not a failure.
It is the beginning of discovery.
And perhaps this is one of the most important shifts we can make as educators.
Instead of seeing uncertainty as a problem that must be quickly solved, we can start seeing it as a space where learning becomes possible.
A space where curiosity gathers people together.
A space where play, exploration, and knowledge intertwine.
And a space where classrooms slowly transform into communities of inquiry.
Places where people do not simply learn answers.
They learn how to think together about the world.
And sometimes, that thinking begins with a very simple moment.
Someone notices something strange.
Someone asks a question.
And together we say:
“We don’t know yet.”
“But let’s find out.”
