Metaphors such as ‘knowledge production” and “knowledge construction” might hinder the “deep understanding” championed by McKenna and Boughey (2022). To the extent that these metaphors equivocate between knowledge, belief and assertion, we risk introducing an incoherent concept of knowledge into our educational practices. This is likely to lead students to confuse performance with genuine learning, and the feeling of knowing with knowing something. In contrast to this approach, I suggest that we shift our focus away from knowledge production and towards inquiry – understood as a difficult encounter between self and world marked by friction, resistance and error. I argue that such an approach is more likely to foster long-term, agentic understanding on the part of students and teachers alike.