Pupils' questions can play a powerful role in helping them to develop conceptual understanding, but can also provide a stimulus for teacher learning. This article presents a series of stories that illustrate the challenges of capitalising on pupils' questions, given the complexity of decision-making required in the science classroom and the current accountability pressures that teachers experience. The project highlights the crucial role that teacher educators and mentors can play, as'critical colleagues' for early-career science teachers, in encouraging and opening up opportunities for teacher learning in the classroom.