Inquiry

Traditionally, the teacher librarian may have had a specific curriculum that was to be taught at various grade levels across the school year. This type of curriculum often centered around the promotion of reading, library skills, and research. The curriculum was often taught during scheduled library time in the elementary grades or as units of study connected to the language arts curriculum of the middle or high school.

Today, a more cutting edge approach is to have a much broader "curriculum of possibilities" that can be embedded into various learning experiences across the school. This "just in time" approach has a much higher probability of making a difference not only for the teacher librarian's concerns, but also boosting the goals and objectives created by the classroom teacher. Embedded experiences are tracked through a simple spreadsheet by teacher and grade level in order to assess not only coverage of the teacher librarian’s initiative, but also as a record of interventions.

The professional staff of the LLC and classroom teachers have the best chance of success with inquiry if they do comparisons of the various models and then adopt a flavor of their own. Even better, those who mentor the students themselves in coming up with their own model of inquiry do these young learners a great favor.

An attempt to teach inquiry in short bursts to scheduled elementary school children or teaching one-shot lessons to older students in the use of databases at the request of teachers has little hope of making any lasting difference for learners. Academic librarians who encounter students with these compressed experiences, or no instruction in inquiry at all, complain about students who are unprepared to do inquiry their first year in college. College librarians used to doing one-shot database instructions have made strides in their most recent ACRL Standards (1) documents by advocating embedding inquiry into the curriculums of the various disciplines. Across the age groups, a better way seems to encourage the integration and coteaching of inquiry into classroom learning experiences as a part of instructional time. The research about teaching skills at the point of need, or “just in time,” makes it plain to see that embedded approaches are far superior to isolated and separate curriculums.

It is very instructive to examine various models of inquiry that have been created before as the professional staff of the LLC create a model that they will use across the school. Comparing what has been created by the experts can help stimulate ideas. Check out the following collection of inquiry models:

• Earlier models of information literacy/inquiry: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxsaWJyMjUwZmFsbDIwMTJ8Z3g6NzZjMTA2YTIyNGJiYWY1MQ&pli=1
• More recent models of inquiry: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1T7koO_wYvSJE2m1YNpo0RWsbPGiqis4IqH-enudUgXU/edit

As students themselves are introduced to the concept of inquiry, they will also want to create their own model that grows in sophistication as they grow as learners. Having them draw their own models as a part of a reflective Big Think (2) after a research experience helps them begin to come into command of their own learning. This is a priceless gift to give them.

The Emergence of Design Thinking

A trend in business and industry today is to assemble a variety of minds with varying expertise in search of a new and innovative product. The concept was developed by IDEO and their toolkit can be downloaded at: https://www.ideo.com/post/design-kit

Since its introduction, a variety of design thinking models have emerged. Some of them can be seen at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1awkvi53EazeQi_vk3afWkL_xTaO7_EV3v8swMqFsbiw/edit

Librarians and other professional staff of the LLC have discovered that by weaving design thinking and inquiry together, the resulting learning experiences become more powerful. As young learners begin to investigate the creation of a new product, invention, strategy or project, they will often discover that they need more background knowledge than they possess. Thus, they can rely on inquiry methods to build enough background or connections to existing world practices that will help them on their way. The one drawback is, however, that traditional ideas may be a drag on creative thinking and actual innovation, so learners/inventors often have to reject what other people have invented to solve a problem. The challenge is often to ignore the "cannots" of the past and start afresh.

Help in creating cotaught Design Thinking learning experiences is at: https://sites.google.com/view/umbrellacreation/home