Focus on Inquiry - Part 1

@Connie Koorevaar-Goecks I am sure we will see something from you soon 😊. Glad you could join in this months discussion. Make sure you continue and join us again in November when you have had chance to digest the next few chapters.

@Mary-Rose Grieve Thanks for joining in. It is never too late and important that you say you agree or not with others. Inquiry is certainly a process and helping students understand that they are not just finding answers is important. I think that it is important for our students to learn to be sceptical and critical about the information they find but also think that they need to find a balance. Not everyone is tying to con them, not everyone is trying to make them believe the wrong thing and it is therefore a school librarians job to find the balance between ensuring they are critical without taking the joy of finding out away.

@micwagMe too :)

@micwag I think I just said the same thing to @dawnwoods2000 further up when I replied to her. I do think a model helps to guide and gives enough flexibility for it to work however a school needs it to.

@Elizabeth apologies, this appears to have posted in the wrong place! The app on my phone was glitching and jumping all over the place!

@micwag no worries! Sorry to hear app is playing up but glad you are using it too :)

Good luck with your EPQ @micwag I look forward to hearing about your progress :)

Any progress that can be made to get away from the librarian means "books and shushing" is helpful. As @micwag comments, as professionals we know so much more than this stereotype. By indicating to teachers that we can lighten the load - prepare materials in advance as well as leading lessons, which will only be to there advantage. I often feel that by not being a 'teacher' in the academic sense that as librarians we are more approachable to students who might therefore be less afraid to admit confusion/the need for help. Similarly by not being attached to one specific department the library presence encourages the inquiry skills to be seen as bigger than a small sector of the curriculum

@WENDY WALKER I agree, our first battle is about helping teachers understand why inquiry is important and the skills that go along with it. I think many are frightened to admit that they do not have the skills so continue on the path that feels comfortable to them... Google searching...As long as students find an answer that is ok...

I have found that in being invited into the classroom allows the teacher to learn as well as the students. This only works as long as they are invested themselves. We have all been there where the teacher has taken the opportunity to mark their books whilst the librarian take the class.

Providing CPD is one way but the school needs to recognise the expertise of the school librarian and this certainly is not always the case. We do have to keep trying though.

The library can offer a well catalogued list of resources to assist the teachers in ensuring there are enough book options for their topic and if not, assist in finding more or digital options. The library can assist in reinforcing Inquiry model skills during library sessions. Lastly, the library can be an excellent repository for their shared knowledge.

@WENDY WALKER I think that might be something that @Darryl Toerien or @Jenny Toerien could point you towards. Not sure if there is a direct link between inquiry and grades as GCSE results but I am sure there is something...

I believe the greatest obstacle is consistency across the school in ensuring that the inquiry skills are taught/utilized across the whole school to enable the skills to be embedded in the children's future learning. If there is no formal inquiry model accepted and practiced within the school there will be a conflict of skills leading to no consistency meaning each year the children will need to learn new skills depending on which model the teacher is using.

@Connie Koorevaar-Goecks Agreed! School librarians have to find a way to make School Leaders how this could make a difference to teaching and learning... easier said than done though...

@WENDY WALKER This is certainly something that those in the FOSIL forum could help you with. You should tell them what you are up to and see what ideas they come up with. Lots of support if you are brave enough to ask the question. Goes back to our metacognition idea doesn't it... 😊.

Children ask questions all the time. I believe there is no greater way for them to learn than to help them find answers to those questions. IPC starts by asking what do the children think they know/what do they know for certain and what do they want to learn (Knowledge Harvest) per topic. The subjects (Science, Geography, etc) per topic will answer many of the questions the children raise. When I went to school we didn't use IPC so I wasn't familiar with it but I'm always astonished at how excited the children get with each new topic. An advantage of IPC topics are that they are circular in nature and each related topic builds on knowledge from the previous years related topic (Live and Let Live-mp1/Footprints from the past-mp2/Out of Africa-mp3).

@Connie Koorevaar-Goecks Certainly inquiry has far more meaning if it is related to something they are doing in the curriculum. Skills on their own are more difficult to embed and for students to recognise their importance.

@Tom Neilson - something I have taken a long time to work through is how important the Connect stage of FOSIL is, particularly in free inquiry. In more structured inquiries it can often be a simple brainstorming stage looking at 'what we as a class already know about this' - which is a good way into Wonder. However, if I look at the Skills Framework then right from Year 6 upwards Connect includes looking at sources of background information to generate ideas for inquiry. I know for myself that I often don't make enough of this stage - largely because in simpler inquiries lower down the school there isn't really time and we choose a different focus stage. It is important that for EPQ level students, for example, Connect includes the background reading they do 'around' their topic before they have identified a research focus. Wonder then involves working out what a good question looks like for this topic and what lines of inquiry they are interested in pursuing - but they probably won't settle on the final wording of their question until they are on that boundary between Investigate and Construct. (Kuhlthau's Information Search Process views this as the boundary between Exploration and Formulation, where students' thoughts become more focussed and they move from collecting relevant to pertinent information - similar to the Alberta Retrieving and Processing boundary - and is also quite a useful model to look at at this level).

It is important to acknowledge the 'messy' nature of inquiry. Students will move backwards and forwards between the stages of any model (hence the double headed arrows in FOSIL). The more complex the inquiry, the more backwards and forwards movement there will be.

While I like the 'Planning' aspect of the Alberta model, and think that perhaps that could be more explicit in FOSIL, I miss 'Connect' right at the start to locate the inquiry in prior knowledge. For younger years we often tend to downplay the 'product' right at the start of the inquiry and aim to get students to focus on understanding the topic. This reduces the desire to leap straight to designing a pretty poster/ glitzy presentation before they actually have anything worthwhile to say. For older students, who have more control over the pace of their inquiry, I do like the Alberta model's focus on planning their inquiry right from the start and the way 'Review and revise plan for the inquiry' appears all the way through to Sharing though.

I also miss the 'Construct' stage of FOSIL ( 'Building an accurate understanding based on factual evidence') in the Alberta model - 'make connections and inferences' is there in the Processing stage, but the first mention of 'new understandings' is in the Sharing stage, which seems quite late.

(BTW @Tom Neilson, @Elizabeth is right - we'd love to chat with you in the FOSIL Group forum too. We're all on a journey with inquiry and it's good to be able to support each other in that!)

See my answer for question 4.

@Jenny Toerien Thank you for this response. So interesting to read, amongst other things, how you vary your approach to the Connect phase depending on age group and other context.

@WENDY WALKER Delighted to hear you are considering using FOSIL more. There are some great EPQ resources on The FOSIL Group website here... https://fosil.org.uk/resources/ especially this one https://fosil.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Supporting-EPQs-at-Oakham.pdf which can also be downloaded as a word doc for you to edit. Have you joined the Forum on the FOSIL Group yet? They would love to hear about your Enquiry club! Sounds great!

@Elizabeth We use the International Primary Curriculum at our school which incorporates many aspects of the Model for Inquiry however it doesn't reinforce the model in a manner to ingrain the model for future learning I believe. • Scaffold for instruction - it's differentiated

• Gauge for feelings - has student rubricks for reflection

• Common language for teachers and students - set vocabulary per topic revealed during Big Picture

• Guide for students - the learning route is visually portrated on the wall

• Guide for monitoring - has teacher rubricks for assessment Though these aspects are available in IPC they do not model the process in a systematic way specific to creating an inqury model that they are able to generalize to future learning. I will be doing a research project this year to incorporate inquiry learning in a more systematic manner in the library for IPC topics.

@Connie Koorevaar-Goecks It is interesting to hear that your curriculum does incorporate some of these skills but the same in the UK curriculum it does not embed them... I look forward to hearing how your research project goes. If you can share it on The FOSIL Group forum that would be fantastic! Here is the link https://fosil.org.uk/forums/forum/inquiry-and-resource-design/

@WENDY WALKER It certainly is about a child's own understanding of how frustration and self belief are all part of the learning process. I wish I had understood all of this more as a child myself! I still have to remind myself when creating things these days... there is a lot of 'I don't know what I am doing and I can't do this' still in my head these days. Now I know about metacognition (which I have written on a post it on my wall) I can at least remind myself that it is normal to feel this way.

We certainly need to talk to students more about this to help them understand for themselves...

My thoughts reflect much of what has already been said, particularly @Tom Neilson Without proper guidance though an Inquiry Process students may feel the need to give up. The fear of failure can be detrimental to some students' progress, so the cyclical nature of Inquiry models offer a way through the feelings of despair; of failure and of being overwhelmed. For students to know that these feelings are part of the process is encouraging and it produces resilience which is a powerful life-skill.

@Bernadette O'Hanlon resilience is definitely a powerful life skill. I found it particularly interesting that it is found within inquiry as I had not thought about it much before reading Focus on Inquiry. Another useful hook to engage teachers.

@WENDY WALKER I agree that students become frightened of getting the wrong answer and this inhibits their ability to stretch themselves. As we all know we live in a system in the UK where we teach to the test but there are moments throughout secondary school where inquiry is carried out especially within year 7 and year 8. It is important that school librarians take every opportunity they have to engage with these teachers so we can help them support their students to think in a different way.

I think your description of our understanding is important. We do need to recognise that every student is an individual and come from different backgrounds and experiences. Many will have created an idea or opinion on what parent say, which is obvious as they are our first teachers. It is being able to open up those thoughts and ideas so they become something that they understand for themselves. This makes Inquiry essential.

Sorry to be so late to this discussion. I see Inquiry as a gift for the curious. It taps into the human instinct to explore, to question, to adapt and wrestle with what is known about the World. It matters because progress does not come with stagnation. Inquiry actively encourages the questioning of established 'truths'. The inquirer is an active agent and with this new insights are possible.

@Bernadette O'Hanlon Never too late Bernadette. I am glad you have found the time to join in. What a lovely way to describe inquiry! You have really captured the essence of it very well and I think I might be pinching this explanation at some point... with credit of course 😂