@Stephanie Some of those questions would be good prompts to ask students

This is such a tricky one - students sometimes see it as too much effort to be critical. Even trying to teach these navigational or evaluative skills is sometimes boiled down to something formulaic or technical. EG: while many would use the CRAP test or something similar, there is research to show that even such tests can 'fail' to elicit the right kind of critical response. We need to be careful not to try to turn these bigger evaluative skills into technical formulae, as it is not that simple.

I think the policing role is taking things too far, but I do strongly feel that it is within our role to make the staff aware of how to comply with copyright rules, and to model best practice. This is part of teaching good digital citizenship and facilitating participatory culture, which I see as being at the forefront of the work of TLs.

@Elizabeth our ebook collection is definitely getting a workout with the isolation rules. The ebooks are definitely much more expensive to purchase for the library as a rule here too. You really have to weigh up how many uses you will get, considering many will expire at some point.

I would agree that focusing on what you CAN do is important. Also offering some tips to make teachers' lives easier - quick and easy ways to acknowledge sources, ways to track reasonable portions, ensuring if a reasonable portion is uploaded to the LMS, that it is removed when the course is finished, etc. Findings ways to shortcut the time it takes/the effort involved in complying with copyright would be one way to put a positive spin for staff.

In Australia there is no real training offered formally - you don't get it at university and then it is up to the individual school to offer training, and with crowded schedules, it often gets neglected. This is one area where TLs can be proactive. I have seen job descriptions for teacher-librarians where copyright compliance is one of their areas of responsibility.

@Elizabeth in Australia most schools are affiliated with either the relevant state education department or other governing body (eg for religious institute schools) and these bodies take care of the licencing. I think you would find in Australia that most librarians are savvy to what licences the school has and what they can and can't do. Getting this information across to the staff is the key issue. At a previous school, we provided 'mandatory' copyright training in summary form, and this stimulated a LOT of queries from teachers in the coming months. Even if teachers don't know the licences/rules, they know they can come to the TL and get the right advice.

@micwag this also tends to be an issue in my context. As a teacher-librarian who has teaching load, I have offered to put the correct acknowledgements in place before a resource is uploaded to our LMS, for example. It puts copyright in the spotlight for staff, but I agree, it isn't really their priority most of the time!

@Elizabeth And also for us to model best-practice with all of the resources we create. For example, I always model proper referencing with any sources I refer to in a presentation, and point out where I have sources images and what cc licence applies.

@hp I agree that libraries should lead the way in both showing users how to properly credit their sources, and to show/curate copyright-free resources.

Hi Elizabeth, I am here to join the conversation about copyright and school libraries, but I am guessing the chapter for this month is UK-focused, so I haven't actually read it! I have done some training re the copyright laws in Australia as they apply to libraries and schools, and our govt also provides a great website to help educational institutes called smartcopying. I feel that this is an area in general where schools and libraries could do with a lot more guidance.

Agreed with the general gist of this thread! Teaching students to be clever researchers and 'mine' the Wikipedia article for good references and interesting next steps is how I would use it. The same applies for a good academic article from a database.

@Elizabeth I like your idea with the catalogue and I think we could expand this to academic databases when working with high school students. Having a lesson or series of lessons where we teach target skills like skillful use of keywords and advance search options, narrowing a search etc to drill down to that one resource that will really help them. This could be contrasted with the Google search and looking at the different skills that are needed to know when you have found what you need. And circling back - important!

I agree this needs to be done early, done well, and done often. Teacher-librarians can work collaboratively with classroom teachers to integrate these skills across the curriculum so that it is not just something that we 'roll out' each time an inquiry unit comes around. TLs could work with teachers to integrate learning experiences with these 4 steps at different points in the regular curriculum. Students have to see skills being applied in different contexts to really see the transfer-ability of these skills.

I am late to the discussion again! But: I have used a variation on the CRAP test in my current school, but it does certainly have its limitations. I agree with Mike and other people who have commented on this thread: the test can be confusing and time consuming and not really hit the mark. I do think that having some kind of framework is still beneficial. We need to have a starting point from which students can learn and build their socio-cultural knowledge about how sources and research work in the real world.

@Elizabeth Thanks for the heads up re Fossil Group

@Elizabeth and @bathgatew I agree - it normally has to be pushed by the librarian who approaches teachers and offers to help. Once the teacher and the librarian have a good working relationship, I find that it is more of a two-way street, with teachers actively seeking the librarian for help with inquiry learning in their classroom. A good collaborative relationship can really yield great results: we have had our head of science work closely with us over the year to improve specific research skills of chem and biol students as we implement new senior syllabi. There were research requirements and skills in the syllabus docs that our students (and some teachers) were not familiar with, so we worked together to come up with an approach to professional development and classroom teaching so that the students could rise to the challenges presented. It was a really nice partnership, but this is so rare. The offer to help is often not taken up when teachers are busy and feel under pressure. Talking to the librarian or inviting them into class can seem like something that will just take more time, unless the teacher values the librarian as someone who can make their job easier.

I think this book would be a valuable resource for teachers as a starting point for inquiry learning. It is very accessible and the slim size might make staff more likely to read it! I do think that teachers wanting to learn about inquiry learning in depth would be well served to supplement this resource with some others, for example Kuhlthau et al and Kath Murdoch's work springs to mind as these authors provide a more comprehensive coverage of the nuances of inquiry learning. Mackenzie's book is a wonderful start, though.

In my current school, there has previously been an interdisciplinary inquiry project that lasted for a whole school week, culminating in a final project and presentation. I had initially seen this as a 'free' inquiry because of the flexibility allowed, however, on closer reflection I now see that this was actually a guided inquiry. The school has since pulled this activity from the program due to timing constraints. Another guided inquiry at our school is a year 9 and 10 history project that students can choose in Term 3 where there is free choice of topic, resources and process (but the outcome must be an analytical essay). Student have opportunity to submit their work to one of our state's essay writing competitions if they wish. This task normally garners quite a bit of enthusiasm and originality from the students because they are not constrained by curriculum requirements. I would LOVE to see some students working on a free inquiry but this would require quite a proposal to our leadership team to demonstrate the benefits (and how we could still meet our syllabus requirements)

It can be difficult in a high school setting (particularly in the senior years) to co construct inquiries based purely on student interests - this is because of the way our curriculum is designed to fit national and state standards for assessment. We still try as much as we can to enable students to find topics that interest them. IN terms of understanding what students are passionate about, classroom teachers can build this knowledge progressively through the year. There is a great post in Cult of PEdagogy about using dialogue journals for students to share their interests and reflect on their learning journey - perhaps something like this might be useful. As a TL, I find that I know quite a lot about my library 'high flyers' because of their book choices and requests, but when I walk into a classroom for library teaching, I don't know a great deal about some of the students. That's where old fashioned conversations come in handy. I always tell students they are most likely to get something out of the assignment if they focus on something that interests them or reminds them of a past experience.