Recommendations for future practice

Inquiry learning is all about asking good questions and learning how to learn and on the whole I would have to say that the ILA was a very effective Guided Inquiry learning task. Inquiry learning as a pedagogy is effective because students are required to “answer their own questions”. It is accepted that certain content is prescribed by any curriculum, but it is essential to provide a “hook” to get students attention; this can then followed by an invitation to explore a part of the content that they find particularly exciting or attention grabbing. The ILA definitely achieved that objective when the survey completed by the students graphically illustrated to them that we have only one earth and quite a few more “earths” would be required to support us if everyone lived the typically wasteful first world lifestyle that we do. 

Inviting students to explore ways to alleviate a part of their “ecological footprint” in order to “save the world” gave them a feeling of power and control; not only because they could do something about a major world problem, but also because they could choose a part of the problem that interested them in particular. This achieves the objective of making students feel like “masters of their own destiny” and in so doing makes the learner feel more responsible for their own learning.

Another aspect of the ILA that I felt worked well was the fact that the students were given ample time to explore and produce the product. An entire term was allocated to the task (with various deadlines along the way so that students were not tempted to leave things until the last minute). However, when the teacher found towards the end of term that the students had really not had enough time to complete things to her satisfaction she negotiated with leadership to organise an extension on the project. Kuhlthau has cited “lack of time” as being a problem when doing inquiry based learning in her book Guided Inquiry: Learning in the 21^st century so it was very gratifying to observe the teacher appreciating the importance of sufficient time. Time is also important for the instructional team to get together and do their planning. This does not appear to be a problem in this school as great importance is placed on the involvement of the teacher-librarian and collaborative teaching in general. Sufficient time is always allocated for “instructional team” meetings.

A potential problem for inquiry learning tasks identified by Kulthau’s studies at Rutgers University was the confusion of roles. Fortunately this has not emerged as a problem at this school as the members of the instructional team have a mutually accepted philosophical base of the importance and relevance of constructivist learning.  They share a commitment to the development of students’ information literacy and understand that good collegial collaboration is essential for successful inquiry learning support.

Clearly identified roles and collaboration had enabled the librarian to anticipated the need for printed matter on the subject before the task was administered. She had ordered relevant and up to date books beforehand. These were ready and waiting as the students started their project. The librarian also demonstrated effective internet search strategies and the identification of valid and reliable internet information.  In addition to this she modelled effective ways of keeping a record of references in order to build up a Bibliography.

A further potential problem could have been a poorly designed assignment, but once again this was not the case here. The assignment had been specially designed for the course and the entire term was used for the assignment. This meant that information literacy was acquired during the course of the assignment. Skills were not taught in isolated lessons on a once off basis, with no relevance to “real life” situations. There was no “teaching to the test” and indeed the students were expected and encouraged to take responsibility for their own learning.

As this is a private school, there were not as many issues with “blocked sites” as tends to happen with EQ, plus there were ICT specialists on hand at the school to quickly remedy any problems as soon as they arose. This prevented the technical frustrations that often go hand-in-hand with the use of technology. Teenagers can become quite easily “put off” and distracted by technical “glitches”. Fortunately these were not an issue.

ACARA has not specifically mentioned the development of literacy skills. This places the responsibility of IL development into the hands of TLs who will “need to examine the dimensions of the Curriculum to find the elements of information literacy that are present, and make links between these elements”.  (Lupton 2012). Students conducted their own research and produced meaning from that experience. Primary data in the form of graphs, interviews, surveys and photographs were required as part of the task. The data obtained then needed to be analysed and reported. Students received demonstrations on how to analyse graphs and write logical and meaningful sentences about their data thus helping to build excellent information literacy skills.

In Step 4 of the task, emphasis of the iterative nature of inquiry emerged in the instruction, “It is also expected that as you proceed with your research you will develop and/or refine your research focus by developing new inquiry questions and research strategies”. Although not explicitly stated in Kuhlthau’s ISP, this circular or spiral pattern of inquiry learning is part of many inquiry learning models (eg Brunner's Inquiry Process). The circular nature of learning was certainly illustrated in this ILA.

Students are usually unprepared for the feelings of anxiety and frustration experienced during the early stages of an inquiry process. This is illustrated in some of the student comments from the second questionnaire, when the students would have been experiencing the doubt, confusion and frustration of the exploration stage of Kuhlthau’s ISP.

“I’m very confused about what I’m supposed to be doing and what information I am supposed to be looking for”, and, 

“I find it difficult when the teacher is trying to teach us things but I’m still not sure of the basics so I can’t learn more about something I don’t know” as well as 

“I didn’t really receive much help from my teacher therefore I didn’t understand (to the full extent) what I am researching”

Kuhlthau points out that “a large part of the instructional team’s work is assisting students through those troubling times of uncertainty”. (Kuhlthau, 2007). When students are going through this phase and these emotions they tend to think that they are the only ones experiencing increased uncertainty. They are usually relieved to discover that these feelings are common and to be expected.  The instructional team can support students during these emotional upheavals by scaffolding, reassuring and generally tailoring interventions in an enabling and enriching way. This gradually builds up their confidence and tenacity and helps students to develop the emotional maturity of knowing that the uncertain, frustrated feelings are normal; will happen again, and can be overcome again!

Part of the inquiry process is to flounder and struggle a little. But most teachers of young adolescents will attest the fact that teenagers are notoriously impatient! Therefore I would suggest a Blogsite or Facebook page that can be used as a student collaborative problem solving resource (or brains trust!) to support each other when the “storms” arise.  The teacher would need access to the page as well and it would exist with the understanding that it is not for gossip or “general whinging” but as a place to go to when timely assistance can be obtained, mainly from peers. It would also be a place where students would be gently and constantly reminded that they are responsible for their own learning because learning is not ‘something the teacher can give you’. It often helps to hear an instruction rephrased in terminology that you are used to hearing and this is something that could be accomplished on a shared site. One of the comments written on the questionnaire reflected this fact.

“Although I was confused at the beginning, with help from a few of my peers I was able to finally get on track and complete my assignment to what I think was of satisfactory standards.”

This type of problem solving ‘cyberspace’ place would also be useful for instructors to become aware of any problems that would need intervention from the instructional team, rather than just a nudge in the right direction from a peer.

One of the things I would change if I were to conduct research like this again would be to reword the questionnaires.  As mentioned previously the wording in questions 1 and 6 of the last questionnaire could be seen to be referring to the same thing. I would also provide examples of the types of responses to put into the questions enquiring about “what was easy” and “what was difficult” when doing research. Ensuring that the students had sufficient time to think and provide detailed answers for the first two questionnaires would also be a priority.

Although the task did possess aspects of information literacy that moved it into the Transformative window of the GeST model (Lupton 2002), namely “Identify a strategy that could be implemented (either by you or your family or more widely in the community) to reduce their ‘footprint factor’, I think this could have been emphasised more. Perhaps students could have shared it more widely in the community and indeed the world by creating a class blog. Perhaps inviting other classes that are doing similar projects in Australia and around the world could be invited to join in or comment. Maybe even a letter to a journal or newspaper or Member of Parliament? This would have moved the inquiry task further into the Situational and Transformative windows of the GeST model (Lupton 2002).

 In conclusion, I have thoroughly enjoyed my exploratory journey into Inquiry Learning. Now that I have experienced it, I cannot think of a better way to inspire students to learn. I hope to create an inquiry task of my own for students under my care one day, and I will certainly make good use of the learning experiences that I have gained watching others learn via Guided Inquiry instruction!