My own inquiry process was quite similar to the descriptions provided in Carol Kuhlthau’s Information Search Process. I met the initiation phase with equal measures of excitement and trepidation. I view this task as a professional resource building opportunity, and am keen to create a high-quality product that I would be proud to show to my colleagues and leadership team, particularly at a time when advocacy for the role of the teacher-librarian is incredibly important. However, I also wanted to explore key areas that my workplace is investing time and resources into; to demonstrate how my skills attained while undergoing study to become a TL would be a valuable asset to the school. So, to me, this task is personal.
Selection did bring about a sense of optimism, as I felt comfortable in my decision to show people why the role of the teacher-librarian is so important to the inquiry process. This certainly gave me a sense of motivation. The exploration phase then moved me to a sense of frustration and doubt, as I wanted to know everything, and immediately. This was also the time I did start to waver from my original inquiry question, sometimes to the point of changing focus altogether. However, I reflected on the importance of this topic to my current professional practice, and worked towards refining my question based on the findings of my re-search. The addition of ‘inquiry-based learning‘ as a key term to my primary question has been the most fruitful change in terms of the breadth of supportive resources I found during my re-search, as was moving from the term ‘secondary’ to ‘high school’. This directed me to a number of international resources that provided relevant information, ideas, and practitioners to add to my PLC. When I needed to focus on Australian contexts, ‘guided inquiry’ yielded some excellent results. Learning to move quickly and efficiently between carefully selected terms was an interesting learning process, and a skill that I look forward to strengthening. I also I found that I did not set myself time limits, and by failing to do so, conducted re-search for much longer than I should have. I was genuinely interested in what I was finding, and would take the time to read, reflect and curate for later. However, I did need to be more realistic in setting time parameters, so I could continue on in a timely manner. Thankfully, the collection phase did bring some sense of direction and “the need for pertinent, focused information,” (Kuhlthau, 2018) though I also slipped back to the exploration phase on occasion. The transition from collection to satisfaction phase incurred a confidence dip, as I found I had curated a great deal of information (although had been told, and knew from common sense, that this was not a great idea). Going back through the resources did, at times, present a sense of doubt, as I would occasionally second guess myself over the validity of particular resources. However, seeing the process culminate in new resource creations – the final curated collection and the infographic - has presented a great sense of satisfaction, as well as clarity. A sense of achievement is something I hope to feel very soon, however, I am looking forward to starting again with another focused inquiry question, to further deepen my knowledge about inquiry learning, and the positive implications it has for our students, and for us, as life-long learners.
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