A door slightly less familiar, but not too far removed from what I am used to; just a lick of paint and WD40 on the hinges.
Google Scholar is a more refined web search engine that concentrates its searches on academic and scholarly articles and texts. I started with the same search string as the Google search: “teacher librarian” AND ”inquiry learning”, which yielded 800 results. Again, articles by Kuhlthau appeared early in the search. Site and resource abstract cited key terms such as ‘collaboration’, and ‘partnerships’, prompting further consideration of my inquiry question. “Inquiry-based learning” and “guided inquiry” were also terms used in resources that were useful for my inquiry question, thus they were added to the search string. However, many results had a primary/elementary school focus, which also advised my following search string: Search String: “teacher librarian” AND secondary AND (“inquiry learning” OR “inquiry-based learning” OR “guided inquiry”) Yield: 608 This search required further adjustments to yield more focussed results. Advanced search was utilised, with dates set: 2010 – 2018, to ensure current relevancy. While this yielded a broad range of results for ‘teacher librarian’ and ‘inquiry learning’, there was no explicit link to support for classroom teachers evident in the abstracts provided. There remained a focus on primary contexts, on teacher librarians and information literacy, as well inquiry and technology. These topics also showed more citations that other texts, demonstrating that they are probably topics of interest. Formats included mostly articles, however there were a few reviews for books. Search String: “teacher OR school librar*” AND secondary (“inquiry learning” OR “inquiry-based learning” OR “guided inquiry”) Yield: 73 For this particular search, truncation was attempted in an effort to draw out resources about the school library or libraries, as well as the librarian, in an effort ascertain information about inquiry practice in high schools. Disappointingly, this direction was not supported by Google Scholar, and my search was revised back to ‘library’. Additionally, ‘school’ was added with the Boolean operator “OR” as an alternative option for ‘teacher’, thus trying to capture appropriate American texts. This search directed me to some excellent resources through the professional journal Teacher Librarian, however, as they were part of academic databases such as Proquest, the full text could not be accessed through this search. The right key? Google Scholar did provide options for advanced search, a date range to ensure timeliness of information, and highlighted citations, which can give an indication of the validity of the source. However, it did use ‘natural language’, thus need explicit teaching in how to execute better search results. Additionally, can be difficult to access all texts, as some are behind paywalls, which could result in frustration for the user. While Google Scholar provided a more refined set of results for my searches, the process did encourage me to reconsider the structure of my question, and to consider other alternatives: How can teacher librarians best support inquiry-based learning (or guided inquiry)? What partnerships are required for successful inquiry-based learning? I may have more luck with data bases.
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