Thank you for this update, Rachel – you share valuable insight.

I am currently reading Teaching as a Conserving Activity by Neil Postman (1979), which revisits some of the ideas in Teaching as a Subversive Activity, co-authored with Charles Weingartner in 1969. In the decade between the two books, Postman observed two pitfalls facing inquiry (pp. 213-214):

The first is that too many teachers have used the inquiry method as an excuse to bypass the teaching of any systematic content. … It is, from my point of view, unacceptable in our present situation to have students learn inquiry skills without having them applied to important subjects. … A second reason … is that in the hands of a teacher with a technocrat mentality, the inquiry method loses its spirit and is reduced to a set of mechanical procedures.

These two pitfalls face us still today, and I am increasingly convinced that it is our deep understanding of inquiry as a stance [or spirit, in Postman’s terms] of wonder and puzzlement that gives rise to a dynamic learning process of coming to know and understand the world through subject area content that enables the library/ian to help their classroom colleagues avoid these pitfalls and so become integral to a collaborative educational process.

This, however, will take as long as it takes and demands of us perseverance.

Jenny and I are working with Barbara Stripling on a proposal for the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) national conference in Tampa Bay (19-21 October), which addresses these very issues, which I will share as soon as we know the outcome.

Wishing you continued success.

P.S. For some reason your reply above was pending until I released it – if any of your posts do not appear immediately, please let me know and I will investigate.