Darryl Toerien has written an article – “As We Begin, So Shall We Go”: FOSIL as Means to a “Transcendent and Honourable End” – for Synergy (Volume 22, Number 1, June 2024), the journal of the School Library Association of Victoria (SLAV).

The article will become publicly available in October with the publication of Volume 22, Number 2, but is shared here (download as PDF) with the permission of the Editor, Dr Susan La Marca.

This article represents my fullest attempt so far to develop the philosophy and epistemology of FOSIL-based inquiry, or a theory of the role of the library in the student’s intellectual experience.

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Snapshot

Philosophically, FOSIL (Framework Of Skills for Inquiry Learning) is an evolving theory of the inquiry-centred instructional role of the school librarian through which the school library becomes integral to the educational process, properly understood. In doing so, school becomes integral to broader efforts to strengthen the reality-based community of error-seeking inquirers upon which our imperilled democratic order depends. Practically, then, FOSIL is a model of the inquiry process based on the work of Barbara Stripling as expressed in the evolving ESIFC (Empire State Information Fluency Continuum), which is undergirded by a PK-12 framework of learning skills – metacognitive, cognitive, emotional, social and cultural – and a growing collection of resources that support the systematic and progressive development engaged and empowered inquirers within the context of subject area teaching. FOSIL is also a community of inquiry – the FOSIL Group – focused on FOSIL, but not exclusively so.