Inquiry is not limited to the International Baccalaureate. However, as an inquiry-based approach to learning and teaching that can be traced back to the early 1960s, an approach to which the Library/ian is integral, there is much of theoretical and practical value about inquiry that we can take from the IB.
The IB document Ideal libraries: A guide for schools (2018, p. 9) – quoting Callison (2015) and Levitov (2016), who are almost certainly not writing about the IB – makes the point that “inquiry is more expansive than research, and facilitating it requires expertise beyond research methods”. Furthermore, as “libraries are where many inquiries begin and continue, the librarian is responsible for energizing and maintaining the inquiry process. Ideally, the librarian is trained in many ways of creating conditions for inquiry within and beyond the classroom.”
This echoes the point in the text under discussion, that “the teaching of inquiry skills represents a paradigm shift for school librarians” that is still underway (p. 53).
Before moving on to discuss what changes fundamentally when inquiry, especially Investigate, takes place in a digital environment, we should give some thought to this paradigm shift and what it demands of us in the library and the classroom.
References
- Callison, D. (2015). The evolution of inquiry: controlled, guided, modeled, and free. Santa Barbara: Libraries Unlimited.
- IBO. (2018). Ideal libraries: A guide for schools. Cardiff: International Baccalaureate Organisation (UK) Ltd.
- Levitov, D. (2016). School Libraries, Librarians, and Inquiry Learning. Teacher Librarian, 28-35.
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