This is a very perceptive question, Vittoria.
CWICER – Connect Wonder Investigate Construct Express Reflect – is, or was, essentially FOSIL.
When I first adopted and began developing FOSIL from the Empire State Information Fluency Continuum (ESIFC) in 2012, FOSIL stood for Framework for Oakham School Information Literacy. In 2013 Elizabeth Hutchinson, who was then Head of the Schools’ Library Service in Guernsey, attended a workshop that I was running for International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Programme (DP) librarians. Elizabeth adopted FOSIL and renamed it CWICER, which better suited her/ their situation.
As my understanding of the ESIFC grew – like you I was on a very steep learning curve – I began to realise that what I had thought was a framework of information literacy skills was actually a model of the inquiry process and an underlying framework, or more properly a continuum, of inquiry skills that included information literacy skills. By this time interest in FOSIL from colleagues beyond Oakham School had grown to the point where some sort of community of mutual support was desirable. FOSIL was renamed Framework Of Skills for Inquiry Learning to more accurately describe its purpose and enlarged scope, and the FOSIL Group was formed in April of 2019. At this point, Elizabeth renamed CWICER to FOSIL.
The distinction/ relationship between information literacy and inquiry is an important one, and one that needs fuller treatment, but basically, FOSIL develops information literacy skills within an inquiry process. I will later attach a leaflet that I produced for CILIP’s School Libraries Group – FOSIL-based inquiry for school librarians: an introduction – that explains this in slightly more detail.
Welcome on our journey.
Edit: FOSIL-based inquiry for school librarians: an introduction may be downloaded from here.
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