Thank you both for your thoughtful and thought provoking replies.
I will tackle the IB, this is BETA testing after all and the IB inspectors who visited us for our 5 year review were certainly interested in FOSIL. Maybe Matt Rose and I can make a start and other IB Librarians can join us. If there is anyone else working with he MYP who would be interested in pursuing this with the IBO do say. I might start a fresh post on the Forum so that this is seen more widely and we can collate material and comments in one place. Darryl, have you ever managed to have any productive conversations with the IB about this, Anthony Tilke was the leader of my Level 3 IB training and I found him to be very open, I don’t think I’ve seen him here? Is he engaged with FOSIL?
Darryl, it is to try and resolve the same approach to the EE that you discussed that I decided to run the induction project. We have cohort after cohort who seek answers rather than taking a stance of wonder. I am sure that we can support this long term by making alterations lower down the school but this push at the start of year 12 seems like a necessary intervention particularly after GCSE.
Jenny, thank you so much. The idea of asking the students to become parliamentary researchers is excellent. I suspect we might even have a parent who could come and speak to them about this work, they will find it far easier to focus with that approach. The UK government has some excellent material produced by the Knowledge Exchange Unit available on their website. I take your point about the issue of briefing papers proposing a solution but I also remember carrying out research for lawyers as a Legal Librarians, often we were asked to find information, broad and reliable, from which the lawyers would draw conclusions. It is this open and curious research that I am hoping for and I think if I can design a research proforma which will provide a space for students to showcase their results then I will have a new focus for this project.
I might consider grouping them by subject area and asking them to present. I am keen to find an element of oracy practice in this project, part of my difficulty is the shear number of students, we do not have time to hear them all individually. Potentially we could ask them to present to parents at the sixth form open evening. This could take the form of an exhibition with parents primed with a selection of questions pulling in form the skills we want students to have developed or concerning the resources we want them to use. Another possibility might be through their ToK lessons, to use that opportunity to question their research.
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