Discussing Education, Libraries and FOSIL With Elizabeth Hutchinson

[Darryl Toerien Keymaster]

Thanks, Elizabeth.

I was delighted that we were joined by Ruth Maloney* for Episode 16 of FOSIL, Education and School Libraries.

*Co-host with Elizabeth of Engaging and Empowering School Libraries.

 

[Darryl Toerien Keymaster]

On Wednesday evening of 22 January, Elizabeth and I met for Episode 17 – links to podcast and YouTube video – of our monthly FOSIL, Education and School Libraries podcast series. In this episode we provided some contextual information about the colleagues who will be sharing their valuable insights with us during the FOSIL 2025 Symposium on Saturday 8 February, which is free, online and will be recorded.

The Symposium marks 15 years of thoughtful and purposeful development of FOSIL (2010), and 6 years of the FOSIL Group (2019), which now numbers almost 400 members representing more than 35 countries.

Elizabeth and met in 2011, so she has been a companion on this journey since almost the very beginning.

These are my preparatory notes on colleagues in order of appearance, with Elizabeth introducing Ruth Maloney and Jannath Khanom, who she has a closer working relationship with. Both Ruth and Jannath have made deeply thoughtful contributions to the FOSIL Group Forums.

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I met Dianne and Jennifer at the IASL 2019 Conference in Dubrovnik, where I had been asked to deliver a keynote presentation – Between the Classroom and the Library (notice a recurring theme!) – following the IFLA 2019 World Library and Information Congress in Athens.

Dianne and Jennifer had been instrumental in developing the deeply thoughtful Alberta Inquiry Model as part of Focus on Inquiry: A Teacher’s Guide to Implementing Inquiry-based Learning. You and I hosted an extended discussion of this enormously helpful document during October, November and December of 2019, which culminated in an online Q&A with Dianne and Jennifer in January of 2020 – see Focus on Inquiry in the FOSIL Group Forum, which includes links to the discussion and webinar. Dianne also authored E&L Memo 2 | Focus on Inquiry: Reflections on Developing a Model of Inquiry for the FOSIL Group Epistemology & Learning Memos series, which I need to revitalise.

Also significant from our perspective is that Dianne was co-editor with Barbara Schultz-Jones of the IFLA School Library Guidelines (2015), followed by Global Action on School Library Guidelines (2015) and Global Action on School Library Education and Training (2019) in the IFLA / De Gruyter Publications series.

Also significant from our perspective, and also in the IFLA / De Gruyter Publications series, is that Dianne was co-editor with Barbara Schultz-Jones of Global Action for School Libraries: Models of Inquiry (2022). Three of the five models included in the book are Stripling’s Model of Inquiry (more on this later), FOSIL and the Alberta Inquiry Model. The book also included a chapter by Joseph Sanders and Jenny Toerien on Deep Collaboration by Teacher and Librarian to Develop an Inquiry Mindset using FOSIL (see also Curricular Inquiry: Learning Between the Library and the Classroom for an online discussion of this work between Joe and Jenny and here for the accompanying PPT presentation).

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Our relationship with Lee FitzGerald stretches at least as far back as 2021, when we wrote FOSIL: Inquiry As Mind Set, Skill Set, Tool Set and Community for her as Editor of ACCESS (Volume 35, Issue 2, June 2021), the national journal of the Australian School Library Association.

Since then, I have developed a close working relationship with Lee, going on to write six more articles for ACCESS, the last two with Lee: Re/Dis-Covering the Promise of Freedom Through Inquiry – Part 1 (Volume 38, Issue 3, September 2024) and Re/Dis-Covering the Promise of Freedom Through Inquiry – Part 2 (Volume 38, Issue 4, December 2024).

Lee, who is now also Adjunct Lecturer on the Master of Education: Teacher Librarianship course at Charles Sturt University, was previously Head of Service at Loreto Kirribilli in Sydney (Australia), an independent, Catholic school for girls from K-12. Lee oversaw an outstanding inquiry programme. She has remained in contact with Jo, who is the History Coordinator, particularly around the superb Grade 11 Ancient History inquiry. Lee and Jo have enormous experience of Guided Inquiry Design, and Jenny and I worked with them to reframe this inquiry through FOSIL, so I am very excited about that they will be sharing this extraordinary insight into inquiry with us.

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Blanchelande College in Guernsey (Channel Islands) is an independent, Catholic school for boys and girls from PK-12. While we will not talk about our inquiry programme during the Symposium, we have established Signature Work inquiries in all phases of the College, which are backbone for other inquiry-based work across phases and academic disciplines/ subjects, and reflect on them as often as possible in the FOSIL Group Forum, specifically in Inquiry and resource design.

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Mary-Rose Grieve | Hartland International School in Dubai (United Arab Emirates) is an independent school for boys and girls from PK-12, which offers a British education “through the National Curriculum for England.” Mary-Rose appears to me, like Elizabeth, to have been a companion on this journey for as long as I can remember. Her perspective is extraordinarily broad, and so particularly insightful. I am deeply envious of her broad and intimate knowledge of books, both non-fiction and fiction, that provoke and foster inquiry, especially for our youngest students.

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Ruth Maloney | Tonbridge Grammar School in Tonbridge (England, UK) is a “selective grammar school with academy status, educating girls between the ages of 11 and 16 (Grades 6-10) and girls and boys in the Sixth Form (Grades 11-12).”

Ruth’s perspective as a presenter is unique, in that they offer the International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme in Grades 6-8, the GCSE in Grades 9-10, and the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme in Grades 11-12. This is the same as Oakham School by the time we left, except that they also offered the A-level alongside the Diploma Programme.

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Jannath Khanom | Connaught School for Girls in London (England, UK) is a “state funded independent academy” for girls between the ages of 11 and 16 (Grades 6-10).

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David Harrow, Faye Marland, Nick O’Loughlin |  AKS Lytham in Lytham St Annes (England, UK) is an independent school for boys and girls from PK-12. David was Academic Deputy Head at Oakham School and was both a visionary advocate for FOSIL-based inquiry, and inquiry more broadly, and so was instrumental in the establishment of the FOSIL Group as a free and open community of inquiry centred on FOSIL, but not limited to it. Within a year of starting at AKS Lytham, David, Faye and Nick were responsible for enviable celebrations of students as engaged and empowered inquirers across a range of school phases and within a GCE and A-level educational context. The highest compliment that I can pay to David is that, had circumstance been different, Jenny and I would have followed him to AKS Lytham.

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Barbara Stripling, who [auspiciously, as far as I am concerned] shares a birthday with me, has been a formative influence in my professional development since I first stumbled into school librarianship in 2003.

In that year, Barbara co-edited Curriculum Connections Through the Library, which included a chapter on inquiry-based learning, and introduced me to her model of the inquiry process, and her approach to teaching and learning. This led me to Learning and Libraries in an Information Age (1999!), which Barbara edited, and in which she noted: “A primary emphasis on learning in school libraries represents a paradigm shift for our field, one that is not yet universally understood or effectively implemented. School [librarians] must step forward as instructional leaders in their schools to design library … programs that help students learn important ideas in the curriculum and learn how to learn in the information age.” This identifies an abiding concern with a paradigm shift that we have not yet fully made, and what brings us together for the Symposium.

Barbara also authored E&L Memo 1 | Learning to know and understand through inquiry for the FOSIL Group Epistemology & Learning Memos series, which I need to revitalise.

In view of this, I am both humbled and honoured to be co-authoring Teaching Inquiry as Conversation: Bringing Wonder to Life with Barbara, also for Bloomsbury Libraries Unlimited and in collaboration with Jessica Gribble, Senior Acquisitions Editor.

[Author]

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