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[Darryl Toerien Keymaster]

I am reminded that on 18 August 2023 I presented my chapter at the IFLA Information Literacy Section’s launch of Libraries Empowering Society through Digital Literacy.

The recorded presentation may be viewed here on YouTube (14m08s).

[Darryl Toerien Keymaster]

Episode 32 of FOSIL, Education and School Libraries (recorded on Saturday 19 August 2026) is now available: Reading Is Inquiry: Helping Students Make Sense of Their World.

We were again joined by Gabrielle Mace for this special and final episode in this series.

Gabrielle is a literacy consultant, former Head of Library Services and Teacher Librarian, whose work focuses on reading culture, inquiry and the role of school libraries in developing engaged, thoughtful readers and learners. She has worked with inquiry throughout her career and is currently exploring the intersection between deep reading, inquiry and student engagement in her practice.

—

Gabrielle’s question that we explored answers to in this episode was:

7. Reading as inquiry conversation | Yours and Barbara’s concept of inquiry as conversation has made me think differently about reading. I’ve been observing what happens when students need to read because they genuinely need the information to resolve uncertainty, including voluntarily returning to something they’ve already read because new evidence has changed its possible meaning. | Do you see reading itself as an inquiry conversation, and are reading and inquiry more deeply connected than we sometimes acknowledge in schools?

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My preparatory notes follow below.

Yes.

Revisit Jacques Maritain from previous Episode

“Nothing is more important than the events which occur within that invisible universe which is the mind of [a person]. And the light of that universe is knowledge. If we are concerned with the future of civilization we must be concerned primarily with a genuine understanding of what knowledge is, its value, its degrees, and how it can foster the inner unity of the human being.”

Not just information—”inert ideas”, as Whitehead (1929) puts it—so what is knowledge and how do we get it? Again Whitehead—the joy of discovering that ideas can help students make sense of the stream of events that pours into their lives, is their lives, which is reality.

Paulo Freire: Paulo Freire’s The importance of the act of reading (1983), in which he observes that

“reading the world precedes reading the word, and the subsequent reading of the word cannot dispense with continually reading the world” (p. 5).

Now, as Norman Beswick (1967) noted

“some knowledge [of the world/ reality], truly, comes from experience and experiment [reading the world]; most knowledge from record [reading the word], in the widest McLuhan-like sense” (p. 201).

This is vitally important, because it broadens our understanding of what it means to read, and, indeed, what can be read. And, in case it is not obvious, this is inquiry—coming to know and understand reality through learning to accurately and dynamically read the world (experience and experiment) and the word (record).

Simone Weil: Developing attention—making yourself fully available—is of utmost importance. Attention cannot be forced, but can be captured by words that are worthy of attention, words that are revelatory.

I have been giving much thought to reading [and writing—still to come] throughout the inquiry process:

• Connect | Reading to engage with the text intellectually and emotionally
• Wonder | Reading to enter into dialogue with the text
• Investigate | Reading to make sense of/ know the text (what is the text saying to me?)
• Construct | Reading to find meaning in/ understand the text (what does the text mean to me?)
• Express | Reading to communicate personal knowledge and understanding
• Reflect | Reading to reflect on learning

Moreover, inquiry is communal/ conversational—elsewhere (1970/2005), Freire writes that

“apart from inquiry, apart from the praxis, individuals cannot be truly human, [because] knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other” (p. 72).

Now school, in my experience, does not view inquiry in relation to reading in this way, or at least not coherently and consistently.

[Darryl Toerien Keymaster]

This year I had a 15-minute session with Year 9 students—in Forms rather than teaching Sets—on the first day of term as part of their Academic Induction programme, which was helpful.

I re-read Whitehead’s (1929) The aims of education over the summer. In it he says that

“From the very beginning, the child should experience the joy of discovery. The discovery which they have to make, is that general ideas give an understanding of that stream of events which pours through their life, which is their life.” (emphasis added)

This is important for three reasons.

Firstly, from the perspective of the Library. This brings to mind Douglas Knight’s (1968) observation that the two major and unique functions of a library are that it is space for (1) the meeting of mind and ideas, and (2) the development of ideas in the mind. Moreover, as Ruth Anne Davies (1969/1979) observes in her landmark work, The school library media program: Instructional force for excellence,

because “the library…program and the educational program are interdependent and inseparable…perspective in viewing the function and role of the school library…program [must begin] logically by building a historical understanding of education itself.”

This, then, establishes a deep and vital link between the library programme and the educational programme.

Secondly, from the perspective of the Year 9 Signature Work, which is centrally important to the Library’s inquiry-centred instructional programme (see IFLA School Library Guidelines), and by extension that of the College. The Signature Work consists of a number of lessons that follow a logical order, in that they step students through the stages of the inquiry process. During the course of these lessons, students are introduced to a number of ideas that might qualify as “general ideas [that] give an understanding of that stream of events which pours through their life, which is their life”—work still to be done here, also in relation to Willard’s (2002) four main factors in the realm of thought (ideas, images, information and thinking). However, I had not considered these [general] ideas as an organising principle, in that each lesson could/ should be centred on one—or more, if necessary to move the inquiry forward—clearly defined ideas. For example:

• Lesson 00 (Induction)
  • Idea: The only true measure of success is how well you deal with reality [which includes your Signature Work] (Willard)
  • Idea: Think globally and act locally
• Lesson 01
  • Idea: Reading the world (experience) precedes reading the word (record of experience), after which you cannot read one without also reading the other (Freire)
  • Idea: In order to learn you must desire to learn (Peirce), and because it is always wrong to believe something without sufficient evidence (Clifford), you will need to provide evidence of your desire to learn [for example, annotating your independent reading]
• Lesson 02
  • Idea: …

Thirdly, in relation to the College’s values, which are (1) Joy in Learning, (2) Joy in Service, and (3) Joy in Faith. The joy of discovering that certain ideas help us to make sense of reality—which is a central feature of our definition of inquiry*—not only links the library’s programme with the College’s educational programme, but also with one of its core values.

I will update further as Lesson 01 takes shape for Monday, and also share Lesson 00 (Induction).

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*Inquiry is a stance of wonder and puzzlement that gives rise to a dynamic process of coming to know and understand the world and ourselves in it as the basis for responsible participation in community.

[Darryl Toerien Keymaster]

Episode 31 of FOSIL, Education and School Libraries (recorded on Saturday 29 August 2026) is now available: Inquiry as Conversation: Who Does the Thinking?.

We were again joined by Gabrielle Mace for this special episode.

Gabrielle is a literacy consultant, former Head of Library Services and Teacher Librarian, whose work focuses on reading culture, inquiry and the role of school libraries in developing engaged, thoughtful readers and learners. She has worked with inquiry throughout her career and is currently exploring the intersection between deep reading, inquiry and student engagement in her practice.

Gabrielle’s questions that we explored answers to in this Episode:

1. Inquiry as conversation | A central proposition of Inquiry as Conversation is that inquiry is fundamentally conversational: with ideas, information, other people and ourselves. | What becomes possible when we understand inquiry in this way, rather than primarily as a process students move through? (Reference: Chapter 2, pp. 15-22)

2. From research process to knowledge construction | When Barbara discusses the development of her model, she describes a shift from a research-driven process model towards an inquiry model grounded in constructivism and social constructivism, where learners actively construct knowledge through their experiences and interactions rather than simply acquire information. | What changes in our teaching when we genuinely understand inquiry as knowledge construction rather than information acquisition? And what does the social dimension of constructivism add to that process? (Reference: Chapter 3, pp. 31-35)

3. Revision, evidence and intellectual humility | One idea in the book that particularly interests me is the changing relationship between the inquirer and what they think they know. In my own inquiry design, I deliberately use new evidence that can destabilise an earlier, perfectly plausible interpretation. Darryl and Barbara discuss ‘adaptability and resilience’ and the dynamic nature of inquiry requires this mindset. | Is the willingness for students to say “I may have been wrong” and to reconstruct understanding when the evidence demands it, an essential disposition of genuine inquiry? (Reference: Chapter 4, p. 49)

4. Where does inquiry reside? | The book has made me think about where the intellectual work of inquiry actually resides. In The Student Detective, I deliberately create a bounded, curated information environment so that students can spend more of their time reading closely, evaluating evidence, making connections, discussing competing interpretations and constructing and revising explanations rather than formal research. | How do you think about the relationship between information-seeking and these other dimensions of inquiry? Are there different ways of designing the information environment depending on the kind of inquiry thinking we are trying to develop?

5. Inquiry in the age of generative AI | The book’s argument feels particularly urgent in an environment where generative AI can provide an immediate, fluent answer and potentially remove much of the productive struggle involved in inquiry. At the same time, AI makes questions of authority, evidence, interpretation and reliability even more important. | Does inquiry as conversation become more important, rather than less, in an AI-rich information environment?

6. Instructional mindset and the gradual release of skills | In the chapter on Teaching the Skills and Attitudes of Inquiry, you and Barbara argue that before we plan instruction, we need to clarify our own instructional mindset – including what we want students to understand, how we teach through conversation rather than delivery, and ultimately how we enable students to become independent learners. You also draw on the Gradual Release of Responsibility, where the cognitive work shifts from teacher-driven, to shared, and ultimately to student-driven. | What does that gradual release look like in genuine inquiry? How do we know when we’re providing the scaffolding students need, and when we’re actually doing too much of the intellectual work for them? (Reference: Chapter 8, pp. 105-106)

—

Note: We didn’t get to the final question, so we will be discussing it in our next episode.

7. Reading as inquiry conversation | Yours and Barbara’s concept of inquiry as conversation has made me think differently about reading. I’ve been observing what happens when students need to read because they genuinely need the information to resolve uncertainty, including voluntarily returning to something they’ve already read because new evidence has changed its possible meaning. | Do you see reading itself as an inquiry conversation, and are reading and inquiry more deeply connected than we sometimes acknowledge in schools?

—

Elizabeth’s blurb

In Part 2 of our conversation with Gabrielle Mace, we continue exploring the ideas behind Teaching Inquiry as Conversation. You can listen to Part 1 here.

This time, we ask a deceptively simple question: who is actually doing the thinking?

We explore what it means for students to construct knowledge rather than simply acquire information; why changing our minds in response to evidence is an important part of inquiry; and what happens when teachers provide so much support that they begin doing the intellectual work for students.

We also consider how generative AI changes the information environment, and why the role of the school librarian in developing increasingly independent inquirers may matter more than ever.

And, as usual, the conversation leaves us with more questions than answers.

Links

The Student Detective — Gabrielle’s structured inquiry experience that transforms the way students read, think and collaborate.

Teaching Inquiry as a Conversation: Bringing Wonder to Life (2026) by Darryl Toerien and Barbara Stripling.

[Darryl Toerien Keymaster]

Episode 30 of FOSIL, Education and School Libraries (recorded on Saturday 22 August 2026) is now available: What Happens When We Let Students Wonder?.

Gabrielle Mace, joined us for this special episode.

Gabrielle is a literacy consultant, former Head of Library Services and Teacher Librarian, whose work focuses on reading culture, inquiry and the role of school libraries in developing engaged, thoughtful readers and learners. She has worked with inquiry throughout her career and is currently exploring the intersection between deep reading, inquiry and student engagement in her practice.

—

Elizabeth’s blurb

In this episode, we’re joined by Gabrielle Mace to explore the connections between deep reading, inquiry and the school library. We discuss Gabrielle’s work developing immersive inquiry experiences, the ideas in Teaching Inquiry as a Conversation, and what it means to create a culture of inquiry in schools. Along the way, we explore curiosity, conversation, student agency and the important role school librarians can play in helping students become thoughtful, independent learners.

Links

The Student Detective — Gabrielle’s structured inquiry experience that transforms the way students read, think and collaborate.

Teaching Inquiry as a Conversation: Bringing Wonder to Life by Darryl Toerien and Barbara Stripling.

 

[Darryl Toerien Keymaster]

Episode 29 of FOSIL, Education and School Libraries (recorded on Sunday 2 August 2026) is now available: Inquiry as Conversation: FOSIL, School Libraries and the Future of Learning.

Barbara Stripling joined us for this special episode, and I asked her the following question to get us going:

• Inquiry as conversation
  • There was a shift from a resource-centred view of the library in 1970s to a student-centred view in the 1980s
  • Brainstorms and blueprints: Teaching library research as a thinking process (1988) was the result of a conversation between you and your colleague and friend, Judy Pitts
  • Curriculum connections through the library (2003) marked the shift from a research process to an inquiry process for you, in which you introduced your model of the inquiry process
  • Your model then became integral to the New York City Information Fluency Continuum (NYCIFC, 2009)
  •  The NYCIFC was then endorsed by New York State and became the Empire State Information Fluency Continuum (ESIFC, 2012)
  • The ESIFC was then re-imagined (2019)
  • Now, the re-imagined ESIFC is scheduled to be re-imagined again (2026/7)
  • Why is this conversation, which stared more than 50 years ago for you, still worth having?

Priorities for me going forward are:

• Paulo Freire’s notion that inquiry–coming to know and understand reality–is a dynamic interplay between reading the world [through experience] and the word [through the record of experience, both our own and those of others].
• Something vitally important happens between making sense of information about the world–Investigate–and finding meaning in that information–Construct–which is worthy of greater attention.
• Dallas Willard’s four main factors involved in the realm of thought–ideas, images, information and thinking–will be helpful, here, both in terms of designing and supporting inquiry, but also clarifying the role of the library/ian in this.
• Barb and I devoted quite some time to discussion the role of deep reading in the inquiry process, and there is scope for doing so for writing, especially in terms of writing to make sense of and find meaning in.
• More broadly, then, to make a case for a liberal education with inquiry as distinguishing feature.

[Darryl Toerien Keymaster]

Thanks, Elizabeth and Alyssa.

I have taken the liberty of moving this topic to this Forum, because it addresses broader concerns raised here, and while the Topics in this Forum have not been updated in some time, they may still be useful.

I have found it helpful to have the following engineering adage in mind: a system is perfectly designed to achieve the results it gives you.

This is helpful because it allows us to step back and consider the incentives and support for engagement with FOSIL as Professional Development (PD), as well as disincentives and obstacles. In our school, for example, engagement with FOSIL is built into our medium term / unit plan (see below), and reflection on that engagement into our appraisal process. This, in turn, requires in-service education and training (INSET), which we deliver through new staff induction and INSET days, examples of which may be found in FOSIL Presentations. While this does not automatically mean that all colleagues are equally interested and/ or engaged, or automatically solve practical problems like lack of time and personalised support, it does lay a solid foundation for an enabling inquiry environment in which colleagues can encourage and support each other to become more engaged and empowered inquirers themselves.

I have elsewhere made reference to the Developing Inquiring Communities in Education Project (DICEP). If you can get hold of a copy of Action, talk & text: Learning and teaching through inquiry (Wells, 2001), I recommend that you do, as the whole book addresses this question. If not, Action, talk and text: The case for dialogic inquiry by Gordon Wells (PDF download), which is based on Chapters 1 and 10, may be helpful.

—

[Darryl Toerien Keymaster]

Episode 28 of FOSIL, Education and School Libraries (recorded on Saturday 4 July 2026) is now available: Four Domains of Thought (Part 2): Information and the Ability to Think.

[Darryl Toerien Keymaster]

This is an excellent question, Alyssa, and one that I have been wrestling with since I first started working on FOSIL in 2010.

There is a tension here, which Jonathan Rauch (2021, p. 4) describes very well:

[while] acquiring knowledge [necessarily involves] personal struggles to find the right questions and assemble mosaic tiles of information to tell the tale coherently, [acquiring knowledge] is a conversation, not a destination…a journey we take together, not alone, [because] others are always involved [whether living or dead].

I have tended to err on side of personal struggles, mainly because I don’t think students have much space [or time] for the quiet stir of thoughts (John Ciardi), but also because enabling meaningful and productive conversation during an inquiry is challenging.

I am, however, wrestling with this more purposefully at the moment as I begin planning ahead for the next iteration of our Year 9 (Grade 8) Interdisciplinary Signature Work Inquiry @ Blanchelande College, particularly from this post onwards, and in the light of Paulo Freire‘s observation that:

reading the world precedes reading the word, and the subsequent reading of the word cannot dispense with continually reading the world.

I also recommend Action talk, and text: The case for dialogic inquiry (2001), by Gordon Wells (DICEP).

References

• Freire, P. (1983). The importance of the act of reading. Journal of education, 165(1), 5–11. tinyurl.com/38x8etpj.
• Rauch, J. (2021). The constitution of knowledge: A defense of truth. Brookings Institution Press.

[Darryl Toerien Keymaster]

Continued from post above…

The reason why it is necessary to make a clear distinction between inquiry and research–and, more narrowly, information literacy–is precisely because inquiry is a process through which we learn important disciplinary/ subject content. This process includes research and information literacy–mainly in, but not limited to, Investigate and Express–but is not reducible to research or information literacy. This means that when we are talking with our classroom-based colleagues about inquiry, we are talking with them about acquiring disciplinary/ subject content knowledge, which is their primary concern. Whereas, when we are talking with our classroom-based colleagues about research, or information literacy (or media and information/ digital/ AI/ … literacy), we are talking about part of the process of acquiring disciplinary/ subject content knowledge, and one that, moreover, competes for precious curriculum time for the acquisition of disciplinary/ subject content knowledge, which, most likely, is focussed on the memorisation of information for reproduction in tests. It is a question, then, of trying to convince our classroom-based colleagues of approaching the acquisition of disciplinary/ subject content knowledge through inquiry, or of trying to convince them give up precious curriculum time for something that only partly addresses the acquisition of disciplinary/ subject content knowledge. This may seem like a minor distinction, but, in reality, it makes the world of difference to collaboration between the library and the classroom.

In discussing inquiry as a preferable way to approach the acquisition of disciplinary/ subject content knowledge–one that goes beyond memorisation and reproduction in tests, and is more expansive than research and information literacy–we have found the inquiry process skill sets especially helpful, which were introduced in the 2019 re-imagining of the ESIFC continuum of skills.

These make it clear that inquiry, as a learning process, is not limited to research, or information literacy–in fact, my work on FOSIL started with wondering what came before and after citing and referencing (see An Extraordinary Journey: FOSIL). They also make it easier for classroom colleagues to locate aspects of what they are doing in the inquiry process, even if they are not [yet] enabling a full inquiry, which facilitates conversation about how to collaborate on inquiry-based learning, whether in part or whole.

—

For interest, Barb included a helpful discussion of how inquiry differs from information problem solving, or the research process, in her chapter on inquiry-based learning for Curriculum connections through the library (2003), which also introduced her model of the inquiry process. Note that the starting question in inquiry is not necessarily the same as the final question that emerges from investigate and construct.

[Darryl Toerien Keymaster]

Episode 27 of FOSIL, Education and School Libraries (recorded on Saturday 4 July 2026) is now available: Four Domains of Thought (Part 1): Ideas and Images.

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Preparatory notes

Robert A. Heinlein: “Dad claims that library science is the foundation of all sciences just as math is the key–and that we will survive or founder, depending on how well the librarians’s do their jobs.”*

Douglas Knight: The two major and unique functions of a library of any type are that it is a space for the encounter between the minds of our students and ideas [in our collections, especially non-fiction], and the extension of those ideas in the minds of our students.

Dallas Willard: “The realm of thought involves four main factors. These are ideas, images, information, and our ability to think, but the two most powerful ones are ideas and images.”

• “Ideas are very general models of our assumptions about reality. They are ways of thinking about and interpreting things.” E.g., love and leadership.
• “Closely associated with governing ideas are the images that occupy our minds. Images are always concrete or specific, as opposed to the abstractness of ideas, and are heavily laden with feeling. They frequently present themselves with the force of perception and have a powerful emotional linkage to governing idea systems. They mediate the power of those idea systems into the real situations of ordinary life.” E.g. [from revision with my son for his end-of-year Theology exam], love (Cupid, or Jesus on the cross), and leadership (Napoleon Crossing the Alps by Jacques-Louis David, or Christ Washing the Disciples’ Feet by Tintoretto)
• “Without correct information (or facts), our ability to think has nothing to work on. … Lack of information results in everything from unpleasant burdens to stark tragedies.”
• Thinking “is the activity of searching out what must be true, or cannot be true, in the light of given facts or assumptions. It extends the information we have and enables us to see the ‘larger picture’–to see it clearly and to see it wholly. And it undermines false or misleading ideas and images as well. It reveals their falseness to those who wish to know.”
  • “Prospering depends upon people thinking well.”
  • “Bluntly…crooked thinking, unintentional or not, always favors evil. And when the crooked thinking gets elevated into group orthodoxy, whether religious or secular, there is always, quite literally, ‘hell to pay.’ That is, hell will take its portion, as it has repeatedly done in the horrors of world history.”
  • “By ‘thoughts‘ we mean all of the ways we are conscious of things. That includes our memories, perceptions, and beliefs.”

References

• Robert A. Heinlein, Have space suit–Will travel (1975/78, p. 128).
• Douglas Knight (1921–2005), Then-President of Duke University and Chairman of the United States National Advisory Commission on Libraries. See ‘Foreword’ to Library services for the nation’s needs: Toward fulfillment of a national policy (1968), by the United States National Advisory Commission on Libraries.
• Jacques Maritain (1882–1973), French philosopher and political thinker (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). See Education at the crossroads (1943/60, Yale University Press) and The education of man (1962/67, Notre Dame University Press).
• Dallas Willard (1935–2013), Professor Emeritus in Philosophy at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. See The unhinging of the American mind–Derrida as pretext (1999) and Ontology of knowledge course (1997). For quotations, see ‘Transforming the mind’ in Renovation of the heart (2002, NavPress).

[Darryl Toerien Keymaster]

Hello, and thank you, Alyssa—and Elizabeth.

Jenny and I are in the final week of our academic year, so will only be able to reply more fully here and elsewhere next week.

However, some immediate thoughts here…

It was/ is necessary, and therefore helpful, to make a distinction between inquiry and research (and information literacy for that matter), which many colleagues, including librarians, conflate, and which is one of the tendencies that saps inquiry of its potency.

Ideal libraries: A guide for schools (2018/2022, p. 9)—citing Callison (2015) and Levitov (2016)—made the point clearly that “inquiry is more expansive than research, and facilitating it requires expertise beyond research methods.”

By then, the shift in school libraries from research process models to inquiry process models had been underway for more than a decade, with Barbara’s model of the inquiry process, which was one of the earliest, being published in 2003. For reasons that I do not fully understand yet, explorations of inquiry as “a method of instruction and an environment for formalized learning” (Shera, 1972, p. 177) had been underway outside of school libraries for far longer. Two examples that I am familiar with are:

• The Developing Inquiring Communities in Education Project (DICEP), which started in 1991 as a collaboration between teachers in public schools (Grades 1–8) in metro Toronto and surrounding areas and university teacher educators at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) of the University of Toronto. However, over its 10 years, the Project saw a shift in focus from “a study of ‘Learning through Talk’ in elementary science classrooms [to] creating opportunities for inquiry-based learning and teaching at all levels and in all areas of the curriculum” (p. 2).
• Even earlier, Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner devoted a chapter to The Inquiry Method in Teaching as a subversive activity (1969), and even then they noted that “of all the ‘survival strategies’ education has to offer, none is more potent or in greater need of explication than the ‘inquiry environment’” (p. 36, emphasis added).

In 2017, Barbara wrote that “the teaching of inquiry skills [within a learning process aimed the acquisition of disciplinary knowledge and understanding] represents a paradigm shift for school librarians [and classroom teachers]” (2017, p. 53), and this paradigm shift is still, frustratingly, underway, as is the need for explication.

I’ll share more on this important topic in due course.

—

References

• Callison, D. (2015). The evolution of inquiry: controlled, guided, modeled, and free. Libraries Unlimited.
• IBO. (2018). Ideal libraries: A guide for schools. International Baccalaureate Organisation (UK) Ltd.
• Levitov, D. (2016). School libraries, librarians, and inquiry learning. Teacher librarian, 28-35.
• Postman, N., & Weingartner, C. (1969). Teaching as a subversive activity. Delacorte Press.
• Shera, J. (1972). Foundations of education for librarianship. Wiley-Becker and Hayes.
• Stripling, B. K. (2003). Inquiry-based learning. In B. K. Stripling & S. Hughes-Hassell (Eds.), Curriculum connections through the library (pp. 3–39). Libraries Unlimited.
• Stripling, B. K. (2017). Empowering students to inquire in a digital environment. In S. W. Alman (Ed.), School librarianship: past, present, and future (pp. 51–63). Rowman & Littlefield.
• Wells, G. (2001). The case for dialogic inquiry. In G. Wells (Ed.), Action, talk & text: Learning and teaching through inquiry (pp. 171–194). Teachers College Press.

[Darryl Toerien Keymaster]

In addition to the Theology inquiry for Year 8 mentioned in this post above–Who is the Messiah that the Jews were expecting? (detailed LibGuide link)–that we introduced this year, we have also developed the following Year 8 inquiries:

• English ~ Gothic Literature (basic LibGuide link)–now in its third year
• Geography ~ Extreme Weather (detailed LibGuide link)–new this year
• Mathematics ~ International Mathematicians (detailed LibGuide link)–now in its fourth year, with Maths goes to the Movies new this year

Edit: These Year 8 students have also experienced the very sophisticated Year 6 (Grade 5) Interdisciplinary Signature Work Inquiry @ Blanchelande College (Forum Topic)–now in its fourth year–which also has some excellent Resources (Search by Title “Cool Water”) and a detailed LibGuide.

I mention this for two reasons:

Firstly, these Year 8 students will arrive into Year 9 as significantly more engaged and empowered inquirers.

Secondly, the English Gothic Literature inquiry results in students writing their own Gothic short stories, drawing on the literary techniques they uncovered during the inquiry, which we then publish and make available in the Library. This is such a powerful experience for the students, and these anthologies are some of our most popular books. What I have noticed this year, possibly partly due to the point above, is how purposefully and enthusiastically students across all three classes are approaching their short stories, with a much greater sense that they view themselves as writers. I am very excited about developing this aspect of inquiry more purposefully with them in Year 9.

[Darryl Toerien Keymaster]

G.K. Chesterton in Frank Cottrell Boyce’s Foreword to Pandæmonium, 1660–1886: The Coming of the Machine as Seen by Contemporary Observers, by Humphrey Jennings (1985/2012),

The World is not perishing from lack of wonders, it is perishing from lack of wonder.

Also, Frank continues

Progress is not motivated by money. Progress comes from those who are happy to embark on a course of action without quite knowing where it will lead, without doing a feasibility study, without fear of failure or too much hope of reward.* The engine of of innovation is reckless generosity…National identity is not a settled thing—it’s not a typical dish or a national costume. A nation is what Philip Larkin would call ‘a frail, travelling coincidence’—a ragtag of people on a journey together…

*C.S. Peirce (1955),

Upon this first, and in one sense this sole, rule of reason—that in order to learn you must desire to learn, and in so desiring not be satisfied with what you already incline to think [judging according to the weight of evidence]—there follows one corollary…Do not block the way of inquiry!

[Darryl Toerien Keymaster]

Notes on previous post…

By record, I mean the record of human knowledge of reality as uncovered through inquiry in the various academic disciplines (scholarship). This does not discount important insights into reality that we can gain from fiction, but this is a discussion for later.

Theologically, from a Christian and Catholic perspective, Jesus’ self-identification with Isaiah’s prophetic text could not be more attention-worthy, because in doing so, He declares Himself to be the Messiah the Jews were expecting, even though many would not realise it. His own words [as reported by Luke], then, become prophetic and eschatological, in that the values of the everlasting Kingdom of God that He has come to usher in are at odds with those of the kingdoms of this world. Moreover, His acting in and on the world is part of a Historical record that is still being written.

Laudato si’ is the most consequential Catholic social teaching since Rerum novarum (Of new things): On capital and labour (15 May 1891), and its exhortation to hear the cry of the poor and the earth links also and obviously to the Creation and Covenant in Theology. And while it will not be possible to read the entire encyclical, even in part it remains revelatory, for example

“The external deserts in the world are growing, because the internal deserts have become so vast” [quoting Benedict XVI]. For this reason, the ecological crisis is also a summons to profound interior conversion.

—

Thinking more about Blake’s London, I remembered talking with Frank Cottrell Boyce at the 25th anniversary of the extraordinary Smallbone Library at Oakham School about his involvement with the Opening Ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics Games. The other guest speaker, Huw Davies, had earlier mentioned to me that a revelatory text for him had been Pandæmonium, 1660–1886: The Coming of the Machine as Seen by Contemporary Observers, by Humphrey Jennings, which I bought. It turned out that my copy had a Foreword by Frank. Of the book, Frank has said

When I first held this book in my hand, I swear I could feel it shaking with its own internal energy.

Frank gifted a copy of the book to Danny Boyle, who said of the book

Pandaemonium was the biggest single inspiration for the Olympic Opening Ceremony…the book was the equivalent of Pepys giving you a guided tour of the birth of electricity and the mechanical age—it’s brilliant, exciting and essential.

I have now pulled my copy of Pandaemonium off its shelf, a copy that Frank was kind enough to sign, and it is full to overflowing with revelatory texts about industrialization that a full day of scouring the web did not uncover—a Godsend.

The following from Frank’s Foreword caught my eye:

Pandaemonium documents the Industrial Revolution. We’ve had another revolution since then, of course. The Opening Ceremony was an event that both celebrated and immersed itself in the digital revolution. But at its heart was that most analogue of things–a book. Only books can free us from the tyranny of the Present. The internet gives us the whole world now but it has shrunk the ‘now’ to a moment. As Danny Boyle put it, ‘ we are children of the machine age, locked inside this terrifying beast, increasingly innocent of how it makes things for us’. Only books can let us hear the voices that brought us here. Also they can be given as gifts.

In addition, then, to a revelatory text about industrialisation, it will be revelatory for Year 9 students to watch the truly extraordinary Opening Ceremony (no ads) at the start of the Inquiry, being a kind of text, as it is highly unlikely that any of them will have seen it [due to not having been born yet!].

So much more still to come.

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