Is inquiry learning the ideal way to learn?

Mandy Lupton works at the Faculty of Education at the Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia and she is interested in the way people use information to learn. Her analysis has found that some models of inquiry bear a strong relationship with information literacy, others with information seeking and others with research. In the school sector, inquiry and information seeking are dominant models, whereas in higher education, information literacy and research are dominant.

Identify, locate, evaluate
If one looks up Information Literacy the term is defined as "the ability to know when there is a need for information, to be able to identify, locate, evaluate, and effectively use that information for the issue or problem at hand." Mandy Lupton explains how she views Inquiry Learning:

"Inquiry learning is considered as a pedagogy, a process, and a curriculum design approach, while information literacy is viewed as a process. My empirical exploration was undertaken in a study of teacher-librarians' inquiry learning pedagogical practices and the study found that some teacher-librarians saw inquiry learning and information literacy as synonymous, while others saw inquiry learning as a pedagogy dependent on information literacy," she says.

Inquiry learning at an early age
Mandy Lupton's previous research has investigated university students' experiences of using information to complete assignments in environmental studies, music and tax law. Her current research involves teacher-librarians' pedagogical practices and the relationship between inquiry learning and information literacy. Her analysis argues that a conceptual and empirical exploration of the ways in which information seeking and use and information literacy are present in models of inquiry learning. It discusses the relationship between the generic, situated and transformative information literacy through the GeST windows model (link) and inquiry learning pedagogy. One of the participants at the seminar asks when the ideal age to facilitate inquiry learning is.

"If you use inquiry-based learning the idea would be to start very early in the first years of primary school. When students are undertaking an inquiry they will reach points where they will feel overwhelmed or bored or where frustration sets in but if they are undertaking this process in many different contexts and through different topics throughout the years of schooling, they know how to push through that and the teachers will know how to get them through the stages," Mandy Lupton says.

Based on serendipity
Mandy Lupton's next project is to write a paper with one of her PhD-students on teenagers creating and sharing content on social media since "it encompasses intuition and emotions which are unrecognized by most information literary frameworks because we look at codified information and documentary information instead," as she explains.

At the end of the seminar a debate among the participants begins. One of the participants adds: "Sometimes, when I ask colleagues or students how they got ideas for projects, they tend to answer that they have not reflected on it. We do not really have terms to use for describing reflection, so many say that their ideas are based on serendipity."

"True, but serendipity can actually be a huge part of Inquiry Learning because the idea is that you have questions after questions and what you find leads to new questions," Mandy Lupton replies.