Guided Inquiry Information Literacy Curriculum
Bookmark and Share

Hi everyone!

A long silence from me, as I’ve been working with  many Tls in training at CSU. This is a little break between sessions, and I’m working on a book on Guided Inquiry.  I wanted to tell you about one of the most exciting developments in the theory and practice of GI presented in the 2015 version of Guided Inquiry: Learning in the 21st Century (Kuhlthau, Maniotes & Caspari). This is the Information Literacy Curriculum elaborated on in chapter 7 of the book. It focuses on three central concepts:

  • Information that is organised provides access to facts, ideas and multiple perspectives
  • Valuable information prompts curiosity, reflection and enlightenment
  • Thoughtfully interpreting information over times leads to deep learning.

These concepts are elaborated to define, in a condensed way, the information literacy skills needed to locate, evaluate and use information, to present a comprehensive view of the skills required at each stage of a GI. Its significance lies in its simple iteration of GI skills (very useful in explaining GI to novice teachers), and in the fact that it can be used by planning teams in primary and secondary schools to create a scope and sequence plan for the gradual implementation of GI across the school.

Challenges to GI include the difficulties of collaboration between TLs and teachers who are struggling with a content-heavy curriculum, and the impossibility of covering the whole school population with GIs – after all, there’s only so much one or two TLs can do – which means that coverage of GI skills are piecemeal.  This simple but condensed information literacy curriculum can form the basis of a whole school approach to GI implementation in the creation of a scope and sequence using the concepts and elaborations in the information literacy curriculum, thus allowing ownership to extend to all teachers in the school.

The Information Literacy Curriculum presented by Kuhlthau, Maniotes and Caspari is an essential development in GI theory and practice, enabling whole school coverage of the skills of GI. Its elements are attached here –  Concepts based Information literacy curriculum –  but for further detail, you will need to look at the book, Guided Inquiry: Learning in the 21st Century(2015)

Cheers, and have a great winter break!

Lee FitzGerald

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *