I think they can be mutually exclusive because the 21st century skills that students acquire through the inquiry-based learning method help them to make their own connections about what they are learning. Students are learning for understanding and within a context of becoming life-long learners. This curiosity and desire for understanding helps them to engage in deeper understanding of topics and content, instead of primarily memorising and recalling facts, rules, formulas and ideas. This deep level of understanding can assist students to do well on tests that focus on accountability. Students are better able to understand and comprehend questions and articulate their deep thinking. As stated by Bransford et al., (1999) And students who achieve a deep understanding of science content through inquiry usually do well on conventional tests. (Bransford et al., 1999) I think local, state, Australian and International Education Departments need to consider the format of accountability to ensure that it allows students to display their skills as agile, critical thinkers who are digitally fluent, able to read complex texts and write clearly. They need to come up with accountability formats that allow students to display their creative solutions to problems they identify and articulate how they have learnt the skills of working in teams.
You may wish to consider what problems and barriers teachers and TLs may face in schools which adopt inquiry learning.
I think some of the issues that might stand in the way of inquiry learning in school are time to properly allow for students to students to formulate their own focus and the answers to their own questions, and to transform information into knowledge. Students need time to come up with creative solutions to problems they identify and to learn the skills of working in teams and our tight timetable and the curriculum expectations does not always allow for this
Inquiry learning can be seen by many teachers as unknown territory. A step away from a certain control of teaching to an outcome and knowing in advance what the possible learning results will be. They may feel it is a move away from the conventional teaching to outcomes which place importance on factual knowledge taught through textbooks, worksheets and may feel that these provide quicker results.
Inquiry learning may be seen by teachers as a lack of control of the classroom with regards to content delivery and feel they are relinquishing to conditions of uncertainty in the classroom.
I think some of the issues that might stand in the way of collaboration between teachers and teacher librarians to carry out inquiry learning are time constraints, pressures of standardised testing and assessment for reporting and accountability. Further, many teachers pressured with their own preparation time, often have little time during the day to work with the teacher librarian on designing inquiry-based activities. Despite this I think teachers are interested in implementing inquiry learning in their classrooms and working with the teacher librarian, however for partnerships to be forged the timetabling at schools would need to change to make it possible for teachers to undertake this and work hand-in-hand with the teacher librarian. For this to occur the executive and school principal need be proactive and support the concept.