I have been churning through Module 5 in preparation for my third assessment piece.  Well, can I say I think I need some guidance through all of these concepts, reflections, analyses and research.  Although, it is a lot to take in I can already see myself expanding on my previous knowledge.  The hard part is selecting what will work the best to show my understanding.

I started my assessment with a mindmap of ideas on the curriculum area, World Religions.  This mindmap on mine has grown to incorporate reflection and hopefully interventions along the way. I find it rather comical in a way, but affirming (see my previous blog What the Heck am I doing?), that I am actively incorporating reflection into my programming.

After reading ‘It Trains Your Brain’ (Fitzgerald & Garrison 2017), Making the Shift (Maniotes & Kuhlthau 2014) and Assessing and Evaluating (Kahlthau, Maniotes & Leslie 2015) I am starting to see a deeper potential of Guided Inquiry with the Teacher Librarian as an active member to the teaching and learning process of IL.  This is something that my school leadership and I have been working towards over the past two years.  We have had to be creative, sensitive and confident in what we do.  By creative I mean how we timetable and provide students the opportunity to develop their IL skills.  I think whenever a school changes their pedagogical approach a lot of sensitivity to what has been is common.  Previously, the TL has been left to their own devices, teaching what works best for them, with teachers carrying on ‘doing it all’ and now they are asked to work with someone who takes their class for release, each week.  Without previous rapport with the TL there has been a preconceived idea of what a TL does, which quite often is different to a Information Specialist – letting go of an ideal can be difficult.  As a TL, I need to be confident in myself, my content and how I can support the classroom teacher in order to promote myself as a valuable team member.

In an ideal world I will step into the classroom with the teachers and team teach alongside them and also continuously with them (in the library) to fully embrace Guided Inquiry with integrated Information Literacy.  The best I can do, for now is to deepen my knowledge, incorporate practices into my teaching and provide an open feedback practice with classroom teachers.  My next step is to develop authentic reflective practice opportunities for my students in my next assessment.  From there, I would like to experiment with a different IL Model.  Watch this space.

 

References

Fitzgerald, L. & Garrison, K. (2017) ‘It Trains Your Brain’: Student Reflections on Using the Guided Inquiry Design Process. Synergy,    15/2

Kuhlthau, C. C., Maniotes, L. K., & Caspari, A. K. (2015). Assessing and evaluating pp149-161. In Guided inquiry: Learning in the 21st century. 2nd edition (pp. 149-161)  Westport, Conn: Libraries Unlimited.

Maniotes, L.K, Kuhlthau, C. (2014) Making the shift. Knowledge Quest. 43(2) 8-17