Are the acquisition of Twenty-First Century skills and the focus on accountability mutually exclusive?
Can a teacher prepare their students for the Twenty-First-century workplace and instil a love of lifelong learning by ‘testing’ students in a traditional manner? Unfortunately, this question cannot be answered or implemented by individual teachers alone.
With an overcrowded curriculum and expectations from the community for teachers to get back to teaching the basics and proving positive results. Can this, in reality, be done?
Our current education environment expects our students to be able to implement mulitple skills that will make them future-ready for higher learning and employment. The skills of creative and critical thinking require independent reasoning. Information and communication technologies require understanding the ever-expanding information and technological landscapes. These skills can be taught effectively through inquiry-based learning. This learning approach allows the students to pose questions and explore in-depth curriculum content in relevant and engaging ways.
In theory, this is in contrast to the expectations of students learning in a more traditional results-driven environment, where students must reach critical literacy and numeracy goals. The results monitor students’ progress against a state (HSC) or a national measure (NAPLAN). With standardised testing often becoming the focus as its results are easily measurable and interpreted, especially by parents, higher learning institutions and the wider community. Teachers often find themselves ‘teaching the test’ using skills to answer the questions.
What issues might stand in the way of inquiry learning in school?
One issue that might stand in the way of implementing inquiry-based learning in schools is teachers not having experience, understanding or appropriate professional development to plan and scaffold their student’s inquiry learning journey. The importance and relevance of inquiry learning must be advocated for by the executive team, Teacher Librarian and experienced teachers to support other educators. It is often perceived that inquiry-based learning has minimum structure, and students are left to ‘explore’ topics on their own and consequently may lose focus or become discouraged with their learning. All inquiry learning models provide an instructional framework to support students’ information to knowledge journey.
What issues might stand in the way of collaboration between teachers and TLs to carry out inquiry learning?
The Teacher Librarian is in a unique position within any school. They have access to all students across all year groups and ability levels. They are teachers who can resource and implement general capabilities across all the Key Learning Areas in collaboration with classroom and subject-specific teachers. The TLs must advocate for students’ needs and the importance of teaching future-ready skills, not within the segregation of ‘library time’ but in collaboration during planning and implementation with other teachers.
