Young people in Australia, and indeed across the world, go to school to learn. Learning is an emotional experience that needs to be lived in order to change us. It is really not acceptable, given what we now know about learning, to stand at the front of a classroom and teach to a test. However, as a secondary school teacher who has worked across six schools in ten years, I found myself stunned at how much of this tired old model exists. I reflected in my blog that we need “to be conscious that we are not repeating the way we’ve always done things and expecting an outcome that addresses the changes in the world and the speed at which it is changing.” The sentiment of this statement remains, however my reflection did not begin to suggest how we might practically change the educative experience for young people in schools in Australia. At that point, I had not learnt about inquiry learning.

Charles Darwin said “We are always slow in admitting any great change of which we do not see the intermediate steps.” Inquiry learning challenges us to break down the silos of subject areas, allow students to learn about what they are passionate about and foster lived educational experiences. Furthermore, inquiry learning has the ability to address two issues simultaneously: the information issue that has arisen from rapid advancements in technology in a short space of time, whereby it is critically important for consumers of information to be able to evaluate the authenticity of information, and the issue of the need for pedagogical change with a goal to move away from behaviourist models and towards constructivist models. As leaders in education, teachers, TLs, and other school leaders have a responsibility to contribute to building a community of twenty-first century young people who are agile problem-solvers and lifelong learners. We must foster students who know when they don’t know, and know how to find out. A novice in this field, I find myself truly excited by the prospect of inquiry learning models. Within the realms of the school library, teacher librarians (TLs), teachers, students and school leaders alike can be drawn to libraries for a learning journey, their purpose being to promote deeper thinking, learning and adventure.

The ability to simultaneously teach curriculum content and apply 21st century learning skills with a subject expert and an information expert at the helm is an exciting prospect for young people in Australia. Where a unit of curriculum content requires research, inquiry learning provides a scaffold for all stakeholders to engage concurrently in information literacy instruction guided by the TL, and curriculum content guided by the subject teacher in a (hopefully) captivating way. Whilst many approaches to inquiry learning are employed in Australian schools, I see the Guided Inquiry Design (GID) model as an optimal model if the TL is given the opportunity to contribute to the unit as a full teaching partner. My blog post in response to 5.3b Guided Inquiry outlines the advantages of GID as I see them. The level of detail provided in the model allowing a platform to integrate and assess 21st century learner skills, the opportunity to implement experiential learning in a classroom setting and the invitation for collaboration – between teacher librarian and teacher, and between students too. Whilst this is ideal, schools are indeed time poor environments that have historically been resistant to change. In light of this, there are challenges that are presented by GID. My response to 5.3b Guided Inquiry also highlights these challenges, being change management – reluctance by leadership, teachers and students to be accepting of the approach, the time constraints of the GID unit, and leadership and teachers misunderstanding of the role of the TL leading to GI not being accessed where it could be used effectively and improve student learning. Other models still seek to embed information literacy in curriculum, and should not be discounted. Should the teacher or TL be time or resource poor, these models still support deeper learning than simply teaching referencing or research skills in one lesson, and can be more appropriate given other constraints, such as time or budget.

The role of the TL as a debated topic was news to me at the beginning of this subject, and indeed this course. But on reflection, I can happily admit my rudimentary understanding of the role. Prior to beginning the course, I saw the role as a colleague in a school who a teacher could draw upon if they wished to jazz up a unit, or get some fancy resources to make their lessons a bit spicier. However, I have come to realise that the TL is an intermediary role requiring collaboration, creativity, innovation, critical-thinking and problem-solving, and could truly be the bridge of change for education paradigms.