Mandy Lupton (2014) and Karen Bonnano (2014) are quite effective at showing that inquiry and critical thinking are intended to be part of Australian education through their incorporation in the Australian Curriculum. Bonnano also makes a good argument for how those skills, competencies and processes can be mapped to an inquiry model such as Guided Inquiry. These are key factors in the argument for schools to embrace and incorporate inquiry learning and information literacy models. They do not, however, specifically address why it is beneficial to institute a single information literacy model or learning process throughout the school. Interviews with students at the Stonefields School in New Zealand demonstrated to me the power of using a consistent terminology and process across the learning of the school. In the video posted by Sarah Martin (2012) you can see that the use of a common terminology enables students across the span of ages and levels to verbalise their experience of the learning process. Some of the children, especially the younger ones, seem to just be parroting phrases they have memorised. However, the in-depth interview with older students in Treadwell’s (2013) video shows that the terminology and processes are being internalised and transferred to areas of learning even beyond the inquiry (or “Breakthrough”) projects. Seeing the results of a single learning process and shared terminology being applied across a school is what convinced me that this is a good idea and inspired me to advocate for it at any school where I work in a substantial role.
References
Bonanno, K. (2014) F-10 inquiry skills scope and sequence, and F-10 core skills and tools. Retrieved May 3, 2018 from https://eduwebinar.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/curriculum_mapping.pdf
Lupton, M.(2014) Inquiry skills in the Australian Curriculum. Access, 6(November), 8-29.
Martin, S. 2012. Stonefields School building learning capacity [Video file]. Retrieved May 3, 2018 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMB7b1rmmrM
Treadwell, M. 2013. Stonefields2 [Video file]. Retrieved May 3, 2018 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGbGiMeLk_M