Assignments Worth Doing:Engaging in Inquiry

Jean Donham, Ph. D.

Cornell College

Iowa ACRL

March 3, 2008

Information Literacy

Skills, knowledge, and disposition for meaning-making

Contextual Inquiry-based

Student Research

What do today’s students think library research looks like?

Assembly?Cut and paste?Reporting?

Transferring?

Gordon, Carol (1999). Students as authentic researchers: A new prescription for the high school research assignment,” School Library Media Research Online, volume 2: 1-21.

Learning is in the question. . .

Encyclopedic: Information but rarely insight.

Meaning-oriented: What is the significance within a context?

Relational: What are the factors. . .? What influences. . .? What is the effect of time and events?

Value-oriented: What is the impact. . .? Who cares and why?

Solution-oriented: What can be done? What needs to be done?

Inquiry

ObservingQuestioning

AnalyzingQuestioning

ReflectingQuestioning

Findings

Relevant/PersonalNot just reportingCuriosity“Research in reverse”“Thinking like a scientist”

Authenticity

Higher order thinking Deep knowledge Substantive conversation Real-world connection

Newmann, Fred, Secada, Walter, and Wehlage, Gary (1995). A Guide to Authentic Instruction and Asessment: Vision, Standards and Scoring. Madison, WI: Wisconsin Center for Education Research.

Biology

Information Literacy Defined

Attainment of the skills, knowledge, and disposition that enable one to locate, evaluate, use and communicate information effectively for the purposes of solving a problem, making a decision, or generating new knowledge.

Information Literacy Dimensions

Skills: be able to generate meaningful questions be skilled in locating information be able evaluating information be able to analyze information and use it to construct

meaning be able to apply information intelligently to problems

and decisions

Information Literacy Dimensions

Knowledge: What is intellectual property and why does it

matter? How is information organized to provide access in

electronic resources? What is bias and how does one recognize it?

Information Literacy Dimensions

Dispositions: be curious be open-minded be investigative be metacognitive be strategic reason use evidence

Ritchhart, R. (2001, April). From IQ to IC: A dispositional view of intelligence. Roeper Review, 23 (3): 143-150.

LearningYou can teach a student a lesson for a day; but if you can teach him to learn by creating curiosity, he will continue the learning process as long as he lives.  ~Clay P. Bedford

It must be remembered that the purpose of education is not to fill the minds of students with facts... it is to teach them to think, if that is possible, and always to think for themselves. ~Robert Hutchins

Sources citedDonham, Jean, Kay Bishop, Carol Collier Kuhlthau, and Dianne Oberg (2001). Inquiry-

Based Learning: Lessons from Library Power. Worthington, OH: Linworth Press.

Farmer, Leslie. (2007). What Is the Question?. IFLA Journal, 33(1), 41-49

Gordon, Carol (1999). Students as authentic researchers: A new prescription for the high school research assignment,” School Library Media Research Online, volume 2: 1-21.

Newmann, Fred, Walter G. Secada, and Gary G. Wehlage (1995). A Guide to Authentic Instruction and Assessment: Vision, Standards, and Scoring. Madison, WI: Wisconsin Center for Education Research.

Ritchhart, Ron. (2001). From IQ to IC: A dispositional view of intelligence. Roeper Review, 23 (3): 143-150.