Jeff C. Marshall

The Common Core stressing the need for inquiry, it is wonderful to see a variety of publications about the topic other than those from the library field. Thus, it was in anticipation the this reviewer received this book about inquiry directed at classroom teachers. Suddenly, it becomes apparent that the vocabulary of inquiry and guided inquiry mean very different things to our author and there is absolutely no recognition that anyone in the school other than the classroom teacher knows anything about this topic. It is another reminder of how siloed a filed can become and not just in education. And, these days, Google is not helping the matter when our searching returns items that the search engine thinks we are interested in. So, if you are a republican, your top hits are red and if Democrat, blue. Marshall offers the classroom teacher a model of inquiry he created that shows four steps: Engage, Explore, Explain, and Extend. The model also includes both assessment and reflection threads running through all four steps. In my conversations with the author, he is worried about the pressure on teachers to deliver the strictly constructed outcomes of standards and so inquiry must be controlled in such a way as to deliver predictable outcomes. To accomplish this, Marshall recommends that the teacher first try to interest the class in a particular topic. Then he suggests pushing the students into some tightly controlled information sources that allow them to explore and try to discover what is meant by the problem or challenge. Then, and only then, does the teacher push out the lecture to elaborate and correct through explanation any misconceptions and then extending the understandings as needed. Thus, the entire inquiry project is done in the isolated classroom by the isolated teacher. There is no recognition of a person down the hall who might have any expertise at inquiry with a tendency to let the students out into the real world of information where they have to battle with various ideas, positions, and solutions. Without the control, the students might wander off track during discovery and not arrive at the desired exact outcome that was originally intended and designed into the investigation. Certainly, the narrower approach in “efficient” in the sense that you can a lot just so much time, control the information input, and thus predict the outcome as long as you corral divergent thinking during your opportunity to explain what should have been discovered when students were exploring. To those interested in direct teaching approaches, this modification seems quite acceptable because it might capture a bit more interest in the pursuit of a problem or concept. To teacher librarians, we worry more about creativity, critical thinking, and coming into command of one’s own learning. We want young people to know the source of ideas, document that source, perceive its intention, and a host of other liberating but challenging experiences. It might take longer, but deep thinking and doing often do. So, what of this book? If I were in a school with this idea of inquiry being sanctioned, I would do an experiment where one group inquires narrowly and another group widely and then looking for deep understanding as well as how to learn in the real world of information. Perhaps, narrow information sources can give us a start as novices, but at some point, we need to push learners beyond their comfort zone. This book is recommended so that teacher librarians understand that what they think inquiry is, may not be what others perceive it to be.… (meer)