As you read in our last post, educators from far and wide are leaving their summer places behind and headed to Rutgers University today. Here’s Dr. Heinstrom’s story.
Summer in Finland
July 13, 2016. I am sitting by the lake with a book in my hands that I cannot put down.
It is not the first time I read this book, and it will not be the last, but this time the reading has a special meaning. The book is Guided Inquiry Design by Carol C. Kuhlthau, Leslie K. Maniotes and Ann K. Caspari and I am preparing for next week when I will be attending the CISSL Summer Institute on Guided Inquiry Design (http://cissl.rutgers.edu/summer-institute-2016).
Guided Inquiry Design is an important book for me in many ways. GID is a solid research-based method on how to guide students’ learning in today’s information world. The foundation of the method lies in the highly regarded work of Professor II Emerita Carol C. Kuhlthau. Carol’s research on the Information Search Process (ISP) is a multiple award-winning scholarly work which has been confirmed and established within Information Studies. Carol’s work has, however, not only inspired research and teaching, it is also widely applied by professionals. This work has culminated in Guided Inquiry, where the ideas of the ISP is combined with Dr. Maniotes’ insights from educational research on the importance of Third Space, and Educational Specialist Caspari’s expertise on informal learning with use of museums and community resources to link together classroom learning with students’ experiences outside of school.
This summer I am reading Guided Inquiry Design from a research perspective. Next Spring,
I will be conducting an explorative case study on GID in a US high school with several years of experience in implementing the Guided Inquiry framework. The study is part of the ARONI (Argumentative online inquiry in building students’ knowledge work competences) research project.
ARONI, funded by the Academy of Finland for four years (2015-2019), is a collaborative project between research teams from three partner universities: University of Tampere, University of Jyväskylä and Helsinki University. The aim of the project is to develop an instructional model for online inquiry competence for upper secondary schools in Finland. The project strives to build a deeper theoretical understanding of students’ online inquiry and clarify how their competence can be enhanced in upper secondary education. In Finland, a new national curriculum, developed by the National Board of Education, will be effective from this fall, 2016. The new curriculum emphasizes multi-literacies, including online inquiry competence. We, however, still need a deeper understanding of the best way to support students as they develop these competencies. We believe that our research on Guided Inquiry Design will provide insights that will be highly useful for us as we develop our instructional model.
I close my book and walk up to the house. It is time to apply GID in practice: Immerse, Explore, Identify and Gather what I need to pack for my trip.
Jannica Heinström, PhD
Senior Researcher, University of Tampere, Finland; Associate Professor, Åbo Akademi University, Finland; Docent, University of Borås, Sweden
Link to my Research Gate page
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