To Teach Critical Thinking & Inquiry Learning, Entrust Your School Librarian

Posted on April 15, 2022 by Barbara Paciotti

To flourish in our modern global world, students need critical thinking skills, so educators are turning to inquiry based learning as the best approach. An Internet search explodes with models for teaching it.

What most teachers don’t realize is that their best resource already resides within their own building: the School Librarian.

School Librarians have been integrating curriculum content, critical thinking, and inquiry based learning for a long time, and this is exactly what educational researchers have recently discovered is needed.

ABOUT CRITICAL THINKING

The Foundation for Critical Thinking describes a critical thinker as one who:

raises clear and precise questions
gathers, assesses, and interprets relevant information
derives well-reasoned conclusions, tested for relevance
is open-minded, evaluating assumptions, implications, and consequences
effectively communicates solutions to complex problems.

According to a recent article in The Hechinger Report, teaching critical thinking skills in isolation isn’t effective because students aren’t able to transfer skills between disciplines. Critical thinking is different within each discipline, so the skills needed for one subject area aren’t necessarily relevant to another subject area. Rather “the best approach is to explicitly teach very specific small skills of analysis for each subject.”

And this is where content knowledge becomes important. In order to compare and contrast, the brain has to hold ideas in working memory, which can easily be overloaded. The more familiar a student is with a particular topic, the easier it is for the student to hold those ideas in his working memory and really think. (Jill Barshay, 9/9/19)

ABOUT INQUIRY-BASED LEARNING

The crux of inquiry based learning is to pique a student’s curiosity and motivate the desire for answers—it is self-directed, not teacher-directed. The numerous models for inquiry based learning take students step-by-step through the process, but we can consolidate them all into 4 basic stages:

Develop background knowledge & formulate focus questions
Research to discover answers & build understanding
Analyze & interpret information, then synthesize into a worthy action or product
Impart results & reflect on the action/product and the process

By its very nature, inquiry demands that students apply critical thinking, or what educators often refer to as higher-order thinking, at every stage of the process. But, we cannot assume that our students have the necessary knowledge and skills to be successful at inquiry learning—it’s our responsibility to give them the guidance and time needed to learn.

Unfortunately, most teachers have no idea how to do this. Leslie Maniotes & Carol Kuhlthau summed this up in a Knowledge Quest article:

In typical schools of education teachers do not learn in their teacher education courses about the research process. …teachers are simply relying on their own experience in school to direct their approach to research. … Although teachers have good intentions, they don’t realize that their traditional research approach is actually not supporting student learning. (p9)

Maniotes & Kuhlthau point out that teachers are particularly ignorant about the difference between the exploration stage and the collection stage. During that exploration stage, students build the necessary background content knowledge so they can think critically throughout the rest of the process. When that stage is (too often) ignored, both the inquiry process and the resulting product suffer, and students are even less likely to learn, use, and transfer critical thinking skills.

THE GRAND INTEGRATOR: YOUR SCHOOL LIBRARIAN

The one person in the school who has all the necessary knowledge and training to guide students through inquiry learning is the School Librarian, who has examined multiple inquiry models as part of their graduate coursework. As Maniotes & Kuhlthau put it:

School librarians know the inquiry process like language arts teachers know the writing process and science teachers know the scientific method. (p11)

This makes a School Librarian the perfect person to teach students an inquiry process for any subject area & product. A School Librarian excels at finding content—information and media—so can provide background knowledge that helps students through the crucial exploration stage. Plus, a School Librarian’s broad familiarity with everyone’s curriculum means s/he knows which critical thinking skills are relevant for each subject area.

School Librarians are authorities on critical thinking because the library’s Information Literacy curriculum is all about analyzing, evaluating, inferencing, synthesizing, and communicating complex information in multiple formats. Ann Grafstein of Hofstra University ties Info-Lit to critical thinking and to content knowledge:

Information literacy is a way of thinking about information in relation to the context in which it is sought, interpreted, and evaluated. …effective critical thinking crucially involves an awareness of the research conventions and practices of particular disciplines or communities and includes an understanding of the social, political, economic, and ideological context….

So, it is the School Librarian who can weave together relevant content, an inquiry process, and critical thinking skills to help students develop authentic, worthy products.

INFO-LIT = INQUIRY + CRITICAL THINKING + CONTENT

My Library Lesson Curriculum Matrix - Composite example of an older version for the 1st grading period.

Sample Matrix

Through my years as a Middle School Librarian I use my Library Lesson Matrix to choose which strategies and skills are timely for each subject, at each grade level, across all grade levels, throughout the school year, in order to scaffold short Information Literacy lessons into any library visit.

My Library Lessons present inquiry strategies & skills in a way that students understand why, when, and how to use them. I believe students learn best with visual and aural “helpers”:

I use infographics to illustrate strategies and processes.
I use graphic organizers for conceptual knowledge because they help students develop the understanding for themselves.
I use short videos (~3 minutes) to make explanations more engaging and understandable for students.

Here are some practices and resources that have been most successful with students, most appreciated by teachers, and have garnered positive feedback from my colleagues when teaching the 3 components of Information Literacy:

Research Process Models

Planning and exploration must be the beginning of all effective inquiry-based learning. Simple brainstorming can be a quick & easy way to begin a project; however, implementing a model to guide students through the inquiry learning process assures a more successful outcome.

Popular models have from 5 to 20 different steps, so it’s important to choose one that is appropriate for the grade level, subject-area, and duration of the project.

To help School Librarians choose the appropriate design process for any inquiry assignment, download my comparative chart of 18 different research process models, available on my FREE Librarian Resources page.

A model created for my 6^th graders is a simple way to “PACE” students through a project from planning to evaluation. Join my email group and you’ll gain access to my exclusive e-List Library where you can download my PACE PDF or editable DOCX graphic template and assessment rubric.

Search & Evaluation Skills

This Info-Lit component has 3 parts: source selection, search strategies, and resource evaluation. I like to use KWHL charts to guide students in the selection of materials suitable to their needs and abilities. I encourage them to use our library online subscription services for the most reliable information by showing this video:

It’s crucial to allow students time to develop keywords so they receive useful results quickly. My successful keyword search form is available on my Free Librarian Resources page. For evaluation I use a simple ABC acronym. An earlier post explained why that’s all I use with my middle schoolers.

Academic Honesty

It may surprise you that I don’t teach “plagiarism.” I’ve found it’s much more effective to give students the positive messages of Academic Honesty and teach them how to be legal & ethical, before getting to the cautions about plagiarizing. I begin each lesson with short relevant videos and then have hands-on activities, that introduce:

Intellectual Property and how to do bibliographic citation
Copyright & Fair Use, along with proper note-taking and in-document citation
Public Domain & Creative Commons, especially for images & media

See my Intellectual Property, Copyright & Fair Use, and Public Domain & Creative Commons lessons in NoSweat Library, my TPT store.

RESOLVED…TEACHING CRITICAL THINKING & INQUIRY

Inquiry based learning and critical thinking should always begin with the School Librarian. Their raison d’être is helping students inquire and think critically to take in content knowledge and produce multimedia products that can change our lives.

Collaborative planning with teachers for inquiry based learning is essential, but it is hard to convince teachers to allow School Librarians more than a single day for these important Library Lessons. Those that do see their students produce better products more quickly, so they make the School Librarian part of their planning for the next such project. It’s even better when they tell others about how we contribute to their students’ research success!

Sources:

Barshay, Jill. “Scientific research on how to teach critical thinking contradicts education trends.” The Hechinger Report. Teachers College at Columbia University, September 9, 2019. https://hechingerreport.org/scientific-research-on-how-to-teach-critical-thinking-contradicts-education-trends/

Grafstein, Ann. “Chapter 1 – Information Literacy and Critical Thinking: Context and Practice: Abstract,” Pathways Into Information Literacy and Communities of Practice. Chandos Publishing, 2017. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780081006733000010

Maniotes, Leslie K.; Kuhlthau, Carol C. Making the Shift: From Traditional Research Assignments to Guiding Inquiry Learning. Knowledge Quest, v43 n2 p8-17 Nov-Dec 2014. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1045936.pdf

5 Essential Literacies for Students: Part 3 Information Literacy

Posted on August 15, 2019 by Barbara Paciotti

In our complex, information-rich, culturally diverse world, literacy is no longer just knowing how to read and write. Students need to understand and be proficient in multiple literacies to be successful in our global society. Our responsibility as School Librarians is to inculcate these Five Essential Literacies into our students:

Reading and Writing (the original literacy)
Content/Disciplinary Literacy (content & thinking specific to a discipline)
Information Literacy (our library curriculum)
Digital Literacy (how and when to use various technologies)
Media Literacy (published works—encompasses all other literacies)

Previous blog posts covered Reading Literacy and Content Area/Disciplinary Literacy, so this post looks at Information Literacy, with examples and suggestions about how we might best teach these skills to our students.

DEFINING INFORMATION LITERACY

In its new National School Library Standards for Learners, School Librarians, and School Libraries, the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) defines information literacy as “knowing when and why information is needed, where to find it, and how to evaluate, use, and communicate it in an ethical manner.” (p 277)

This literacy is most often called upon when students have a research assignment of some kind and duration, so School Librarians attempt to embody that definition into our Library Research Lessons. However, info-lit prepares students to make adult decisions, from choosing a movie to buying a house, so to fully prepare students for their future, School Librarians focus on these 3 Components of Information Literacy:

Planning Process – various models that guide students step-by-step through a research, design, or problem-solving project.
Search and Evaluation – skills that help students find, access, and evaluate resources in a variety of formats.
Academic Honesty – builds respect for, intellectual property, copyright, and fair use when using information, creating work products, and presenting results.

INTEGRATING INFORMATION LITERACY

School Librarians face several obstacles to teaching Information Literacy Components to our students:

The Information Literacy curriculum is often embedded into subject curricula, but not identified as taught by the School Librarian.
Class library visits are arbitrary and haphazard, making consistency and continuity of lessons difficult.
Teachers are ignorant about collaboration with a school librarian or have had negative experiences.

To overcome these obstacles, our Information Literacy lessons need to be short purposeful chunks that provide only what students need for the assignment. By not overwhelming students with too many or irrelevant details, our lessons can encourage teachers to collaborate often, which allows us to scaffold Info-Lit skills for each grade level throughout the school year. I’ve written about my Library Curriculum Matrix, a visual organizational tool I created to plan and track my lessons, but let’s look at some specific strategies I use for each Information Literacy component.

THE PLANNING PROCESS COMPONENT

I’ve used many Planning Process Models, and each has its benefits and flaws, but all can achieve our goal to develop a problem-solving, critical thinking mindset in students. Some models have more steps, some fewer, but all planning process models follow four basic phases:

plan
aggregate materials and information
create a product
evaluate outcome.

As an aid to School Librarians, I have a FREE chart of planning process models you can download from my Librarian Resources page. You can choose a model most suited to grade level, subject, and assignment. I use just two simple models for 6^th graders and scaffold the planning process throughout the school year. During 7^th and 8^th grades I present more models, so before they leave our campus, students have learned how to use a variety of planning processes. To make the process clear and understandable, give students an infographic of the model.

Teachers rarely include planning as part of a research assignment—students usually have a single topic, gather the same information, and regurgitate the same product. School Librarians can change that by showing teachers quick planning strategies that we can incorporate into a library visit. Brainstorming with Post-It® Notes, a Thinking Map Circle©, or a KWHL chart stimulates students to think in terms of problem-solving, and they are quick, easy ways to begin a project.

image of 6 Question Research Topic Planner

Free download by joining my e-Group!

Use a graphic organizer to help students formulate questions for research. Questions also help students sift through resources for specific information, and because they require analysis and decision-making, they form that problem-solving mindset. Here are 4 graphic organizers I’ve used to generate questions:

the W section of a KWHL chart
the Q-chart Question Builder
the Britannica Pre-Research Planner
my own 6-Question Topic Planner which is a FREE download for joining my e-Group mailing list.

The plan phase of a Planning Process Model is followed by the aggregate materials & information phase, and we can move seamlessly into the Search & Evaluation component to present resources students can use for their assignment.

THE SEARCH & EVALUATION COMPONENT

We need to teach students 3 different elements of this Info-Lit component: source selection, search strategies, and resource evaluation.

Source selection
Source selection may be proscribed by the teacher, the grade level, or the assignment. Based on the type of resources students need, we may offer a selection of library materials or a Resource List of online sources. A KWL chart can be expanded by adding How (as shown at right) to make a KWHL chart listing a variety of resources.

Convince students they will “save time and find better information” by using online subscription database services and e-books provided by the state and school district. I use this 2½-minute video from Yavapai College: “What Are Databases and Why You Need Them.” If you really want to convince students, mention that they don’t have to evaluate these sources since they’ve already been approved!

The most important lesson we can teach students about search strategies is how to generate keywords. Download my keyword search form and provide it at library computers to reinforce the importance of keywords. | No Sweat Library

click to enlarge

Search Strategies
The most important lesson we can teach students about search strategies is how to generate keywords. For a brief lesson students can write keywords on a Post-It® Note. When using a graphic organizer, such as a KWHL chart, have students highlight or underline important words in their questions. For a visual way to help students master the basics, download my FREE keyword search form from the Librarian Resources page.

To reinforce the importance of keywords, remind students that they look for keywords in the index of a print source; for digital sources I provide the form in baskets at library computers .

Based on our Standards, pre-high-school students don’t need to know the term “Boolean operators”, but they need to learn what they are and how to use them. I teach search modifiers AND-OR-NOT and include them on infographics and graphic organizers, and as part of my keyword search form.

We can quickly teach students to sift top-level domain extensions when searching the free Web by typing site:gov, site:edu, or site:org into the search field of a search engine.

Resource Evaluation
Now is a perfect segue into resource evaluation, a topic that has generated many checklists and acronyms. I want to keep things quick, easy, and memorable, so I use the simple 3-letter “ABC” acronym which I believe is enough for evaluating the quality of any resource:

Authority — Who is the source of the information?
Bias — Why is this published, for what purpose?
Currency — When was this information published or updated?

You may wonder why I don’t have some of the criteria other evaluators use:

I don’t include validity/usefulness because it’s implied when students select sources that answer the planning questions for their topic. If a source doesn’t provide answers to any questions, they don’t need to evaluate it; if it does, then they use ABC.
I don’t include reliability because it’s part of Currency and Authority. If the resource creator has the proper authority and the resource is current, then we can accept it as reliable source of information.
I don’t include accuracy because that takes place during the “create” phase, when students analyze and compare information after it’s been aggregated from sources. If the information isn’t accurate compared to others selected, then the source isn’t used.

Part of the aggregate materials & information phase of a research process model is extracting information from chosen sources, and that’s when we discuss with students Academic Honesty guidelines along with note-taking skills.

THE ACADEMIC HONESTY COMPONENT

It’s important to give students an understanding of, and respect for, intellectual property and fair use so they legally access and ethically use information and media, and properly cite copyrighted text, images, music, and video to avoid plagiarism or piracy when producing their end product. For years I struggled through these lessons, but as soon as I began to use the phrase “academic honesty,” students became more positive toward these lessons—I believe it empowers students to meet high standards and builds their self-esteem.

A previous blog post about how I teach Academic Honesty includes examples and resources, but here’s a quick overview of the 3 conceptual elements of Academic Honesty, organized in the order that best complements the problem-solving mindset we’re trying to implant in students:

This Academic Honesty bundle provides 4 library research lessons in accord with National School Library Standards. Using a positive responsibility approach, these lessons give students a deep conceptual understanding of the legal & ethical issues regarding their research assignments. | No Sweat Library

Get the entire unit from No Sweat Library, my TPT store.

Intellectual property – creations of the mind that belong to the originator or other designated owner.
1. Citation
2. Bibliography
Copyright – legal rights given to owners of creative work so it can’t be used or stolen by others.
1. Note-taking by quoting/paraphrasing, in-document citation
2. Note-taking by summarizing
Fair Use – limited legal use of copyrighted material.
1. Public domain – works whose intellectual property rights/copyrights are expired, given up, or excluded.
2. Creative Commons
Plagiarism – presenting someone else’s words, ideas, or creative expressions as one’s own. An ethical (not a legal) issue of academic dishonesty/fraud.

This conceptual separation of Academic Honesty can allow us to incorporate a short lesson on any concept throughout the school year.

You can find the individual Academic Honesty lessons at No Sweat Library, my TPT store.

WHAT’S NEXT?

Planning process models, search and evaluation skills, and academic honesty complete the Library Information Literacy curriculum, but in our modern technological and global world students need more. Technology skills are crucial for future schooling and employment, and students also need to learn how to ethically interact with and evaluate all the media around us, so come back for Parts 4 and 5 of Essential Literacies as I offer ideas for incorporating digital literacy and media literacy into library visits.

This is the third entry in my series of blog posts on the 5 Essential Literacies for Students. I invite readers to offer comments and suggestions about any or all of these literacies.

Updated 2025.

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