Chapter 1 A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE: A KING TIDE FOR GUIDED INQUIRY There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. —William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act IV, Scene III Across the world, excitement mounts about Guided Inquiry (GI)! The quote from Julius Caesar expresses perfectly the theme of this chapter. We are at the very highest tide for inquiry learning. It is a king tide, and the current of circum- stances is so strong in many countries that it’s almost impossible to resist the move to GI (or other types of inquiry learning). Two worldwide movements are in full flood—21st-century skills and technological revolution—and are fundamentally altering learning. Together they provide a tidal wave of circumstance that is diffi- cult to resist. It is time to “take the flood” of circumstance, and for GI to flourish, particularly enabled with the pedagogical skills of teacher librarians (TLs). WHAT IS GI? It is “a way of thinking, learning, and teaching that changes the culture of the school into a collaborative inquiry community” (Maniotes, Harrington, & Lambusta, 2015, p. xiii). GI is a devel- oping educational practice based on the Information Search Process (ISP) defined in Carol Kuhlthau’s renowned research studies of information behavior throughout the late 1980s (1985, 1988a, 1988b, 1988c, 1989b). The ISP is a complex learning pro- cess involving thoughts, actions and feelings that take place over an extended period of time, that involves developing a topic from information in a variety of sources, and that culminates in a presentation of the individual’s new perspective of the topic. (Kuhlthau, 1989a, p. 1)
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