Researching Research Models

Two quotes that struck me in this week's readings:

"Living in the information age requires people to go beyond the ability to locate information and requires competence in seeking meaning and understanding. More is not necessarily better without skillful guidance from an insightful person [school library media specialist]" (Learning 708).

"...students that have little prior knowledge of the information seeking process have fragmented understanding of subject knowledge" (Riedling, 10)

I like these quotes as they validate the role of the TL and employing research models at the same time.

I appreciated Maloya's reflections (and chart) comparing Big 6, Research Quest and the Infomation Seeking Process. I agree with her preference for Research Quest for the reason she provided - it requires students to think about which resources would be the most suitable for the particular task they are focused on. I also like the simplicity of the language. In a school that is high ESL, this is important.

Many classmates have commented on the importance of the reflection step of the research models. This is so true. It is very easy to get caught up in the process or the product (or both!) and overlook the significant step of making observations about learning. It is important that students develop their interpersonal skills and learning identity which is best achieved through reflection.

Something that struck me about these research models is that for all their similarities, which are many, their terminologies differ. Wouldn't it be great if a school agreed on using one model and thus eliminating the confusion that students would face learning new models and terminologies? This led me to do some research of my own at my school.

I found an interesting blend of research models. Half of the staff had never heard of a research model. Even after I explained it, they thought is was a tool that should be part of Developing Readers. (I clearly explained it badly.) In the end, I had to provide copies of the models for them to understand. They then saw the value in the models, however had not used them before. The good news is that most of these teachers are open to using any model, should I offer to work with them. The other half of the staff use a combination of Big 6 and teacher created research models. The decision to collectively focus on one research model or another will be discussed at a staff meeting later in the month. I am excited that it has got people thinking and talking about this topic and that I can then use this as a platform to offer collaborative teaching ideas.