Guided Inquiry 6: Teaching Retrieving Skills - Gauge Feelings

photo by Casey Serin

Remember the video clip of Sam entering a cold, daunting new environment in the first of these posts? Have you ever displayed the same confused look as Sam as he steps out of the elevator when you were in the midst of research or information retrieval?

Students often feel overwhelmed by what they see as a huge volume of work involved in finding, anlayzing, and synthesizing information. Though Guided Inquiry is intended to be a process which includes educator assistance and intervention during those problematic times, students need to learn that the discomfort connected to working with new information is normal and natural. Kuhlthau has argued that an individual can have a "profound experience of uncertainty in the early stages of the information search process", and that it is necessary to consider "uncertainty as a natural, essential characteristic of information seeking rather than regarding the reduction of uncertainty as the primary objective of information seeking" .

Focus on Inquiry discusses the fact that students "often experience information overload during the Retrieving phase". Why? "[S]tudents’ 'need to know' is often not easily translated into the terminology and structure of the information system, and the information systems—such as the Dewey decimal system,online library catalogues, magazine and newspaper (periodical)indexes, and the World Wide Web—often are not particularly intuitive or user-friendly". We are also told that educators need to:

be alert to the feelings and physical outlets that may characterize information overload — anger, frustration, fatigue, irritability, leg jiggling, lack of focus — and help students to recognize these signs of overload. In addition to helping students understand that it is normal to experience such feelings during the inquiry process, teach students useful coping strategies, such as omission or filtering (ignoring or selecting certain categories of information), generalizing or twigging (broadening or narrowing the topic), or asking for help. Getting a large picture of the topic and its subcategories, by using whole-class or small-group activities, such as concept mapping or deciding what kinds of information might be appropriate for the topic, are helpful strategies for this phase, especially when information overload is, or may be, a problem.

To look at the problem of information a little more deeply and areas where educators can help (zones of intervention), Ignacio has nicely summed up Kuhlthau's 5 C's:

1. Collaborating -- the librarian or peer acts as a collaborator, which also situates the search process in a nonisolating context more typical of real world information seeking tasks.

2. Continuing -- Intervention is a continuous process because information problems are not static.

3. Conversing -- Conversation not only elicits more informed help from the librarian/counselor and feedback from peers but also helps students articulate and understand their information problem and, ultimately, to develop a metacognitive sense of where they are in a process.

4. Charting -- Charting is a system of using visual representations such as conceptual maps to manage and organize large or seemingly vague ideas, to recognize patterns and relationships, and to stimulate a cohesive sense of direction.

5. Composing -- Kuhlthau uses the example of journal writing which, she says, promotes reflection, formulation, and the development of constructs.

So where do teachers and teacher-librarians need to expand their roles in the area of student feelings and the zones of intervention as proposed by Kuhlthau and reiterated by Ignacio? Collaborating with other educators is de rigeur, but collaborating with students may be new to some. Continuing simply means that information problems are ongoing and issues may have to revisited regularly, but that isn't necessarily a big change for educators in the classroom or the library. Conversing in a specific sense to elicit feedback about feelings and reflective meaning may also be new for some. Charting is something I have normally only done in early stages of work, so I myself may have to revisit this "C". Composing, such as journal writing, is again a tool I have used in other manners, not for reflection in information retrieval processes, so again this would be a new use for me (and possibly for some others). How about you?