NYC School Librarian Guidebook: Stripling Model of Inquiry
What is Inquiry?
Inquiry engenders a strong commitment to learning. By creating a culture of inquiry in our schools, teachers build solid connections between inquiry and literacy, as literacy skills are aligned with the essential skills of inquiry. Through inquiry, teachers and librarians transform alienated or apatheic students into engages and empowered inquirers.
What is Inquiry?
Inquiry places students at the heart of learning by empowering them to follow their sense of wonder into new discoveries and insights about the way the world works.
Inquiry requires active engagement. The learner identifies what he/she already knows, asks intriguing questions about what he/she does not know, investigates the answers, constructs new understandings and shares those understandings with others.
The Stripling Model of Inquiry
The iterative process of inquiry is most accurately depicted by a spiral or a cycle. Inquiry is not a linear progression, but is messy and recursive. Inquiry does, however, generally progress through phases. Each phase involves critical thinking skills that empower young people to learn on their own.