ProQuest

To recap, my inquiry questions are/were:

  1. What evidence is there to support the effectiveness of Inquiry Learning as a pedagogical framework?

    Q1.1 What does recent research reveal about the impact and implementation of inquiry learning in primary schools?

  1. How can Inquiry Learning be implemented meaningfully in a library context?

    Q 2.2. What does inquiry learning in a primary school library ‘look’ like?After my A+ Education Searches, I changed tack to a more practical approach through resources found through Social Media (Twitter), therefore, this inquiry direction has come to an end (for now!).

  1. What skills are required for students to engage in Inquiry learning?

Due to the strong link between my first and third questions, my search strings encompass aspects of both, with the hope that results for each will be clear from the abstracts.

Like all searches using Library databases, it is a good idea to start with the Thesaurus function (found within Advanced Search), as terminology can vary depending on the region in which the database is based. Proquest is American, so it may be helpful to use US English terminology. I used various Expert search strategies to narrow my search down from over 940,000 results to less than 100, various examples of search strings I used for the numerous searches I conducted are explained in the table below.

Strategy/Search strings Comment

Filters

Language = English

Publication date = 2010 – 2017

I chose English as the language and narrowed the results to publications published within the last five years. As currency is a decision-making factor in creating professional reading lists, that would be of most benefit to staff in my context, I chose to limit the publication date to between 2012 and 2017.
(inquiry OR “inquiry-based” OR “guided-inquiry” OR enquiry)

Use of double inverted quotation marks “inquiry based” indicates that the search must be for the entire phrase rather than individual words.

The use of brackets are necessary when three or more terms are included in a group with the Boolean term, OR. These terms came up in the Thesaurus and/or in other research up to this point.

NB: I originally included the search inquir* and inquiry? to retrieve variations of the term, however it did not seem to result in appropriate search results. After looking further into it using Proquest’s thorough Search Tips, I discovered that terms retrieved using truncation (*) and wildcard (?) are not considered when sorting results based on relevance. I decided to remove the symbols and rephrase the string with the Boolean operator, OR between synonyms.

(“primary school” OR elementary) NOT (Secondary OR “high school”) After many results including high school case studies, I narrowed the search further and specified that I did not want the results to include secondary or high schools. It occurred to me that I did not use the more common US terminology of ‘elementary schools’, so I tried switching primary for elementary and saw a large increase in results. Considering I am interested in collecting Australian examples of inquiry in primary school libraries, I chose to change it back to what it was.
(impact OR effect) It is important to include synonyms of terms within search strings to ensure appropriate capture of the available research.
AND student AND (skills OR knowledge)  These terms were included to encompass my third re-search question, regarding required skills.
 Use of Brackets  Proquest has rules of Operator precedence (much like mathematical equations) but using brackets overrides this default and terms in brackets are ‘processed’ first before completing the rest of operators in the search string.

Filters

Subject

 The ‘Narrow results’ column on the left of the page provides various ways to refine search results. One particularly useful tool is the Subject filter, where it gives you the option to include and exclude the subjects listed (see Screen shot – Proquest subject filter, below).

I narrowed the subjects down (by ticking exclude or include) to those that seemed most relevant to my inquiry and it significantly reduced my search results.

This can work in a similar fashion to the Boolean operator, NOT for terms such as ‘universities’.

Screen shot – Proquest subject filter. Image by author, Lotte ten Hacken, 2017

Search Within The ‘Search within’ tool is found at the bottom of all the results and is a very useful tool to narrow results further without creating a brand new search.

Recent Searches

Combine searches

eg. 1 NOT university (where 1 = first search string)

Perhaps the tool I find most useful in Proquest, is the Recent Searches function. It lists every search string that has been entered (in reverse chronological order) and allows you to include search strings and then combine them with other search strings to modify searches. It also provides a record of the number of results for each search string, which helps guide the search process.

Beginning with over 50,000 results and narrowing it down to less than 100 was made possible through expert searching techniques including Boolean operators and applying filters to searches. The Recent Searches was an invaluable tool.

Screen shot – Proquest Recent Searches. Image by author, Lotte ten Hacken, 2017.

The results proved to be highly relevant and useful in my Information  Search Process. This was part of the ‘collection’ phase, where I was “seeking pertinent information” with feelings of increased confidence and interest (Kuhlthau, 2004b).

Upon skimming through the results it became clear that it was not really possible to separate the articles relevant to the two different Inquiry questions. They are inextricably linked, with the first question encompassing the other.

Instead of rephrasing my questions, I reflected upon what I think would be most useful information to share with my colleagues and others in my professional learning network and I decided that an appropriate title for my Curated Collection is: The What, Why and How of Inquiry Learning: an inquiry into the purpose, impact and implementation of inquiry-based pedagogies in primary schools.

Now the lightbulbs are burning bright. Strong conductors (search tools and strategies) have resulted in reward – I hope that others are provided with lightbulb moments through following this re-search process.

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