Expert Search

I started my initial search by conducting a general keyword search in Google for each of my three questions. I quickly learned that some of my questions were going to be much more fruitful as a research base, mostly due to the way that I had worded them and more specifically, the type of vocabulary I had chose to use. I some cases my working was not based on commonly used vocabulary and therefore this impacted the results.  After this process and reflecting more deeply on my currently understanding and skill set in inquiry I decided to narrow my questioning down to my question about inquiry skills.  I decided that this was an appropriate way to check the type on inquiry skills I have been focusing on, and to compare them to those in light of current research and practice. Therefore the following question became my focus:

What competencies are essential for students to develop, in order to be effective independent inquirers?

As I worked through my research process I found that it was helpful to track the tools I was using, the searches that I did, and to stop briefly and reflect on what each search produced, in order to shift my approach. Below is a map of how parts of my research evolved throughout the process and how the language of my question shifted as a result of this. Each colour on the diagram indicates a different search approach:

Google:

I began with a Google search using Boolean operations that simply used the terms competency and inquiry, the exact search phrase being: competency AND inquiry.  This search revealed 2.060.000 results (0,38 seconds).  Being such a broad search much of what initially came through was related to the world outside of education and therefore I attempted to narrow my search by adding primary school : inquiry AND competencies AND primary school.  This generated 686.000 results (0,54 seconds).  I then pursued this further and used a search for inquiry AND competencies OR skill and primary school which resulted in 595. 000 resutls (0,47 seconds).  

Despite some helpful resources much of what came through in this search as very program specific and either linked to a  country or a particular program or even subject area and I wanted to make sure I was getting a more overall skills set.  In order to avoid this I tailored my search to be: inquiry AND cross curricular competencies AND primary school.  Which resulted in 424.000 results (0,47 seconds). I chose to add cross curricular to my search as a way to ensure that my results yielded more transferable skills that could be used for inquiry across the curriculum.

I then further refined my search to: cross curricular competencies elementary AND inquiry, where about 412.000 results (0,46 seconds) were gathered. The choice to use the vocabulary of elementary came as a result of recognising that primary may be specific to particular cultures and therefore not yielding results from a range of perspectives and groups.  I also tried this with a more complex search using the OR function and both primary OR elementary: cross curricular competencies elementary OR primary AND inquiry with resulted in 712.000 results in 0,41 seconds.

This was a turning point in my research as the more specific nature of this search meant that I began to access more transferable resources and resources that started to target specific skills sets for inquiry.  I also began to use the various media filters provided by google (video etc), to begin to access a wider range of resources to add to my curation.

I then took a step back and did a broader search to head in a slightly different direction to see if I could gather more resources by changing my search terms and in order to begin this I started with the search phrase of: developing inquiry skills AND cross curricular, which brought 1.900.000 results (0,31 seconds).  I then further refined this using the search phrase: developing inquiry skills AND 21st century learning.  The choice of 21st century came from some references that I had found in my previous search which has shown a more global set of skills that were less subject based.  This resulted in 960.000 results (0,63 seconds) which were suitably generic sets of inquiry skills and more beneficial to the research that I was conducting.

Social Media:

In conducting a social media search I began with Twitter and used a broad search with the hashtag of #inquiry.  This provided some broad inquiry links and some valuable tweets about tools to support inquiry and the skills embedded in it, however in order to try and get more specific sets of documented inquiry skills I tried using the following hashtags of #inquiryskills #skillsforinquiry (no results), #inquirycompetencies (no results), #skilledinquiry (no results), #learningthroughinquiry. This however resulted in either no results or mostly in people's announcements about how they taught inquiry skills and did not find any documented sets of inquiry skills.  I then pursued well known researchers/authors in the field and did a search for the handle of @kjinquiry to look more specifically at Kath Murdoch’s work, and found valuable posts by people that followed her or visa versa that shared resources outlining sets of inquiry skills.

My search also briefly touch on Pinterest where I searched under inquiry skills and was able to locate various resources that again provide a set of skills.  These were based on theoretical frameworks such as Bloom’s Taxonomy for thinking skills, and in some cases made links to technology resources that supported the development of this skills.

Proquest Database:

For this search I again began with a broad search of inquiry skills which provided 925, 934 results.  In order to narrow this search I used the SU.exact(“) feature to obtain results that specifically used the words that I was searching and I focused SU. exact "inquiry skills”, this immediately reduced my results to a list of 150 resources however as Proquest is more of a research database, most of the responses were based on case studies and described the results of implementation of the teaching of inquiry skills and not on identified skills sets.

Building on what I had learned about using 21st Century as a phrase rather than cross curricular I proceeded with a search phrase of: developing inquiry skills AND 21st century learning, which resulted in 125,719 results that were more specific and targeted to my evolving question, which had now become:

What inquiry skills are essential for students to develop in the 21st century and how do we develop these?

Google Scholar:

My last search was in Google Scholar and this was used to identify some supporting research that supported the sets of skills that I was discovering in my searches.  I used the search phrase: inquiry skills 21st century which gave me 265,000 results (0.13 sec).  I then further reduced this search by using the phrase 21st century guided inquiry which gave me 14,000 results (0.08 sec).  These results provided by this lead to me various valuable books which provided a sound rationale behind many of the online resources that I had found and provided a way to tie some of these together.