This stage of my inquiry tour once again brings me to a quick descent stage.
ProQuest has been my go-to database as a student, as I have always had success retrieving a diverse range of relevant, peer reviewed resources. ProQuest is a relatively large database. It is American so it uses American search terms and spelling, but there is a built-in thesaurus to help with terms.
I have typically used the Advanced Search on ProQuest. However, in the spirit of inquiry learning, I decided I would conduct all my searches this time in the Basic Search using simple and complex search strings. Therefore, just like the A+ Education tour stage, my first action was to read ProQuest’s search tips to improve my search techniques on this database.
Next, as is my usual habit on this database, I checked the Full Text and Peer Reviewed option boxes.
My current questions are:
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How can teacher-librarians support teachers in the Guided Inquiry process?
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How can teacher-librarians create learning environments that encourage students’ engagement in Guided Inquiries?
As my questions have not changed since my last search (and my reading of those selected resources), I continued with the same search strings – with only minor modifications to comply with ProQuest’s operators. Once I had my search results, I narrowed them further by using the side bar options. This is a great tool and makes searching on this database easy, especially for beginners.
I have included the results of only a few searches, as they generally appear to be adding only a little to the collection of resources I have from my previous searches.
Searches 1 – 3
| Search String | Results | Analysis |
| (“guided inquiry” OR “inquiry learning”) AND teacher-librarian AND librar* | 107 | There were a few results that are repeats from my other searches, as well as a few new interesting resources from an international perspective.
I made a small adjustment to my initial search string from the one I used in A+ Education string: by adding the * truncation operator to librar, so the search would include both library and libraries in the results. This did increase the number of results, but obviously makes no difference to the relevance in relation to my inquiry path. Additionally, I tried the ? wildcard operator and the results were the same as when I used the * (see screen shots below) However, this simple search string is too broad, as there was a large number of non-relevant works for the purpose my inquiry focus. |
| (“guided inquiry” OR “inquiry learning”) AND teacher-librarian AND “secondary school” AND librar* | 20 | This search string is yielding nothing but repeated results and non-usable recourses. |
| (“guided inquiry” OR “inquiry learning”) AND teacher-librarian AND (“secondary school” OR “high school”) AND librar* | 60 | The use of the word high school did increase the search results but only a few new results of relevance. |
Search 4
I conducted more searches using ProQuest’s proximity operator to focus on Guided Inquiry, teacher-librarian and teacher collaboration.
| Search String | Results | Analysis |
| (“guided inquiry” OR “inquiry learning”) AND teacher-librarian NEAR/10 collaboration | 16 | I used the proximity operator NEAR/[number] to search for articles with a focus on the teacher-librarian – teacher collaborative relationship.
This search came back with five/six new relevant resources, and also with a few repeats and non-relevant results. |
Search 5
Finally, I selected an article that I found very useful and used the Related items options to explore other similar resources. I repeated this on a few articles but eventually found I was coming back to the same articles I had saved in my previous searches. I have been told it is a skill to know when to stop – I think I need to now.
Reflection
I was both pleased and disappointed with this stage. I was pleased because it is an easy database to search and I found some additional resources for my inquiry. Additionally, I challenged myself to improve my searching skills in this database by using compound Boolean operators, truncation, wildcards and proximity operators – instead of relying on the Advanced Search tool to do it for me. However, overall I was a little disappointed that this database did not yield any significant numbers of new relevant resources.
ProQuest will likely remain my first port of call for researching scholarly resources in the future, but I will definitely supplement this with searches on A+ Education and Google Scholar.
I finished this stage, but not with the win. However at least I gained a few valuable lessons along the way.
In terms of my research questions, I will have to give them a good deal of consideration before I move onto the next stage: Social Media. I am a novice with respect to social media (in both professional and personal contexts) and so this will be interesting!
The next stage of my inquiry tour is trying to conduct expert searching on social media.
Tour de Inquiry Learning 