The Manitoba Ministry of Education’s School Library Policy Statement states that “resource-based learning is an educational model which, by design, actively involves students, teachers and teacher-librarians in the meaningful use of a wide range of appropriate print, non-print and human resources.” In an attempt to translate this into my own words, I see resource based learning as learning opportunities collaboratively designed to facilitate “meaningful use” of diverse resources. To dig more deeply into “meaningful,” I would hazard that students learn to and as they critically select and utilize resources that fit both their personal learning style(s) and their learning goal(s).

I agree that inquiry based learning is an umbrella term and, at its simplest, is an inquiry into real life problems. I believe that inquiry based learning can take on many guises and can range from more teacher centered to student centered. My colleague Dawn Anderson put together the below chart last year to help teachers wrap their heads around scaffolding inquiry projects. This is not meant to be a comprehensive answer or definition but rather a helping tool for those minds that find it beneficial.

Created by Dawn Anderson (2014).

Based on this chart, this is an example of what could be called a “guided” inquiry project.

Any inquiry demands that each learner explore a variety of resources in order to answer a question or create a solution so it follows that any inquiry project could also be resource based learning as well. As a more teacher centered and structured design (if that’s what it has to look like), resource based learning would be ideal for scaffolding towards a more student centered inquiry project where necessary.  In fact, it would be crucial in order to develop some of the phantom skills (resource selection, evaluation, synthesis, etc.) that inquiry requires.

I guess my question is: do the teacher and teacher librarian always select the resource pathways when designing resource based learning opportunities? Or can resource pathways be co-created with the students as well? That would be fun!