Reflective practice in teaching fosters inquiry-based learning: Pedagogical implications for LIS education

Reflective practice is an umbrella term that covers a wide range of concepts with rather diverse meanings. However, the core and common theme among them is the ability of learning through and from everyday life experiences with the aim of constructing a new understanding about ourselves and the experiences. The main purpose of reflective practice is learning from the past to generate new knowledge in order to build a better future. Regarding the contemplative essence of this approach, it requires a number of thoughtful attitudes and skills such as self-awareness, critical thinking and mindfulness. As a result, reflective practitioner need to learn how to pose relevant questions to probe causes and consequences in a specific context and critically analyse complicated topics. Moreover, they should be able to explore the context, imagine possibilities and generate alternative methods in their practice. Reflective practice is widely accepted as an effective approach in the learning and teaching scholarship to improve the quality of learning and teaching experiences for both teachers and students.
On the other hand, inquiry-based learning is a student-centred method and has a constructivist approach which enables students to pose their own questions about the topic and seek appropriate answers from a wide range of evidence and information. Inquiry-based learning is a form of sense making approach to engage students in an ongoing process of genuine curiosity, authentic experiences and construction of deep understanding.
In this presentation I explain how we can support inquiry-based learning through a reflective practice approach in teaching. Then I provide a number of examples from the Library and Information Science (LIS) topics as productive grounds to foster inquiry-based learning. Finally, I share my experiences of applying both theories in the subjects that I teach and provide some suggestions in this area.