Wiggling

In Lamb's "Wiggling" stage, enquirers contemplate what they have done with the information they've found.  They think about what criteria they have used for evaluation of their sources.  If content is judged to be reliable and useful, the learner assimilates the information with their existing knowledge and considers how to use the information in their final product.

In Eisenberg and Berkowitz's "The Big 6" model, this stage can falls in the "information use" stage.  Learners are engaging with their information to determine its usefulness and accuracy.  In Marjorie Pappas and Ann Tepe's "Pathways to Knowledge" model, this stage would be considered "interpretation."  Here, learners assess the usefulness of their information, develop personal meaning from what they heave learned, and begin to synthesize.  In Ken Macrorie's "I-Search" model, this step falls into Phase 3, which focuses on gathering and integrating information.  Here, the learner can should both analyze and synthesize the quality of their information in order to create meaning.  (Callison, Baker)

My collection of information for this inquiry moved in stages.  First, I looked for books on India in general.  Once I realized that those books did not include much information about marriage customs, I started to look for books specifically about Indian weddings.  My local library had nothing on this subject, so I used the Purdue library for further research.

After reading through some of those sources, I realized that although my brother refers to his upcoming ceremony as an "Indian wedding," that term could mean a ceremony of many different religions (Muslim, Hindu, Christian, Jain, Sikh, etc.).  What he will actually be having is a Hindu wedding.  Once I realized this, I had to go back and look for print sources that specifically discuss Hindu rituals.

While this produced a more successful search, I still found that print sources were too broad.  All of the print sources that I discovered contained a comprehensive discussion of Hinduism, including its roots, core beliefs, and all major ceremonies.  While that information was interesting, most of it was not applicable to my inquiry, as Brian and Lakshmi have decided to cut many of the purely religious parts of the ceremony to drastically reduce the time.

Still, the print sources gave me a basic overview of Hindu wedding ceremonies.  I was then able to search online for more specific information, using what I learned from the print sources as a scaffold.  Interestingly, the majority of useful websites that I located were developed as "wedding planners" for prospective brides, containing many links to places to shop for wedding apparel.  While these sources were not in any way "academic," they still contained much useful information.

At that point, I had to step back and re-evaluate my purpose in this inquiry.  Was I really conducting an academic inquiry, and did I need accredited sources?  Or because my inquiry was more personal in nature, would these "wedding planning" sites carry weight?  I landed somewhere in the middle of those two ends of the spectrum.  My inquiry IS personal in nature, and because it involves planning the details of a personalized wedding (by my brother and his fiance), I thought that the personalized planning sites could be very helpful, as they offered many of the same choices that Brian and Lakshmi are facing.  If nothing else, reading about these options allowed me to refine the questions I asked them in my interview.  More strictly "academic" sites tended to focus on formalized rituals, many of which were not going to be included in this specific ceremony.  Still, I wanted to have reliable sources so that I could modify my personal inquiry into a teaching tool.  Therefore, I decided that the "wedding planner" sites could be used to help me direct my interviews, and the information on them could be used if it was confirmed by at least two other sources, one of which I wanted to be an interview with Brian and Lakshmi.  Even if I was able to say to them, "Are you doing this?" and they affirmed, then I could go back to the site for more information.

My primary sources for this project were personal interviews.  For specific details about the upcoming wedding, I interviewed my brother, his fiance, and her parents.  Due to their time constraints, I also interviewed one of my co-workers and her stepmother, who was born and raised the same region of India that Lakshmi comes from, to get more information on the significance and background of various parts of the wedding.

An example of all of this would be the mangalsutra, which is a wedding necklace made of black beads, given to the bride by the groom on the day of the ceremony.  I first read about the mangalsutra in one of my print sources (Kanitkar), which contained only a a few sentences about it.  I was then able to look up additional information on various websites ("Indian Wedding Traditions," "The Hindu Wedding Ceremony," and "A Short Hindu Wedding Ceremony").  My interview with my brother confirmed that they would be including this piece in their ceremony, and my interview with Harveen Bhatla gave me more in-depth about its significance.

Baker, Katie.  Comparison of models.  http://virtualinquiry.com/inquiry/bakermodel.pdf

Callison, Daniel and Leslie Preddy.  The Blue Book on Information Age Inquiry, Instruction and Literacy.  Westport, Connecticut: Libraries Unlimited, 2006.

"Indian Wedding Traditions."  Beautyhill.  http://culture-customs.beautyhill.com/indian-wedding-traditions.html

Kanitkar, V.P. (Hemant) and W. Owen Cole.  Hinduism--An Introduction.  New York: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., 1995.

Lamb, Annette.  "Wiggling."  Information Age Inquiry.  https://oncourse.iu.edu/portal/site/FA11-IN-SLIS-S574-16409

Seal, Manisha.  "The Hindu Wedding Ceremony."  Culture.  http://www.redhotcurry.com/culture/hindu_wedding.htm

"A Short Hindu Wedding Ceremony."  http://www.scribd.com/doc/36069092/A-Short-Hindu-Wedding-Ceremony