Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Critical Synthesising

In my first year of studying for my Masters of Teaching Librarianship I took two subjects, ETL401 and ETL501. These subjects provided an overview of the role of the teacher librarian and their effect on the school community.

To begin with the role of the teacher librarian was seen “first and foremost as a facilitator of books” (Mackenzie, July 2010). There were many reasons for thinking this way, one of which was the schooling system in which I was raised. I was originally from England and the attended primary school did not have a school library. Instead we had a mobile van appear every 2 weeks from which we could borrow books. When I arrived in Australia I was already in secondary school and there was no set library time. Another reason for thinking this was because I am a firm believer in the importance of reading. Guthrie and Wigfield state that students who read outside of classrooms had a higher reading comprehension and knowledge based then students who didn’t (1997, p 420). It then surprised me to read Herring’s article which stated that some researchers “argued that reading for pleasure is given unnecessary prominence in some school library mission statements” (Mackenzie, August, 2010, Herring, 2007, p 29). If research has shown that students who read outside the classroom have a higher reading comprehension then the importance of reading should be recognised in all mission statements pertaining to the library and schools in general.

Another facet of the role of the teacher librarian was the teaching of research skills. Whilst I briefly thought that teacher librarians should assist in teaching students how to research (Mackenzie, July 2010) due to lack of knowledge and access to teacher librarian resources I was unaware of just how involved they should be. Haycock states that a decline in school libraries is “almost certainly linked to the erosion of research skills among students at the post secondary level” (2003, p 11). Through completion of this course I have been made aware of information literacy skills and their importance to students in their studies. Information skills, which cover the finding, using, synthesising and evaluation of data, are key skills which must be taught to students if they are to become successful learners. Plotnick states that “information literacy skills instruction must be integrated with the curriculum and reinforced both within and outside of the educational setting” (1999, p 2) and the teacher librarian plays a key role in the implementation of these programs. However, as stated on the ETL401 forum, one of the main difficulties faced by teacher librarians is that there is not a single definitive definition of information literacy. Snavely and Cooper discuss how the many definitions have caused “ambiguity” and that it is “a phrase in quest of meaning” (1997).
Before I started this course I had never heard of an information literate school community. Whilst this connects to the above paragraph about information literacy the definition that I prefer is a school community which is dedicated to work together to achieve the goal “of becoming informed” (Boyd, Eyre & Henri, 2002, p 2). I realised that my lack of knowledge about this subject came from the inability to access many of the journals and through not realising that the concept existed. It is interesting to note that information literate school communities are not taught in undergraduate degrees for early childhood teaching despite being an important topic of discussion. Now that I understand the meaning of an information literate school community I can see that the teacher librarian has a very specific role to play in its creation and development. As stated in ‘The Library Edition’ teacher librarians need to become leaders within their school community and expand their role to becoming advocates to creating an information literate school (Mackenzie, September 2010).

The final point to make is about the Standards of Professional Excellence for Teacher Librarians. Previously I had believed that teacher librarians had the same standards as every other teacher. However now I realise that teacher librarians have their own specific discipline and therefore their own specific standards. Park states that “without professional standards how are new teachers expected to know what characterises quality teaching, given the vast array of teaching styles and practices that currently exist within schools?” (Park, 2001, p 19) and this rings true for teacher librarians as well. By knowing the Standards and working towards them, teacher librarians can improve their teaching and the outcomes for students in their care.

To conclude this discussion my first year at Charles Sturt University has taught me a lot about the role of the teacher librarian. It has shown me that there is a lot more work involved then looking after books and covering other teacher’s relief from face to face time, and hopefully my knowledge base will continue to grown throughout the rest of my years at university.







Reference:
Australian Library and Information Association & Australian Schoolslibrary Association. (2005). Standards of professional excellence for teacher librarians. Available from http://www.asla.org.au/docs/TLstandards.pdf

Cooper, N. & Snavely, L. (1997). The information literacy debate. The Journal Of Academic Librarianship 1 9-14.

Guthrie, J. & Wigfield, A. (1997). Relations of children’s motivation for reading to the amount and breadth of their reading. Journal of educational psychology 89(3) 420-432.

Haycock, K. (2003). The crisis in Canada’s school libraries: The case for reform and re-investment. Retrieved from the World Wide Web, 1 October 2010 from: http://www.cla.ca/slip/final_haycock_report.pdf

Henri, J., Boyd, S., & Eyre, G. (2002). Sculpting and Information Literacy School Community: Looking for Touchstones. In D. Singh, A. Fonseka & B. De Rosario (Eds.). School Libraries for a Knowledge Society: Proceedings of the 31sr Annual Conference of the International Association of School Librarianship (pp. 121-140). Seattle: IASL.

Herring, J. (2007). Teacher librarians and the school library. In S. Ferguson (Ed.) Libraries in the twenty-first century: charting new directions in information (pp. 27-42). Wagga Wagga, NSW: Centre for Information Studies, Charles Sturt University.

Park, R. (2001). The impact of standards on a beginning teacher. Unicorn 27(3) 18-20

Plotnick, E. (1999). Information literacy. eDigest 98(7) 1-5. Retrieved from the World Wide Web, 3 October 2010 from: http://www.planetfreebook.com/Classic_collection/classic_books_author_PQ_PDF_edited_filenames/Plotnick.Eric%20!Information%20Literacy.pdf

Monday, October 4, 2010

Topic 3 (Forum Post moved here)

I have always found the concept of Resource Based Learning interesting, especially from an early childhood perspective. Going right back in preschools there has always been resource based learning and little teacher directed, whole group activities. Yet schools seem to be the complete opposite. In some ways I can understand that as schools often have less time and more concepts to teach. There is also the need for explicit teaching of subjects (e.g reading) that are difficult to learn through RBL. To be honest I think there should be a mixture of teacher directed and resource based learning. We are often told that students learning differently so we cannot say that one teaching approach/ style is better then the other when we should be using a variety.