When I first started the Introduction to teacher librarianship course, I was coming from a Technology Teacher role. Part of the reason I decided upon my career change was the changing trends I could see happening not only in the Australia Curriculum but also in Australian education itself. (Initial reflections Blog Post / Assessment 1 ETL401 July 10th 2019). My specific focus was the area of digital technologies and literacies and as stated in my initial blog post, I believed that teacher librarians “had a unique opportunity to help facilitate this change”. I now believe that, although the digital component is still an integral part of the TL role, the role of the teacher librarian is a multifaceted landscape which includes the act of collaboration, changing information landscapes and the impact these areas will have on the overall information literacy of our students.
My understanding of the role of the Teacher Librarian in the Educational Environment
There are concerns that Teacher Librarians are a dying breed (Bonanno, K 2015) from what I have learned during this course, this is simply not true. The fact of the matter is that the role is changing from that of a traditional view of the Teacher Librarian to one of a multifaceted professional. Purcell (2010) describes the roles of the TL as a leader, instructional partner, information specialist, teacher and programme administrator. Purcell believes that the teacher librarians role is to nurture students and support learning and literacy” and I strongly believe that this reflects my own personal practices and experiences The library is meant to foster well being – schools libraries are no longer the silent place to do academic work, they simply cannot exist within this context if they wish to survive. I strongly believe that the school library needs to be a place where creativity and innovation can be fostered – because, as said by Ken Robinson – schools “Kill creativity” (Why I love Ken Robinson Sept 23rd 2019). Ken describes how schools are not preparing our schools for 21st century skills and learning – but as teacher librarians, we can be that “frontline” that can foster these skills due to the flexibility in our job roles.
Ultimately, teacher librarians are information specialists. As expressed in the ASLA article “What is a Teacher Librarian” (Australian School Library ASLA 2014), we have three major roles – curriculum leaders, information specialists and information service managers. All of these roles encompass the commodity that defines us – information! As I discussed my blog post Module 3: Are school librarians an endangered species? (Link) Teacher librarians are integral to the success of our students. This, I believe, really encompasses the roles suggested by ASLA as they all concentrate on our ability to provide students with information and as well, all know, information is knowledge and knowledge is power. Now, more than ever, teacher librarians are making the most of the new and integrated technologies, smaller and limited budgets and being the frontline defence in an age of misinformation. Our students social capital falls heavily in the digital realm and it is important that as a TL, that we are not only guiding students through this content , but also creating that can be easily understood by them ( Discussion Forum post 2.2 Information society, 30th July 2019).
My Understanding of the impact of information literacy roles in Teacher librarianship.
Early on in the course, we were asked to define the term “information literacy” in our own words. My definition referred to the “The ability to understand knowledge and information regardless of the information context and the ability to apply and use this information in a shifting and interchanging environment.” (Module 5: Information literacy reflective practices Sept 11th 2019). Most of my studies led to the conclusion that literacy does not come naturally to most of our students and this affects my role heavily as a teacher librarian. With a background in digital technologies and computing, I believe that I was one of the few teachers at my school to witness the snaffling behaviour in students described by Coombs (2009) when information gathering. I strongly believe that implementing scaffolds such as Guided Inquiry Design (GID) will enable our students to access information at a more critical level.
The reason why I so strongly relate to The GID process is that I feel that it strongly reflects the 21st century skills identified by the Australian curriculum. (Discussion Forum 5.3b Guided Inquiry) GID helps students to understand how to go from the mass amount of information (big picture) to allowing them to define a topic or question. These simple, easy to understand steps are scaffolded in a way that it allows students to access information from any context (Fitzgerald, L 2019) and means, as I suggested in discussion post 5.4a Information Literacy (Sept 2019) the challenge for teacher librarians is to help students internalise these information research skills and to break habits formed by many years of educations. I believe the GID process enables students to do this – however, we need to work collaboratively with teachers- the GID process is a scaffold that has enough flexibility to be manipulated to allow for more autonomous learning for our students.
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