Moving On

Finally – it’s done! I’ve completed my Master of Education (Teacher Librarianship) after 2.5 seemingly endless years!!!

Frodo Its Done GIF - Frodo Its Done - Discover & Share GIFs

I’m not sure if I’ll continue to have access to this blog now that I’ve graduated, so in the interests of continuing my reflective practice, I’ve set up another via Edublogs: https://allyoureadislove.edublogs.org/

CDN media

If anyone has liked what they’ve seen here and wishes to follow my ongoing professional journey as a high school teacher-librarian, feel free to join me at this new site. I’ll be posting regular updates, research summaries and reflections and hope to see you there!

ETL512 Assessment 6: Professional Reflective Portfolio

Part A: Statement of Personal Philosophy

Effective 21st century teacher-librarians require strong interpersonal skills alongside the pedagogical knowledge to teach a multitude of competencies and literacies across different curriculum areas. Through proficient leadership, strategic planning, resource management, and innovative program design, modern teacher-librarians inspire passion for reading for pleasure and information while supporting learning and wellbeing in our communities.

Modern libraries are about people, not just resources. Our ability to form effective relationships with students, staff, parents, and professional networks allows teacher-librarians to meet the diverse educational, wellbeing, and recreational needs of our learning communities and to advocate for our value in an ever-changing information landscape.

Part B: Critical Evaluation

My very first assessment for this degree required me to reflect on my understanding of the role of teacher-librarians in schools (Lysaught, 2021a). For this task, I discussed the roles I focused on as part of my then-recent job application:

Little did I know, but this visual would serve as a prescient highlight to many of the issues explored throughout this course.

The early work completed in ETL401 introduced me to several roles expected of modern teacher-librarians, and as a result of my continued learnings in this degree I have consolidated these varied elements into three key themes.

Theme 1: Resourcing and Inspiring Reading for Pleasure

The first theme, resourcing and inspiring reading for pleasure, in many ways reinforces pre-existing stereotypes about the work of teacher-librarians as predominantly dealing with books. I discussed this misconception in my early blog posts, noting that these perceptions were largely based on community experiences (Lysaught, 2021a; Lysaught, 2021b). As a result of the readings and learning tasks in this degree, I have concluded that teacher-librarians must therefore ensure that we provide a multitude of different experiences to our communities to shape their perceptions of our roles as varied and valuable in an ever-changing modern information landscape.

However, Herring (2007, p.31) noted that fulfilling all the possible roles expected of teacher-librarians at one time is impossible. Anecdotal evidence suggests many teachers still don’t know what information literacy is, let alone a teacher-librarian’s role in developing student proficiency; those few who do often lack the time for collaborative planning and teaching. Rather than stress myself out by fighting an uphill battle and overhauling community perceptions completely, at the start of my teacher-librarian journey I’ve chosen to draw on my strengths as an English teacher and my pre-existing relationships with this faculty to lean into community expectations and show my value to our school by establishing a culture of pleasure reading. Once trust in my abilities as a teacher-librarian and strong relationships are formed through this Trojan horse, the plan is to leverage my success and branch out into other facets of my role, such as information specialist, to further entrench my value to our school community.

Step one in my plan to channel then subvert community expectations was to create a Wide Reading Program for the Stage 4 English classes. To show the value of this program to our school leaders, I aligned it with our Strategic Improvement Plan, foreshadowing the learnings of ETL504 Teacher Librarian as Leader. This program, inspired by the ETL402 Literature Across the Curriculum readings, aims to create a school-wide culture of pleasure reading. Reading for pleasure has repeatedly been shown to improve student literacies and socio-emotional development (Combes & Valli, 2007; Howard, 2011; Allington & Gabriel, 2012; Kid & Castano, 2013; Gaiman, 2013; Wu et al., 2013; Whitten et al., 2016; Ipri & Newman, 2017; Stower & Waring, 2018; Smith, 2019; Merga, 2021; Merga, 2022). Student reading drops off during adolescence for several reasons, including lack of access to quality texts, lack of positive reading role-models, lack of time, and lack of confidence in their reading ability:

This program aims to address these issues by providing students access to appropriate, self-selected texts and by setting aside a 60-minute period each fortnight to allow students time to explore, share, and value their reading in a socially supported positive learning environment (Gibson-Langford & Laycock, 2008; Krashen, 2011; Fisher & Frey, 2018; Merga & Mason, 2019; Allington & McGill-Franzen, 2021). Through this program I aim to create independent, lifelong readers who are set up for personal and academic success.

This initiative was first trialed in 2022, our first year without a school-wide DEAR program. It initially ran with 4 Year 7 classes which dropped back to 2 due to staffing issues and frequent interruptions. Data revealed that overall, the students who participated enjoyed the experience and found it beneficial, and I reported these findings to our Senior Executive via my Annual Library Report (Lysaught, 2023a):

In 2023 the Wide Reading Program was expanded from one teacher to six and now includes our Support Unit and two Year 8 classes, largely due to word of mouth and positive feedback from participating teachers – proving Bonanno’s (2011) argument that we should build relationships with the staff willing to work with us, since others will choose to follow once trust is developed (Crippen & Willows, 2019, p.173).

A crucial element of successfully inspiring reading for pleasure, especially amongst teens asserting their independence and exploring their identity, is the provision of relevant resources which support self-selection of reading materials (Beach et al., 2011; Allington & Gabriel, 2012; Fisher & Frey, 2018). To ensure a robust collection which meets the needs and interests of my patrons, I drew heavily upon the learnings gained in ETL503 Resourcing the Curriculum. Library hygiene is an important element of ensuring an enticing, relevant collection (Fieldhouse & Marshall, 2011), and thus at the end of 2022 I completed a stocktake and significant weed of our Fiction and Quick Reads collections (Lysaught, 2023a). This was the first stocktake since 2018 and the median age of deselected resources was 1999, necessitating a serious update of our collection to ensure continued relevance. This was followed by subsequent stocktakes of our Picture Book and Graphic Novel collections at the start of 2023. Once these stocktakes were completed I introduced dynamic shelving to make the shelves more enticing and facilitate browsing (Bogan, 2022).

I also implemented patron-led acquisitions to increase circulation and user connection to the library’s resources (Hughes-Hassell & Mancall, 2005, p.9; Kimmel, 2014; Johnson, 2018; Aaron Cohen Associates, 2020, para.6; Crawford et. al, 2020, p.2), with 49% of newly acquired fiction resources specifically requested by staff and students in 2022 (Lysaught, 2023a). Drawing upon my experiences during my practicum, this year I bought 131 Hi-Lo books for our Quick Reads collection, and plan to use them for future Book Club activities during the Wide Reading lessons (Lysaught, 2023b). I am also in the process of genrefying our Quick Reads collection for easier browsing and selection, trialing the learnings gained in ETL505 Describing and Analysing Educational Resources (Lysaught, 2022a) in one of our popular, manageable collections.

Fisher & Frey (2018) argued that interventions designed to increase reading volume should rely on four factors: access, choice, classroom discussion of texts and book talks. The initiatives described above aimed to incorporate these four factors alongside efficient collection development and management. Loans statistics indicate that circulation has increased on the days when the Wide Reading lessons run, and as a result Oliver data shows we are on track to meet or beat our previous loans records since I became the teacher-librarian in 2020, despite our removal of a whole-school DEAR program in 2022.

Theme 2: Resourcing and Developing Reading for Information

As mentioned above, despite the importance of reading for pleasure in developing literacy, the role of a modern teacher-librarian should expand beyond the realm of books and into the crucial realm of information literacy to avoid the misunderstanding that our roles are limited and unnecessary in modern schools. I personally was guilty of this misconception prior to starting this degree, so I can hardly blame time-poor classroom teachers and senior leaders for not understanding our role, especially if they’ve never seen it in action! It is therefore necessary that we provide a variety of different experiences to our communities to shape their perceptions of our roles and ensure they understand our vital importance in developing our students as ethical, efficient users and creators of information. We cannot risk becoming an “invisible profession” (Valenza, 2010; Bonanno, 2011) and resourcing our libraries to develop information literacy is a path forward for teacher-librarians to show our value in a shifting infosphere increasingly filled with mis- and disinformation (Floridi, 2007, p.59; Lysaught, 2021c).

ASLA 2011. Karen Bonanno, Keynote speaker: A profession at the tipping point: Time to change the game plan from CSU-SIS Learning Centre on Vimeo.

The learnings gained in ETL401 Introduction to Teacher Librarianship were crucial in forcing me to revise my misunderstandings regarding the role of the modern teacher-librarian. For the second assessment I focused on how social media platforms affect our relationship with information, and discovered that improved internet access has changed information-seeking behaviours to favour passive information acquisition which uses the path of least resistance (often relying on social interactions), significantly impacting users’ ability to determine fact from fiction (Bates, 2010; Herbst, 2020; Liu, 2020; Kuhlthau et al., 2021). Teenagers are particularly likely to gain information from online, social sources and, far from being ‘digital natives’ equipped to navigate online information, are uniquely vulnerable to misinformation (Combes, 2009; Jacobson, 2010; O’Connell, 2012; Common Sense Media, 2019; Australian eSafety Commissioner, 2021). As a high-school teacher-librarian, I therefore have an ethical responsibility to ensure that my collections and programs equip my students with the skills and competencies they’ll need to be information literate in an increasingly digital world. Anecdotal evidence suggests that for many secondary classroom teachers, the fact that teacher-librarians don’t teach to a specific curriculum demeans our value. The recently released Information Fluency Framework (NSW Department of Education, 2023) offers an exciting way to legitimise our work moving forward, showcasing that we can be the glue which brings learning areas together, and will form the focus of my professional learning after finishing this degree. In the meantime I will continue to run one-off research skill lessons for my colleagues as requested.

Inquiry learning was another key aspect of our role explored in ETL401. While I had been familiar with concepts such as Project Based Learning from my time as a classroom teacher (Lysaught, 2021d), other methods such as Guided Inquiry Design were eye-opening and revealed a new pedagogy full of potential for my students (Lysaught, 2021e), since information literacy is foundational to inquiry learning (Fitzgerald, 2015). I greatly enjoyed reworking our existing Year 7 Shakespeare unit into a Guided Inquiry Design unit and look forward to the opportunity to co-teach it in future (Lysaught, via Guided Inquiry in Australia, 2020), alongside the digital narrative I created for ETL533.

ETL533 Assessment 4 – Digital Storytelling: A Day in Elizabethan England by Danielle Lysaught (Danielle Lysaught)

However, implementing inquiry learning and developing information literacy programs has not been without significant challenges in reality. Early on I identified that high staff workloads and minimal free time would likely hamper potential attempts to implement collaborative inquiry learning (Lysaught, 2021f). As such, there has been limited staff uptake. However, largely due to the relationships and trust developed through the Wide Reading Program, I have finally been asked to work with one of the English teachers and her Year 8 class in Term 4 on a unit exploring suspenseful narratives. The ETL512 Study Visits emphasised the importance of emotional intelligence and persistence as key traits for teacher-librarians, and my personal experience shows that we must be resilient in the face of setbacks and persist in the hope that we can eventually have the opportunity to showcase our value to our colleagues.

Effective collection management is another crucial aspect to developing information literacy in our community. ETL503 Resourcing the Curriculum and ETL505 Describing and Analysing Educational Resources reinforced the importance of efficient resource management for supporting curriculum learning. In 2021 I completed a stocktake of our non-fiction collections – the first since 2018. The shelves were overflowing, messy, and not conducive to easy selection of relevant material:

Prior to this stocktake, the median date of publication was 1981. I weeded 2468 outdated or damaged resources, almost halving the collection and bringing the median date of publication to 2000 – an improvement, but indicating that there is still significant work to be completed to ensure a current, relevant collection which meets the needs of my staff and students. Foreshadowing the learnings of ETL504, I published the findings from this stocktake in my 2021 Annual Report and shared it with the Senior Executive to highlight the complexities of my role to our school leaders (Lysaught, 2022b).

In 2022 we started accessioning English novels to support their resource management, leading to it becoming our third largest collection:

This year, due to the success of this initiative, we have also had requests from the Science Faculty to assist with the management of their Stage 6 resources. While not without challenges, this provides a way for me to showcase my value to my colleagues, support curriculum learning through effective resource management, and interact with students who would otherwise possibly not utilise the library.

Theme 3: Promotion and Advocacy through Leadership

Two of the most used tags on my blog are ‘promotion’ and ‘advocacy’, so it’s only appropriate that the final theme discussed focuses on these issues.

Early in this degree the readings revealed the importance of advocating for our positions (Lysaught, 2021g), meaning that right from the start I’ve developed an awareness of the importance of perception and relationships in our role. This was consolidated throughout this degree in every unit.

In an early blog post for ETL503 Resourcing the Curriculum I noted that, due to the teacher-librarian’s often poorly defined role and lack of clear curriculum direction, we are often utilised in different ways to support whatever the school requires (Lysaught, 2021h). It is therefore crucial for us to collaborate with our colleagues so that they understand our varied roles, ensuring our continued visibility and effectiveness to our school community. As seen through the frequent ‘promotion’ and ‘advocacy’ tags in my blog, so much of our work gives us the chance to increase our visibility; while it can be tempting to give up in the face of colleagues who view us as having the “cushy job”, we need to change our mindset and instead reframe challenges as “chopportunities” (Weisburg, 2020) and look for ways to make our work seen, valued, and understood (Valenza, 2010; Bonanno, 2011).

My final unit, ETL504 Teacher Librarian as Leader, emphasised the different leadership styles that we can leverage to maximise our effectiveness to our colleagues. Effective leadership, regardless of the approach or title, should focus on building strong relationships with others through mutual trust, respect, and effective communication (Holmes et al., 2012, p.271, 276; Moir et al., 2014, p.37; Ezard, 2015; Gleeson, 2016). My very first blog post had outlined my intent to support both staff and students (Lysaught, 2021i), and thus Servant Leadership appealed to me from the start (Lysaught, 2023c). In particular I was drawn to Servant Leadership due to its focus on empowering and developing others, humility, commitment to growth and community building, highly developed interpersonal skills, stewardship, healing, conceptualisation, and foresight  (Arar & Oplatka, 2022, p.83-87; Crippen & Willows, 2019; p.171-172), and found that its guiding questions – ‘do you want to serve or be served?’ and ‘do those served grow as persons?’ (Blanchard & Broadwell, 2018; Greenleaf, 2008, p.36) – aligned well with my personal traits and values, and could help me support and heal cynical, time-poor staff and to act as mentors for both staff and students (Branch-Mueller & Rodger, 2022, p.46-47; Reinsel Soulen, 2020, p.39-40; Uther & Pickworth, 2014, p.21-23).

As a result of the learnings in this degree, I’ve experimented with a variety of different promotions and advocacy methods. I began this degree in mid-2021 when NSW started online learning followed by cohorting, which made collaboration and promotion particularly challenging early on; this has been further compounded by the current teacher shortage and high staff turnover at our school. Some of the early initiatives I implemented to raise the library’s profile include the Student Media Team, a Babble, Books and Breakfast club working alongside the Wellbeing faculty, and a Staff and Student Book Club (Lysaught, 2021j). While the book club fell apart due to lack of interest and time after online learning finished, the other two initiatives are still going strong. My early attempts at strategic planning appear quite amateurish in hindsight, though the alignment of my initiatives to our Strategic Improvement Plan and promotion of my work through Annual Reports foreshadowed the strategies suggested in ETL504 (Lysaught, 2023d). Our school recently experimented with the idea of holding all Stage 6 exams in the library, which if enacted would necessitate its closure for over 2 months of the school year. I was able to successfully leverage leadership strategies and use visitor and loans data collected each day to show the impact library closures would have on our school community, convincing the decision makers to choose another option:

Looking to the future, I will continue to experiment and expand on the learnings gained from this degree. First I will create a library operations folio to ensure effective management and strategic planning moving forward (Braxton, n.d.; National Library of New Zealand, n.d.; Oberg & Schultz-Jones, 2015). I was particularly inspired by the idea of hooking in new and current staff via mentoring (Cox & Korodaj, 2019; Reinsel Soulen, 2020), and building community ownership through a library committee has been a long-time goal of mine (Lysaught, 2021h). Inspired by ETL505 and the ETL512 study visits, I’d also love to create a library website to increase visibility and support teaching and learning by providing easily accessible pathfinders and research lessons. This journey is a marathon, not a sprint, and this degree has shown countless potential pathways to follow in future.

 

Part C Reflection

At the beginning of this course, we were asked to consider what makes a teacher-librarian (Lysaught, 2021a). My understanding of the role has expanded significantly since those early days:

However, despite the complexity of our role, our work is still widely misunderstood. This degree has shown me that to be seen as professionals, we must act as professionals and take every opportunity to advocate for our role through the work we do in our school communities. The professional standards developed by the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) and the Australian School Library Association (ASLA) provide a useful framework for evaluating our professional practice and ensuring that we remain relevant and visible to our peers.

As a classroom teacher with experience teaching both the English and History syllabi from Year 7 through to Year 12, including the Extension courses for both subjects, I feel quite confident in my abilities as a teacher with strong professional and pedagogical knowledge who meets the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers, many of which align with the ALIA/ASLA Standards through their similar professional domains (Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership [AITSL], 2022). While I already had a strong understanding of reading practices, assessment, and ICT, this degree introduced me to the wonders of information literacy and collection management which have allowed me to be even more effective in my classroom practice and developed my understanding of how to support my colleagues more efficiently in my library role.

As a relatively new teacher-librarian, I feel that I still have a fair way to go regarding my professional practice, particularly regarding our role as information specialists. While I believe that I have created an environment where learners are encouraged to engage with our resources for understanding and enjoyment, I need to do more to ensure an information-rich learning environment which meets the needs of my community. I’ve worked hard over the last 2 years to build an environment which fosters positive wellbeing and strong reading culture, and due to these relationships and the trust I’ve developed with our teaching staff I’ve finally got the opportunity in Term 4 to collaboratively develop and teach a Guided Inquiry unit. Likewise, while I’ve previously done some strategic planning and budgeting (Lysaught, 2023d), the skills gained in this course will leave me much better equipped to plan for the future and ensure the library’s continued relevance and value to my school. In Term 4 I therefore intend to create a Library Operations Folio, including strategic and operations plans alongside policies for collection development, ICT use, and potential challenges.

I am already a member of several professional organisations, and fully intend to take advantage of their professional development. This will focus on the development and delivery of information literacy programs and wellbeing programs, broadening my understandings further and allowing me to showcase the potential in our practice to our wider school community.

Advocacy through action and alliances is my path forward in what could otherwise be an isolated, misunderstood role. While building my Wide Reading Program I have relied heavily on the action research process to ensure that my practice is evidence-based, innovative, and meets the needs of my staff and students. I have used this research to showcase my professionalism and the potential of my role to my colleagues, particularly to my school leaders. However, evaluating my work against the ALIA/ASLA standards shows that more could be done to develop my leadership capabilities. ETL504 emphasised the importance of leading from the middle by working with staff as well as students, such as through collaboratively teaching, leading professional development, or running key committees (Green, 2011; Wong; 2012; Wolf et al., 2014; Baker, 2016; Crippen & Willows, 2019; Reinsel Soulen, 2020). High staff turnover makes developing relationships with my colleagues a challenge, but also presents a ‘chopportunity’ (Weisburg, 2020) to exhibit both transformational and servant leadership, hook in new staff, and build a culture of library collaboration and appreciation from the ground up.

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Lysaught, D. (2021a, July 19). ETL401 assessment 1: What is the role of the teacher librarian? All You Read Is Love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2021/07/19/etl401assessment1/

Lysaught, D. (2021b, August 29). ETL401 3.2 the role of the teacher librarian – LIBERating our perceptions. All You Read Is Love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2021/08/29/3-2-the-role-of-the-teacher-librarian-liberating-our-perceptions/

Lysaught, D. (2021c, August 30). ETL401 2.3 the information landscape. All You Read Is Love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2021/08/30/2-3-the-information-landscape/

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Lysaught, D. (2021e, September 14). ETL401 5.4a information literacy. All You Read Is Love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2021/09/14/5-4a-information-literacy/

Lysaught, D. (2021f, September 7). ETL401 4.1 inquiry learning: Some thoughts. All You Read Is Love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2021/09/07/4-1-inquiry-learning-some-thoughts/

Lysaught, D. (2021g, August 29). ETL401 3.2 the role of the teacher librarian: An invisible profession? All You Read Is Love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2021/08/29/3-2-the-role-of-the-teacher-librarian-an-invisible-profession/

Lysaught, D. (2021h, November 22). ETL503 2.1 developing collections. All You Read Is Love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2021/11/22/etl503-2-1-developing-collections/

Lysaught, D. (2021i, July 9). I’m going on an adventure!!!. All You Read Is Love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2021/07/09/hello-world/

Lysaught, D. (2021j, December 26). ETL402 3.1 strategies to leverage a love of reading. All You Read Is Love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2021/12/26/etl402-3-1-strategies-to-leverage-a-love-of-reading/

Lysaught, D. (2022a, July 4). ETL505 assessment 3 part c: Genrefication essay. All You Read Is Love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2022/07/04/etl505-assessment-3-part-c-genrefication-essay/

Lysaught, D. (2022b). 2021 Annual Library Report. https://www.canva.com/design/DAEwsCALUsI/vyQMXh9an6lLizamxaUW_Q/view?utm_content=DAEwsCALUsI&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link&utm_source=publishsharelink

Lysaught, D. (2023a). 2022 Annual Library Report. https://bit.ly/3Jg1e7k

Lysaught, D. (2023b, July 13). ETL512 assessment 5: Professional placement report. All You Read Is Love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2023/07/13/etl512-assessment-5-professional-placement-report/

Lysaught, D. (2023c, March 12). ETL504 2.2 leadership theory. All You Read Is Love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2023/03/12/etl504-2-2-leadership-theory/

Lysaught, D. (2023d, April 27). ETL504 strategic planning and setting goals: An amateur’s journey. All You Read Is Love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2023/04/27/etl504-strategic-planning-and-setting-goals-an-amateurs-journey/

Merga, M., & Mason, S. (2019). Building a school reading culture: Teacher librarians’ perceptions of enabling and constraining factors. Australian Journal of Education 63(2):173-189. DOI:10.1177/0004944119844544

Merga, M. (2021). Libraries as wellbeing supportive spaces in contemporary schools. Journal of Library Administration 61(6). DOI:10.1080/01930826.2021.1947056

Merga, M. (2022). School libraries supporting literacy and wellbeing. Facet.

Moir, S., Hattie, J. & Jansen, C.  (2014). Teacher perspectives of ‘effective’ leadership in schools. Australian Educational Leader, 36(4), 36-40.

National Library of New Zealand. (n.d.). Getting started in your school library: An operations checklist. National Library: Services to schools. https://natlib.govt.nz/schools/school-libraries/library-systems-and-operations/library-operations/getting-started-in-your-school-library-an-operations-checklist

NSW Department of Education (2023). Information Fluency Framework. https://education.nsw.gov.au/teaching-and-learning/curriculum/school-libraries/teaching-and-learning

Oberg, D., & Schultz-Jones, B. (eds.). (2015). Collection management policies and procedures. In IFLA School Library Guidelines, (2nd ed.), (pp. 33-34). Den Haag, Netherlands: IFLA.

O’Connell, J. (2012). So you think they can learn? Scan 31, 5-11.

Reinsel Soulen, R. (2020). The continuum of care. Knowledge Quest, 48(4). 36-42.

Smith, A. K. (2019, October 14). Literature has the power to change the world. Here’s how. Books At Work. https://www.booksatwork.org/literature-has-the-power-to-change-the-world-heres-how/

Stower, H. & Waring, P. (2018, July 16). Read like a girl: Establishing a vibrant community of passionate readers. Alliance of Girls Schools Australia. https://www.agsa.org.au/news/read-like-a-girl-establishing-a-vibrant-community-of-passionate-readers/

Uther, J., & Pickworth, M. (2014). TLs as leaders: are you a Highly Accomplished teacher librarian? Access, 28(1), 20–25.

Valenza, J. (2010, December 3). A revised manifesto. School Library Journal. https://blogs.slj.com/neverendingsearch/2010/12/03/a-revised-manifesto/

Weisburg, H. K. (2020). Leadership: There is no other option. Synergy, 18(1). https://slav.vic.edu.au/index.php/Synergy/article/view/369/364

Whitten, C., Labby, S., & Sullivan, S. L. (2016). The impact of pleasure reading on academic success. The Journal of Multidisciplinary Graduate Research 2(4), 48-64.

Wolf, M., Jones, R. & Gilbert, D. (2014). Leading in and beyond the library. http://all4ed.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/BeyondTheLibrary.pdf

Wong, T. (2012). Strategic long-range planning. Library Media Connection, 31(2), 22-23..

Wu, Y., Mallan, K., & McGillis, R. (2013). Reimagining the world: Children’s literature’s responses to changing times. Springer.

ETL512 Assessment 5: Professional Placement Report

Section 1: About the placement organisation

Wollondilly Library is a small but effective public library in Picton, NSW. It services the widespread Wollondilly LGA, covering approximately 2556 square kilometres and with a population density of 21.83 per square kilometre (ID Community, n.d.). New developments increased the population by 8.6% over five years (NSW Government Office of Local Government, 2023), with two-thirds living in urban settings while one-third rural (Wollondilly Library, n.d.). Wollondilly’s population is predominantly white and Australian-born, with the majority of residents identifying their ancestry as Australian, English, Irish, and Scottish (Australian Bureau of Statistics [ABS], n.d.).

Wollondilly Library’s mission statement reveals its purpose is to provide a range of information and materials to all residents, to encourage curiosity, free inquiry and lifelong learning, and to support the community’s civic, intellectual, and cultural pursuits. The team leader’s perspective is that the library exists to overcome disadvantage.

To encourage ease of browsing in the limited library space, Wollondilly Library has separate collections for Junior and Adult fiction and non-fiction, a Young Adult collection, an Adult Large Print collection, and a variety of magazines and other multimedia resources such as DVDs, CDs and audiobooks. Eresources such as Hoopla, Borrowbox, Mango, and Studiosity also support the various needs of users and supplement the physical collection, though borrowing statistics indicate most patrons (many from older generations) still prefer physical resources. In Wollondilly, 89.6% of residents only speak English at home (ABS, n.d.). As such, most of the collection is in English, though there are resources from the Adult Fiction, Adult Non-fiction and Junior Fiction collections offered in other languages along with access to the inter-library loans service.

Couples with children make up 50.6% of Wollondilly residents, compared with 44.7% of residents in NSW (ABS, n.d.). The team run several programs to provide socialisation for children and their parents while developing early literacy and encouraging positive engagement with the library. Bookbubs (ages 0-2) and Storytime (ages 2-5) run twice a week, while Sensory Storytime catering for users with diverse needs occurs once a month and is looking to expand (Wollondilly Library, 2023a).These programs provide a free activity for families who might otherwise be isolated due to a lack of parent groups in the area, while school holiday programming such as Lego Robotics, Mocktails and Monet, and HSC seminars (Wollondilly Library, 2023a) engage students with continuous learning and support the work done in local schools.

One of the challenges faced by Wollondilly Library staff is its low population density resulting in small funding allocations alongside the expectation to service all members in such a far-flung community. The Wollondilly Mobile Library van visits various locations, while the Home Library Delivery Service ensures access for users who can’t leave their homes due to disability or illness (Wollondilly Library, 2023b). For many patrons using these services, they offer a rare opportunity to engage with other members of the community and if this service did not exist could result in almost complete isolation and cut their access to information dramatically. Community Outreach programs also visit preschools and local shopping centres, ensuring positive interactions between staff and the community they serve.

Wollondilly Library also achieves its mission statement and overcomes disadvantage through its physical space and provision of ICT resources. The study spaces and meeting rooms are utlised by local students, adults, and community groups, while the Local History Room takes advantage of Wollondilly’s unique heritage to further connect with the residents. A welcoming children’s area in the Junior collection space encourages positive interactions through the provision of toys, craft, and Lego. For many residents, these quiet spaces, local history resources, and toys are unavailable without cost elsewhere. Patrons also have access to technology such as printing, computers, wifi, and assistive technology which I witnessed being used for a variety of purposes ranging from study to centrelink applications.

Without Wollondilly Library, many patrons would not be able to access these programs, resources, and services. As a result, their disadvantage would, in countless ways, become further entrenched.

Section 2: Theory into practice

My placement consolidated my understandings of the theories explored in ETL402 Literature Across the Curriculum.

Wollondilly Library’s Book Bubs (0-2 years) and Storytime (2-5 years) programs are aimed at developing early literacy and positive reader identity, while the Sensory Storytime was created in consultation with qualified special education teachers and promotes inclusive literacy practices, noted as a key component of an effective teacher-librarian’s work (Australian School Library Association [ASLA], 2014, p.14). Several adult book clubs run by library staff or by members of the public using library book kits aim to promote pleasure reading for older audiences. The mobile library van allows Wollondilly Library to provide access to users who would be otherwise unable to attend the physical branch location, and I participated in several community outreach programs including preschool visits and mobile storytimes in public spaces. These programs created a positive reading culture in the community which leads to many wide-reaching benefits for individuals and our society. The use of literature to overcome disadvantage was explored in ETL402, and several researchers support the notion that a positive reading culture can negate socio-economic disadvantage (Allington et al., 2021, p.S234; Krashen, 2011, p.7; Whitten et. al., 2016, p.48). While ETL402 focused on literature in schools, many benefits discussed in this subject were evident in the programs offered by Wollondilly Library. For instance, the Storytime program was designed around a specific weekly theme which aimed to engage readers through personal connections to content while developing valuable interpersonal and age-appropriate academic skills (Kidd & Castano, 2013, p.377; Myambo, 2016, para.1, 4; Short, 2018, p.291).

ETL402 revealed enjoyment of reading plays a crucial role in developing a person’s literacy skills and understanding of the world around them, as well as their empathy for the experiences of others (Gaiman, 2013, para. 9-10; Haven, 2007, p.vi; Krashen, 2009, p.20; Ross Johnston, 2014, p.537). I worked closely with the children’s librarian and the library assistants responsible for the Book Bubs and Storytime programs. Together we selected a variety of age-appropriate books to read with the children, including sensory board books for the Book Bubs children and picture books aiming to develop early decoding skills for the Storytime sessions. While these texts developed early literacy skills through their use of rhyme, repetition, and images, the primary consideration for staff was to ensure that the children were having a pleasurable and social reading experience. This reflects the notion explored in ETL402 that if children enjoy reading, literacy will be developed more easily (National Library of New Zealand, n.d.). Barone argues that the recent focus on cognitive elements such as decoding, comprehending and reading fluently in schools has meant that a focus on the pleasure of reading has been pushed aside, and that books are seen purely to develop skilful readers rather than as an end in themselves (2011, p.2). My placement experience emphasised that enjoyment of reading should be the focus, and that I have a responsibility to ensure that my students are engaged on an emotional or intellectual level, since this is what creates an intrinsic motivation that drives us to continue reading (Barone, 2011, p.3). Recent research reveals a strong correlation between reading volume and reading achievement and that the more children read, the higher their achievement levels (Allington et al., 2021, p.S233-S234, p.S236) and it is therefore in our best interests to focus on reading enjoyment with my students in future.

During my placement I was struck by how engaged these young readers were with the act of reading, with all children enjoying being read to or eager to interact with the books themselves. This early enjoyment of reading vastly contrasts with the attitudes presented by my high school students, reflecting the research explored in ETL402 around the decline in reading in the teen years due to:

  • Lack of positive reading role models
  • Burnout from reading programs in primary school
  • Boredom from the use of fiction texts to teach literacy
  • Parents who don’t value reading
  • Lack of time due to jobs, extracurricular activities
  • Competing interests and hobbies
  • Underdeveloped imaginations
  • Misconceptions about who reads for pleasure
  • Lack of exposure to reading
  • Lack of confidence and reading ability
  • Overcrowded curriculum and assessment demands
  • Lack of access and choice of reading materials (Dickenson, 2014, Krashen, 2011, Manuel & Carter, 2015, Whitten et. al., 2016)

Several of these barriers to reading can be ameliorated by programs such as those offered by Wollondilly Library. In particular, the social aspects of Wollondilly Library’s children and adult reading programs reinforces the importance of connection and community in developing reader identity, especially amongst teens whose information behaviours are motivated by social concerns (Jacobson, 2010, p.44). Activities such as Book Bubs, Storytime and the adult book clubs allowed library patrons to engage in conversations around literature, acting as positive reading role models while increasing enjoyment and further solidifying their identities as readers.

Section 3: Critical reflection

Seeing the practical application of the concepts studied in this course has consolidated my understanding of teacher librarianship, particularly around the issues of meeting user needs, reading for pleasure and information, the emergence of libraries as a third space providing wellbeing and other supports, collection development and library management, and the importance of advocacy and promotions.

A key aspect of teacher-librarianship is the importance of understanding and meeting our users’ needs and ensuring that we provide timely access to relevant resources (NSW Department of Education, 2017, p.3, 5, 7, 8). This degree frequently emphasised the continued need for free access to information in the digital age (Bates, 2010, para.58; Kuhlthau et al., 2008, p.3). The Australian Library and Information Association [ALIA] believes that unrestricted access to information is crucial to our freedoms and democracy (2018). Wollondilly Library’s commitment to providing access to residents despite their geographic challenges is evident through their Mobile Library Van and Home Delivery Service. In my setting I am faced with the challenge of increasingly being removed from the library space as it is used for exams, faculty testing, and other workshops. Access to reading materials is a crucial factor in promoting reading for pleasure and developing positive reader identities (Fisher & Frey, 2018, p.89). When staff and student access is cut due to circumstances beyond my control, I can adjust the model provided by Wollondilly Library to ensure that my users’ needs are still being met by encouraging online reservations, classroom deliveries, and mobile book trolleys in the playground.

Reading for pleasure is something that I’ve tried to build at my school over the past year to overcome disadvantage while improving student attainment and empathy (Lysaught, 2022a; Lysaught, 2022b; Lysaught, 2023c; Lysaught, 2023d). Wollondilly Library’s adult Book Club model, which allows groups to borrow up to ten copies of the same novel under one barcode, has inspired me in two ways. First, I can adjust this model to suit my Wide Reading Program by offering disengaged students the choice to read the same high interest, low reading level texts, with a social discussion or literature circle activity to follow. Second, I can utilise the book club kits to create a reading group among staff, which would allow us to promote reading for pleasure and showcase our own reader identities to our students as positive reading role-models.

This degree also emphasised that modern libraries are not just about books. Throughout this course it has become clear that libraries play an important role in providing wellbeing and other supports to our community, often stepping in when other services are inaccessible or unavailable (Aykanian et al., 2020; McKeown, 2016; Merga, 2020). My experience at Wollondilly Library proves this, with users utilising library resources to support centrelink applications and mental health activities. Many patrons also used the meeting room and quiet spaces for work and study, while programs such as Mocktails and Monet or Knit and Yarn provided opportunities for users to form connections with others who have similar interests. This supports the work by Hider et al. (2023, p.3-5), who noted that public library physical spaces are increasingly used as ‘third place’ community hubs which enable democracy and civic engagement. Moving forward, in my school library I can incorporate more social activities such as craft activities and gaming clubs to support student interests, friendships, and overall wellbeing.

Library management was another element where I was able to develop my practical skills. I worked alongside several members of the collections acquisitions team, helping me solidify my understanding of budget management and the importance of workflow procedures. Library hygiene is a key aspect of our role as information specialists (Fieldhouse & Marshall, 2011, p.36; Newsum, 2016, p.201), and I worked with the Children’s Librarian to weed their overcrowded junior fiction and non-fiction collections, ensuring that outdated, offensive, or incorrect resources were removed in order to make way for newer, more relevant additions. This experience showed me that I should trust in my own abilities to evaluate resources according to my selection and de-selection criteria.

Bonanno (2011) states we are at risk of becoming an invisible profession, and the terms ‘advocacy’ and ‘promotions’ are among the most popular keywords on my blog. Working alongside the Programs and Promotions Librarian, I was able to understand the importance of advocacy and promotions in a new light. Her tutelage expanded my understanding of the concept of user avatars to ensure my message reaches its appropriate audience, as well as a focus on three content pillars to ensure that my values are clearly expressed.

Overall, this workplace learning opportunity left me with renewed confidence in my understandings and helped remind me that even though I feel overwhelmed in my role much of the time, I am on the right track! It was especially heartening to note that Wollondilly Library has a team of people who each specialise in one role, whereas I am expected to take on all those tasks in my capacity as a teacher librarian.

 

 

Word count: 2299

References

Albitz, B., Avery, C., & Zabel, D. (Eds.). (2014). Rethinking collection development and management. ABC-CLIO, LLC.

Allington, R. L., & McGill-Franzen, A. M. (2021). Reading Volume and Reading Achievement: A Review of Recent Research. Reading Research Quarterly, 56(1), S231–S238. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.404

Australian Bureau of Statistics (n.d.). Wollondilly: 2021 census all persons quickstats. https://abs.gov.au/census/find-census-data/quickstats/2021/LGA18400

Australia Library and Information Association [ALIA] (2018). ALIA free access to information statement. https://read.alia.org.au/alia-free-access-information-statement

Australian School Library Association [ASLA] (2014). Evidence guide for teacher librarians in the highly accomplished career stage: Australian professional standards for teachers.

Aykanian, A., Morton, P., Trawver, K., Victorson, L., Preskitt, S., & Street, K. (2020). Library-Based Field Placements: Meeting the Diverse Needs of Patrons, Including Those Experiencing Homelessness. Journal of Social Work Education, 56(1), S72–S80. https://doi.org/10.1080/10437797.2020.1723757

Barone, D. M. (2011). Children’s literature in the classroom: Engaging lifelong readers. Guilford Press.

Bates, M. J. (2010). Information Behavior. Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences, 3rd Ed. 2381-2391. https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/bates/articles/information-behavior.html

Bonanno, K. (2011). Keynote speaker: A profession at the tipping point. Vimeo. https://vimeo.com/31003940

Dickenson, D. (2014). Children and reading: literature review. University of Western Sydney, Australian Government, and Australia Council for the Arts.

Evans, G. E., & Saponaro, M. Z. (2012). Library and information science text: Collection management basics. ABC-CLIO, LLC.

Fieldhouse, M., Marshall, A. (2011). Collection development in the digital age.

Fisher, D., & Frey, N. (2018). Raise reading volume through access, choice, discussion, and book talks. The Reading Teacher, 72(1), 89-97.

Gaiman, N. (2013, October 16). Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/15/neil-gaiman-future-libraries-reading-daydreaming

Gregory, V. L. (2011). Collection development and management for 21st century library collections: An introduction. American Library Association.

Haven, K. F. (2007). Story proof: the science behind the startling power of story. ABC-Clio, LLC.

Hider, P., Garner, J., Wakeling, S., & Jamali Mahmuei, H. R. (2023). “Part of My Daily Life”: The importance of public libraries as physical spaces. Public Library Quarterly, 42(2), 190-219. https://doi.org/10.1080/01616846.2022.2092347

ID community (n.d.). Wollondilly Shire Council: community profile.

https://profile.id.com.au/wollondilly/about#:~:text=The%202022%20Estimated%20Resident%20Population,21.83%20persons%20per%20square%20km.

Jacobson, Harris, Frances (2010). Found It on the Internet: Coming of Age Online. American Library Association.

Kidd, D. C., & Castano, E. (2013). Reading literary fiction improves theory of mind. Science 342(6156), 377-380.

Krashen, S. D. (2009). Anything but reading. Knowledge Quest 37(5), 8.

Krashen, S. D. (2011). Free voluntary reading. ABC-CLIO, LLC.

Kuhlthau, C. C., Heinstrom, J., & Todd, R. J. (2008). The ‘information search process’ revisited: is the model still useful? Information Research, 13(4). http://informationr.net/ir/13-4/paper355.html

Lysaught, D. (2022a, January 27). ETL402 assessment 2 part b: Reflective blog post. All You Read Is Love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2022/01/27/etl402-assessment-2-part-b-reflective-blog-post/

Lysaught, D. (2022b, August 28). ETL533 assessment 2 part b: Critical reflection of digital literature experiences. All You Read Is Love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2022/08/28/etl533-assessment-2-part-b-critical-reflection-of-digital-literature-experiences/

Lysaught, D. (2023c, March 5). Annual library report 2022. All You Read Is Love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2023/03/05/annual-library-report-2022/

Lysaught, D. (2023d, May 7). ETL504 5.2 & 5.3: Servant leadership. All You Read Is Love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2023/05/07/etl504-5-2-5-3-servant-leadership/

Manuel, J., & Carter, D. (2015). Current and historical perspectives on Australian teenagers’ reading practices and preferences. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy 38(2), 115-128.

Mckeown, A. (2016). Overcoming Information Poverty: Investigating the Role of Public Libraries in The Twenty-First Century. Chandos Publishing.

Merga, M. (2020). How Can School Libraries Support Student Wellbeing? Evidence and Implications for Further Research, Journal of Library Administration, 60(6), 660–673, DOI: 10.1080/01930826.2020.1773718

Myambo, M. T. (2016, January 26). How reading fiction can help students understand the real world. The Conversation.  https://theconversation.com/amp/how-reading-fiction-can-help-students-understand-the-real-world-52908

National Library of New Zealand (n.d.). Reading for pleasure – a door to success. https://natlib.govt.nz/schools/reading-engagement/understanding-reading-engagement/reading-for-pleasure-a-door-to-success

Newsum, J. M. (2016). School collection development and resource management in digitally rich environments: An Initial Literature Review. School Libraries Worldwide, 22(1), 97–109.

NSW Department of Education [NSW DoE] (2017). Handbook for School Libraries. https://education.nsw.gov.au/teaching-and-learning/curriculum/learning-across-the-curriculum/school-libraries/your-library

NSW Government Office of Local Government (2023). 2020/2021 Wollondilly. Your Council. https://www.yourcouncil.nsw.gov.au/council-data/wollondilly-1674451854/

Ross Johnston, R. (2014). Literary literacies: digital, cultural, narrative, critical and deep literacies. In Winch, G., Ross Johnston, R., March, P., Ljungdahl, L., & Holliday, M. (eds.) Literacy: Reading, writing and children’s literature.

Short, K. G. (2018). What’s trending in children’s literature and why it matters. Language Arts 95(5), 287-298.

Warner, M. (2013, May). Welcome to the hybrid age of reading. Christian Futures. http://www.christianfutures.com/welcome-to-the-hybrid-age-of-reading-how-we-read-affects-what-we-read

Whitten, C., Labby, S., & Sullivan, S. L. (2016). The impact of pleasure reading on academic success. The Journal of Multidisciplinary Graduate Research 2(4), 48-64.

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Wollondilly Library (2023a). Events. https://www.library.wollondilly.nsw.gov.au/events/

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ETL504 Assessment 2 Part B: Reflection

This session has been incredibly difficult, with workload pressures leading to burnout. The challenges I’ve faced this session have highlighted the ways that effective leadership can support positive school culture, and this unit emphasised the importance of understanding leadership theory to advocate for our role to ensure effective practice.

One key idea is teacher-librarians should not be held back by their lack of formal leadership position, since good leaders have the vision and skills to inspire others to achieve a common goal and hold perceived influence regardless of title (Bush & Glover, 2014, p.554; Ezard, 2015; Gardner, 2013, p.18-19; Gleeson, 2016; Holmes et al., 2012, p.271, 276; Spencekao, 2013; Sutcliffe, 2013). Rather than relying on official authority, effective teacher-librarians should focus on developing a strong understanding of different leadership styles, integrating their traits to be responsive to their context’s specific needs (Bush & Glover, 2014, p.567; Smith, 2016, p.75-76). I greatly enjoyed learning about these leadership styles and recognised many aspects of Servant Leadership in my own practice (Lysaught, 2023a, 2023b, 2023c) due to its focus on service, community building, and empowering others (Arar & Oplatka, 2022, p.83-87; Blanchard & Broadwell, 2018; Crippen & Willows, 2019, p.171-172; Greenleaf, 2008, p.36). I particularly loved the ‘Continuum of Care’ concept (Reinsel Soulen, 2020), since showcasing my leadership by mentoring staff aligns well with my current position in the Teaching and Learning faculty.

   Image 1: Reinsel Soulen, 2020, p.39

However, despite my natural inclination towards Servant Leadership, this subject taught me it’s important to step outside my comfort zone to ensure effective practice and to be truly responsive to my community’s needs. Moving forward, I plan to also draw on the traits of Instructional and Transformational Leadership, with their focus on improving student outcomes through instructional quality, innovation, and reflective practice (Arar & Oplatka, 2022, p.3-5; Holmes et al., 2012, p.276; Moir et al., 2014, p.36, 39). For instance, these leadership styles can be integrated within our role as technology experts to support time-poor staff and demonstrate our value to our school community (Johnson, 2019):

Image 2: adapted from Johnson, 2019

In schools where misconceptions about our roles abound, ETL504 emphasised the importance of promoting the varied nature of our work and different ways we can leverage these leadership traits to advocate for our positions (Boyd, 2021; Jones, 2021). Reminding staff that our work extends beyond books – especially to technology and wellbeing – and that we can alleviate their workload is a key aspect of leading from the middle which I plan to integrate into my future practice (Lysaught, 2023d, 2023b, 2023e, 2023f). Module 5.3’s self-reflection was useful, identifying that I should improve my practice by leading staff professional learning and continued blogging (Lysaught, 2023f).

ETL504 revealed that ongoing strategic planning projects professionalism (Markless et al., 2016; Wong, 2012); reminding me “don’t get angry, get strategic” (Boyd, 2021).  I’ve improved my planning since my early amateur attempts (Lysaught, 2023h). Change fatigue and innovation overload are real threats in modern education (Clement, 2014; Dilkes et al., 2014; Holmes et al., 2012), and the various models summarised below were incredibly useful for understanding how to successfully manage change, allowing me to move forward in my own setting.

Image 3: Robbins et al., 2006

Image 4: adapted from Chow et al., 2019

Particularly, I found the focus on understanding stakeholder needs useful (Pratt, 2017). The two questions posed by Chow et al. (2019) and understanding resistance (Lancaster, 2019) will be at the forefront of my community consultation moving forward:

Image 5: adapted from Chow et al., 2019

Image 6: adapted from Lancaster, 2019

The importance of developing strong relationships with stakeholders, such as principals, was emphasised and helped me reframe my approach to ensure that my work was relevant to their vision. In future all library initiatives and budget submissions will align with the School Improvement Plan. Previously I’ve created an Annual Library Report, but didn’t know if my efforts were noticed (Lysaught, 2023i, 2023c). Inspired by ETL504, I created a Term 1 Library Snapshot which I published on social media, the newsletter, and library displays (Lysaught, 2023j) and received an email from the Principal thanking me.

Visibility is crucial!

Image 7: adapted from Softlink, 2017, p.3-11

 

 

Word count: 655

 

References:

Arar, K., & Oplatka, I. (2022). Advanced theories of educational leadership. Springer.

Blanchard, K., & Broadwell, R. (2018). Servant leadership in action. Berrett-Koehler.

Boyd, K. C. (2021). Advocacy: 2021 style & beyond. Knowledge Quest, 49(4), 26-31.

Bush, T. & Glover, D. (2014). School leadership models: What do we know? School Leadership and Management, 34(5), 553-571. https://doi.org/10.1080/13632434.2014.928680

Chow, A., Robinson, J., Paulus, L., Griffin, B., Smith, N. Z. & Watterman, A. (2019). From me to we: Seeing is believing. Knowledge Quest, 48(2), pp. E1-E7.

Clement, J. (2014). Managing mandated educational change. School Leadership & Management, 34(1), 39-51. https://doi:10.1080/13632434.2013.813460

Crippen, C. & Willows, J. (2019). Connecting teacher leadership and servant leadership: A synergistic partnership. Journal of Leadership Education, 18(2), pp. 171-180.

Dilkes, J., Cunningham, C. & Gray, J. (2014). The new Australian Curriculum, teachers and change fatigue. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 39(11). https://doi:10.14221/ajte.2014v39n11.4

Ezard, T. (2015). Building trust and collaboration – Tracey Ezard [Video]. Youtube. https://youtu.be/kUkseAdKyek

Gardner, J. W. (2013). The nature of leadership. In M. Grogan (Ed.). The Jossey-Bass reader on educational leadership (3rd ed., pp. 17-27). John Wiley & Sons.

Gleeson, B. (2016, November 9). 10 unique perspectives on what makes a great leader. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/brentgleeson/2016/11/09/10-unique-perspectives-on-what-makes-a-great-leader/#276777b95dd1

Greenleaf, R. K. (2008). Greenleaf on Servant-Leadership: Who Is the Servant-Leader? The International Journal of Servant-Leadership, 4(1), 31–37. https://doi.org/10.33972/ijsl.234

Holmes, K., Clement, J. & Albright, J. (2012). The complex task of leading educational change in schools. School Leadership & Management, 33(3), 270-283.  https://doi.org/10.1080/13632434.2013.800477

Johnson, D. (2019). The school librarian: Your ultimate digital resource. Educational Leadership, 76(5). https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/the-school-librarian-your-ultimate-digital-resource

Jones, A. (2021, May 6). School library advocacy: The time is now. Knowledge Quest. https://knowledgequest.aasl.org/school-library-advocacy-the-time-is-now/

Lancaster, I. (2019, January 26). 5 strategies for managing change in schools. TeachThought. http://www.teachthought.com/uncategorized/5-strategies-for-managing-change-in-schools/

Lysaught, D. (2023a, March 12). ETL504 2.2 leadership theory. All You Read Is Love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2023/03/12/etl504-2-2-leadership-theory/

Lysaught, D. (2023b, March 21). ETL504 2.3: Promoting the teacher-librarian’s visibility and value. All You Read Is Love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2023/03/21/etl504-2-3-promoting-the-teacher-librarians-visibility-and-value/

Lysaught, D. (2023c, May 7). ETL504 5.2 & 5.3: Servant leadership. All You Read Is Love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2023/05/07/etl504-5-2-5-3-servant-leadership/

Lysaught, D. (2023d, April 8). ETL504 2.3: Leadership concept map. All You Read Is Love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2023/04/08/etl504-2-3-leadership-concept-map/

Lysaught, D. (2023e, March 5). ETL504 2.1: Organisation theory introduction. All You Read Is Love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2023/03/05/etl504-2-1-organisation-theory-introduction/

Lysaught, D. (2023f, February 25). ETL504 1.1: How school leaders can build hope and prevent teacher burnout. All You Read Is Love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2023/02/25/etl504-1-1-how-school-leaders-can-build-hope-and-prevent-teacher-burnout/

Lysaught, D. (2023g, May 7). ETL504 5.3 Future ready librarian self-reflection. All You Read Is Love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2023/05/07/etl504-5-3-future-ready-librarian-self-reflection/

Lysaught, D. (2023h, April 27). ETL504 Strategic planning and setting goals: An amateur’s journey. All You Read Is Love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2023/04/27/etl504-strategic-planning-and-setting-goals-an-amateurs-journey/

Lysaught, D. (2023i, March 5). Annual library report. All You Read Is Love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2023/03/05/annual-library-report-2022/

Lysaught, D. (2023j, May 2). ETL504 Advocacy and visibility. All You Read Is Love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2023/05/02/etl504-advocacy-and-visibility/

Markless, S., Bentley, E., Pavey, S., Shaper, S., Todd, S., Webb, C., & Webb, C. (Carol). (2016). The innovative school librarian (S. Markless, Ed.; Second edition.). Facet.

Moir, S., Hattie, J. & Jansen, C.  (2014). Teacher perspectives of ‘effective’ leadership in schools. Australian Educational Leader, 36(4), 36-40.

Pratt, A. (2017). The challenge of implementing change. SCIS Connections, (103). https://www.scisdata.com/connections/issue-103/the-challenge-of-implementing-change

Reinsel Soulen, R. (2020). The continuum of care. Knowledge Quest, 48(4). 36-42.

Robbins, S.P., Bergman, R., Stagg, I. & Coulter, M. (2006). Foundations of management. Pearson Education. In ETL504 Module 4. Strategic and Operational Planning. Interact 2. https://interact2.csu.edu.au

Smith, B. (2016). The role of leadership style in creating a great school. SELU Research Review Journal, 1(1), 65-78. https://selu.usask.ca/documents/research-and-publications/srrj/SRRJ-1-1-Smith.pdf

Softlink (2017). School libraries share: Ideas for school-wide collaboration. https://www.softlinkint.com/assets/img/banners/Whitepaper_-_School_libraries_share_ideas_for_collaboration.pdf

spencekao. (2013, April 6). Instructional leadership. [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efzXDk1–4w

Sutcliffe, J. (2013, September 24). The eight qualities of successful school leaders. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2013/sep/24/eight-qualities-successful-school-leaders

Wong, T. (2012). Strategic long-range planning. Library Media Connection, 31(2), 22-23.

ETL512 Assessment 2: Post 3 – Study Visit Reflection

Finally, write a 300-word reflection on the overall study visit experience and how it has contributed to your journey as an information professional

The ETL512 Study Visits to West Moreton Anglican College (WMAC), Lake Tuggeranong College (LTC), State Library Victoria’s Rare Book Collection (SLV), and Bundaberg Regional Libraries (BRL) have opened my eyes to the variety of work available to information professionals and revealed that the skills developed in one setting are transferable to a myriad of others. 

My virtual visits to WMAC and LTC were incredibly relevant to my chosen pathway as a high school teacher-librarian. They inspired me with wonderful ideas to incorporate into my future practice by connecting our work developing reading for pleasure and information with our promotions and role advocacy. WMAC’s idea of getting students and staff involved in the CBCA Shadow Judging by linking nominated texts to different KLAs was something I hadn’t previously encountered, and is a wonderful way of linking the library’s work with faculty curricula to promote literary learning. LTC’s staff provided several excellent ideas to build a reading culture by forming strong relationships with students and staff. All staff in each virtual visit emphasised the importance of knowing our users and building strong relationships, and it was inspiring to see practical suggestions for successful implementation which could help me build my library’s profile and promote the value of my resources and services to students, staff, and parents.

The SLV visit was to a setting I hadn’t previously considered, but Wee’s work in collection and exhibition curation sounds quite interesting as a possible future pathway if I decide to leave the education sector. His point about the usefulness of pedagogical knowledge in his library was heartening, as was his point regarding the transfer of skills to different positions. I’m now inspired to experiment with object and digital exhibitions in my own library. 

My visit to BRL paired beautifully with my upcoming workplace learning at a local council library and cemented this as a possible future pathway if I leave education. I was inspired by Harris’ emphasis on integrating new technologies into his programs and his passion for ensuring accessibility, diversity, and inclusivity for all users; as a result, I plan to create my own Gamers’ Club and investigate Virtual Reality for my library programs. This visit highlighted the value of creating strong partnerships between local and school libraries, and in future I aim to work closely with our local library network to ensure maximum benefits for my learning community.

ETL512 Assessment 2: Post 2 – Challenges, Advice, and Pathways to Becoming an Information Professional

Establishing a career in the information sector can often involve taking a variety of pathways. Discuss the examples, pitfalls, barriers and advice provided by agency hosts on their career journey to becoming information professionals. Provide one professional development action you are going to take as a result of the study visits to support your career. Include a short discussion about why and how you will take this action and include examples of possible opportunities for this PD. (500 words)

The hosts at State Library Victoria’s Rare Book Collection (SLV), Lake Tuggeranong College (LTC) and Bundaberg Regional Libraries (BRL) provided valuable points about the challenges and possible pathways into a career in the information sector. 

One key challenge identified by SLV relates to staffing and budgets, threats to libraries worldwide (Morris, 2022; Softlink, 2022, p.6-7; Woodcock, 2023). Wee noted that increasing demand for their services  was not matched by financial or staffing support, and positions were increasingly filled by people without information sciences backgrounds. BRL revealed they’d had programs cut by Council. LTC also recognised hopelessness, exhaustion and feeling unappreciated as significant challenges, echoing research outlining the negative impacts of poor leadership on staff wellbeing (Cross, 2015,p.10, 13; International Literacy Association, 2022, p.5). This devaluation of expertise is replicated in my experience, where only 1/7 local schools has a substantive, full-time, trained teacher-librarian, and our library budget hasn’t increased since 2001. Staff at SLV and LTC recognised that time management and prioritising competing demands was another challenge, with Godfree and Korodaj advising prospective teacher-librarians to view our work as a “marathon, not a sprint”. 

Wee advised that good traits for staff include: love of learning; emotional intelligence; and strong interpersonal skills to deal with the public-facing aspect of the role.  LTC advised that key characteristics of effective teacher-librarians include: persistence; gentleness; emotional intelligence; being pushy in an appealing way; cheerfulness and warmth; maintaining calm under pressure; lateral thinking; authenticity; and knowing when to say no to avoid overstretching yourself. Wee noted that all core skills were transferable to different information settings and clearly there is significant cross-over in desirable personality traits for both settings.

Volunteering was one piece of advice given by both SLV and BRL. Wee and Harris both stated that volunteering allows prospective information professionals to network and develop visibility, improve their skills, and show enthusiasm. All three hosts emphasised the importance of advocacy and promotions in their work. BRL emphasised that providing relevant programs to meet user needs is crucial to their advocacy efforts, while both SLV and LTC affirmed that constant promotions were necessary to ensure that their relevant resources connected with users in a timely, effective manner. 

As a result of these hosts’ emphasis on the importance of advocacy and promotions, I will create a school library strategic plan. This will help me to advocate for my role in a professional manner (Markless et al., 2016, p.87) and implement positive change over 5 years, heeding the ‘marathon’ advice from LTC. Within this strategic plan I intend to focus on increasing the promotion of library resources and services to ensure that my users are aware of how I can support their needs. The NSW Department of Education has a free subscription to LinkedIn Learning, which has many courses on marketing and promotions (such as this one Introducing Social Media Marketing) which I can use to improve my library’s visibility and community engagement. Changing technology will also be a focus of my strategic plan, and as a member of the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) I can access their professional learning (such as this one on Digital Trends). This strategic plan and continued professional development will help develop my key capacities in learning and teaching, management, leadership and collaboration, and community engagement (ALIA & Australian School Libraries Association, 2020, p.1-2).

Word count: 554

 

REFERENCES:

Australian Library and Information Association [ALIA] & Australian School Libraries Association [ASLA]. (2016). ALIA-ASLA statement on teacher librarians in Australia. https://read.alia.org.au/alia-asla-statement-teacher-librarians-australia

Cross, D. (2015). Teacher well-being and its impact on student learning [Slide presentation]. Telethon Kids Institute, University of Western Australia. http://www.research.uwa.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/2633590/teacher-wellbeing-and-student.pdf

International Literacy Association. (2022). Librarianship and literacy [Literacy leadership brief]. http://literacyworldwide.org/docs/default-source/where-we-stand/the-essential-leadership-of-school-librarians.pdf

Markless, S., Bentley, E., Pavey, S., Shaper, S., Todd, S., Webb, C., & Webb, C. (Carol). (2016). The innovative school librarian (S. Markless, Ed.; Second edition.). Facet.

Morris, L. (2022, December 21). National Library’s treasure Trove under threat from budget cuts. The Sydney Morning Herald. https://www.smh.com.au/culture/art-and-design/national-library-s-treasure-trove-under-threat-from-budget-cuts-20221212-p5c5m6.html 

Softlink (2022). 2022 Australian and New Zealand school library survey report. https://www.softlinkint.com/resources/reports-and-whitepapers/

Woodcock, C. (2023, January 13). Public library budgets are being slashed. Police have more cash than ever. Vice. https://www.vice.com/en/article/akemgz/public-library-budgets-are-being-slashed-police-have-more-cash-than-ever

ETL512 Assessment 2: Post 1 – Services and Resources to Meet User Needs

Using examples from at least two information agencies you attended, discuss the range of services and resources they provide and how these services and resources are tailored to meet the needs of their users. (500 words)

My virtual visits to Lake Tuggeranong College (LTC), West Moreton Anglican College (WMAC) and Bundaberg Regional Libraries (BRL) provided me with an interesting opportunity to compare the ways school and public libraries are similar and different in the provision of services and resources to meet their users’ needs.

School libraries serve specific school learning communities which consist of students, staff, and parents (Kimmel, 2014, p.31), and aim to meet the educational, cultural, recreational, and professional needs of these users (NSW Department of Education, 2017, p.8). Conversely, public libraries provide free access to information for all community members to enable their participation in society and to contribute to the economic wellbeing of their families and the nation (Australian Library and Information Association [ALIA], 2018, p.1). While both aim to provide free access to a range of services and resources to their users, two key differences exist: firstly, attendance in schools is mandatory, whereas engagement with a public library is optional; and secondly, education is controlled by the state, whereas public libraries facilitate non-coercive, self-directed learning (Foundation for Economic Education & FEEGA, 2019, p.1-2).

Both school libraries visited placed a heavy emphasis on providing services and resources designed to improve their users’ reading, digital, and information literacies, a core expectation of teacher-librarians supporting young people (ALIA, Australian School Libraries Association, & Australian Education Union, 2020, p.1). LTC supported pleasure reading through genrefication and emphasised the need to build strong relationships with students to understand their needs and make them feel supported. LTC also discussed the creation of their library website to support student learning and staff teaching, and the provision of accessible, detailed PowerPoints which develop students’ research, evaluation, and referencing skills. Key to these resources’ success is staff collaboration and consultation, embedding them into classroom activities, and ongoing promotion. 

The need for advocacy and promotion were also discussed during both school visits, highlighting the importance of claiming our space (Bonanno, 2011). LTC noted their practices supporting reading and information literacy were crucial advocacy opportunities, and they frequently promoted their services to parents as well as staff and students. WMAC noted that they raised their library profile by supporting non-traditional tasks (e.g. uniforms), showcasing the library’s value by harnessing the needs of key decision makers and meeting patrons not normally involved with the library. 

BRL also emphasised the importance of customer service, proving that strong relationships are crucial to leadership in both public and educational libraries (Branch-Mueller & Rodger, 2022, p.46-47). Harris discussed the difference between traditional card holders and hidden patrons (e.g. homeless users). Climate-controlled safe spaces and harm reduction work in public libraries supports their role as ‘second responders’ who step in when other services are unavailable or inaccessible (Aykanian et al., 2020, p.S72), reflecting the wellbeing work I encounter in my school library. Harris also emphasised the importance of advocacy and promotions, especially regarding funding. BRL’s provision of technology and IT support (including senior digital literacy programs, digital collections, broadband access, robotics, and 3D printing) reflects the ways modern libraries must stay current with the changing infosphere (Floridi, 2007, p.59). All points discussed supported research regarding the wide variety of services valued by public library users (Hider et al., 2023, p.20-34) and highlighted the similarities with school libraries, despite our different clientele. 

Word count: 543

 

REFERENCES:

Australian Library and Information Association [ALIA]. (2018). Statement on public library services. https://read.alia.org.au/statement-public-library-services

ALIA, Australian School Libraries Association [ASLA], & Australian Education Union [AEU] (2020). Joint statement on school libraries. https://read.alia.org.au/joint-statement-school-libraries

Aykanian, A., Morton, P., Trawver, K., Victorson, L., Preskitt, S., & Street, K. (2020). Library-Based Field Placements: Meeting the Diverse Needs of Patrons, Including Those Experiencing Homelessness. Journal of Social Work Education, 56(1), S72–S80. https://doi.org/10.1080/10437797.2020.1723757

Bonanno, K. (2011). ASLA Keynote Speaker: A profession at the tipping point: time to change the game plan. [Video]. Vimeo. https://vimeo.com/31003940 

Branch-Mueller, J., & Rodger, J. (2022). Single Threads Woven Together in a Tapestry: Dispositions of Teacher-Librarian Leaders. School Libraries Worldwide, 39–49. https://doi.org/10.29173/slw8454

Foundation For Economic Education, & FEEGA. (2019). The Difference Between Public Libraries and Public Schools. ContentEngine LLC, a Florida limited liability company.

Floridi, L. (2007). A Look into the Future Impact of ICT on Our Lives. The Information Society 23(1), 59-64. https://doi.org/10.1080/019722406010599094

Hider, P., Garner, J., Wakeling, S., & Jamali Mahmuei, H. R. (2023). “Part of My Daily Life”: The importance of public libraries as physical spaces. Public Library Quarterly, 42(2), 190-219. https://doi.org/10.1080/01616846.2022.2092347

Kimmel, S. C. (2014). Developing collections to empower learners. ALA/AASL

NSW Department of Education (2017). Handbook for School Libraries.

ETL504 5.2 & 5.3: Servant Leadership

Scenario: You are in your third year as a teacher librarian in a school where you had to work actively to promote the value and services of the library. Classes come to the library either for relief from face-to-face teaching (primary) or supervision for research (secondary) without planned opportunities for collaborative or shared teaching. As you engage with ETL504 you have evaluated your current library role as that of a servant, rather than a servant leader. You seem to be reacting to the immediate needs and requirements of teachers and students in regard to providing resources, responding to immediate information and digital literacy needs, supporting recreational reading requirements and providing technology support.

Task: Through the lens of servant leadership, identify and share one proactive approach to lead a shift in expectations and responsibilities that will build the capacity of either teachers or students in recreational reading.

It’s scary how accurate the give scenario for this task is – it almost exactly matches my situation! I started in the library in 2021 and when I stepped into the position the big perception of the library’s role in our school was that it’s all about books and reading. Rather than dedicate my non-existent time to pick that fight and battle this misconception while in the depths of Covid disruptions and completing the Masters on top of my library responsibilities and English teaching role, I leaned into this perception to show my value to my school community.

Inspired in large part by the work I completed for ETL402 Literature Across the Curriculum, I decided to start an Action Research Project based around my implementation of a Wide Reading Program for Year 7, 2022. That year our school restructured the timetable and removed DEAR from roll call despite our declining NAPLAN and HSC results, so I aligned this project with our School Plan to give it legitimacy and worked with several English teachers since I was still teaching English classes and part of that faculty despite my relocation to the library. I started with 4 classes but due to staffing issues and constant interruptions only maintained consistent contact with 2 classes.

I sold this as a service to these teachers which would support their teaching units and develop student literacy while saving them time. The reformed English curriculum explicitly references reading for pleasure, so this is another angle I’ve used this year to promote the program and ensure unity between my work in the library and teachers’ work in their classrooms.

Word got around about this program and its benefits, and so this year it has expanded to include 5 Year 7 classes and 2 Year 8 classes, ensuring access to reading materials and positive modelling for 190 teenagers who often otherwise wouldn’t take the time to read for fun.

Knowing what I do now as a result of ETL504, if I could go back in time I would be far more proactive about advertising this program and raising its visibility in the early stages with my Senior Executive to showcase my proactive response to community needs and my leadership potential. I did include comments and data from my research in my Annual Reportwhich I shared with my Head Teachers and the Senior Executive, though it’s hard to say if they even read this document so perhaps other tactics are needed, such as personal invitations to attend lessons, social media marketing, and professional publication of the results. I plan to leverage the success of this program and the trust built with staff and students to build collaborative planning opportunities in future, especially around information fluency and inquiry learning, and thus to slowly but surely change the perception of what a library is all about.

ETL504 5.3 Future Ready Librarian Self-Reflection

One of the tasks in this module was to browse the Future Ready Librarians website. Amongst its myriad of wonderful tools, I found the self-reflection survey and since I love a good survey I thought, why not? Here are my results:

 

From this tool I can identify that I need to work on leading through:

  • the provision of personalised professional learning
  • providing robust infrastructure,
  • teaching and promoting student data and privacy, and
  • curriculum instruction and assessment.

ETL504 Advocacy and Visibility

Inspired by the ETL504 readings about the importance of advocating for what we do and the different stats snapshot infographics posted on the NSW School Library Matters Facebook group, I thought I’d have a crack at designing my own. Hopefully this will help increase my visibility and show the value of my work to the school. As a relatively new TL fumbling my way through each day I‘ll take whatever wins I can!

ETL504 Strategic Planning and Setting Goals: An Amateur’s Journey

As I’m learning about effective ways to identify needs and create strategic plans, I thought it would be a good time to reflect on how far my understanding of strategic and operational planning has developed since I started in the library role at the end of 2020. In the last two weeks of 2020 I did my best to wade through the vast depths of the library space, resources and services and created a table to help me identify everything that the library did and everything that needed to be either fixed, implemented, or reassessed. This was such an overwhelming job and I felt completely unprepared, especially since the library didn’t have any policies or procedures that I could refer back to in my planning. At the time I managed to narrow it down to 5 key priority areas (I’ve deleted the other specifics since the original document went over a whopping 6 pages!):

Priority Area Purpose  Strategies Timeframe
Resource Management

Support Student Learning

Library Promotion

Literacy Improvement

Social Inclusion

In 2021 I had a bit more time and understanding of the library role, and refined this planning by setting 5 key goals which I reflected on in my 2021 Annual Library Report. It’s interesting to see how my chosen priority areas have been refined, and how my reporting of these achievement was simplified to show the value of the library to my school’s Senior Executive:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In 2022 this planning was further expanded via the brainstorm below. It’s interesting that at this stage of my understanding I’ve started to hone in on specific aspects of each goal. The achievements associated with each goal were reflected on in my 2022 Annual Library Report which was once again given to the Senior Executive.

Looking back on these now, they seem quite amateurish in comparison to the strategic plans explored as part of my studies for ETL504. However, at the time I was almost completely lacking any realistic knowledge of the library roles and responsibilities or of leadership theory, and so these initial attempts at strategic planning were the best I could accomplish with my limited knowledge. Now that I know better, I intend to do better and hopefully the library will flourish as a result!

ETL504 Leadership Styles and Traits

While I was preparing for the first assessment, I thought it would be an interesting experiment to upload my notes on leadership styles and traits to a word cloud generator. This is the result:

It’s interesting to see that words such as learning, colleagues, collaborative, relationships, goals, opportunities, encourage, respect, model, trust, influence, shared, values, and vision stand out as crucial repeated concepts.

ETL504 3.2 + 3.3: Applying Leadership Theory

Scenario:
Recreational borrowing is declining and students’ engagement with the fiction collection has decreased. The collection is currently shelved alphabetically. Genrefication of the fiction collection is being proposed as a strategy to address the issue.

Task:
A) Consider both internal (library) and external (school wide) factors in this element as a response to the change process

B) Identify one leadership style that will facilitate your chosen element to support the change process. Explain the leadership attributes that will be of most value.

 

External factors potentially leading to conflict over proposed genrefication could include:

  • Different or competing personal beliefs held by leaders and teachers regarding the role of the fiction collection
    • Possible solution: present summary of research into the benefits of fiction as a literary learning tool to support the curriculum; show connection between this research and the impacts that increased pleasure reading has on NAPLAN/HSC scores to align the project with the school’s Strategic Improvement Plan; show testimonials and data from other teacher-librarians or public librarians who have genrefied their collections to benefit their communities
  • Lack of communication opportunities
    • Possible solution: in addition to email communication which members of the leadership team can review in their own time, potentially schedule a meeting to present research and make a professional case for the genrefication of the fiction collection; briefly explain process and reasoning to whole staff at a meeting
  •  Limited available time and resources to genrefy the fiction collection (this is especially problematic given current staff shortages and workload issues!)
    • Possible solution: form a student library committee to a) increase student voice and ownership over the project and b) provide students with their own leadership opportunities (in my school, Student Voice is a key component of the Strategic Improvement Plan)

Internal factors which could potentially lead to conflict in this scenario are:

  • Lack of understanding about what genrefication is and how to undertake this process
    • Possible solution: undertake professional learning in this area, read professional articles (such as those in SCIS Connections), seek support from professional networks and other local libraries (both school and public libraries)

To implement a project such as this, I believe that a teacher-librarian would benefit from understanding both Transformational and Distributed leadership styles. We need to ensure that we have the support and buy-in of both official leaders and classroom teachers and can achieve this by providing them with the reasons why this project benefits them as individuals as well as the whole school community. Our colleagues would need to trust that we are capable of achieving this goal and so we would need to project our professionalism and base our plans in research and best-practice at all times. Leading this change by example is another way we can exhibit Transformational leadership. Empowering selected students to assist in the process of genrefication would also display elements of Distributed leadership.

ETL504 3.2: Conflict Resolution Style

Complete the conflict resolution questionnaire and reflect on your responses in your blog.
What is your predominant approach to managing conflict?
Does this match to how you think of yourself?
What areas do you think you need to develop?
My results indicate that my conflict resolution style is a mix of Styles 1, 4, and 5. I have put the traits which I feel apply in bold:

Style I: You tend to avoid conflict at all costs. While in some situations this may be a wise thing to do, there are things that are worth fighting for. Your fear of confrontation and unwillingness to deal with problems may cause you to abdicate from your personal goals and, as weird as it sounds, undermine your relationships with others. If you never confront your interpersonal problems with honesty and openness, your chances to resolve them are slim. This may lead to passive aggressive behavior from both sides; and while you may be able to avoid the confrontation itself, you will be subjecting yourself to continuous dull pain.

Style IV: You equally value your interpersonal relationships and your goals. Because you aren’t ready to give up on any of the two, you use compromise as your preferred strategy. Even if your demand isn’t satisfied 100 percent, it’s still better than nothing, and you get to keep the relationship.

Style V: Your strategy is honesty and openness. You value both relationships and goals and look for a way to work with your opponent for a solution that is honest and satisfactory for both sides. The difference between Style V and Style IV is that Style V is not willing to compromise the truth but, at the same time, they are patient enough to keep digging until they find a better solution that can satisfy everyone involved.

I definitely agree that I try to avoid conflict and that this has led to a number of issues both in my work and personal life. I absolutely place a high value on the relationships I have with the people I work with, and to ensure that these relationships continue to be effective and productive in the workplace I need to develop my confidence and ability to speak up when there is an issue and to advocate effectively for my work instead of letting my frustrations fester.

ETL504 2.3: Leadership Concept Map

A snapshot of leadership between the principal and the teacher librarian.
Present one simple concept map with no more than 5 concepts.

  • Identify one style suitable for a principal that would facilitate leadership in the teacher librarian.
  • Identify a style of leadership that the teacher librarian could adopt to facilitate professional growth in teaching staff to embrace the General Capabilities (or a 21st century skill)
  • Briefly justify each choice in your message.

The styles of leadership I believe would be suitable for a principal facilitating leadership in the teacher-librarian are Transformational and Distributed leadership. Smith (2016) notes that while leaders generally possess strengths in one leadership style over another, the traits of different styles can be utilised to create an effective blend which is flexible and responsive to the specific needs of an organisation. Transformational leaders see the big picture and inspire the members of their organisation to achieve a shared goal, while Distributed leaders empower others to share or develop expertise and to enact change within an organisation. Both styles require high levels of trust and interpersonal skills to encourage participation and buy-in, as well as strong management skills. However, principal’s efforts to be Transformational and/or Distributed leaders can be hampered by external factors such as Departmental policies, changing curriculum documents, and widespread staff shortages.

In a high school setting, Principals and Deputy Principals often form the Senior Executive team. Whereas the Principal’s role is more inspirational, the Deputy role (in my experience at least) seems to be more managerial. The Senior Executive team manages each faculty Head Teacher, and together they form the Executive Leadership team which oversees implementation of the school’s strategic directions and each associated committee within the school, as well as each faculty. Each classroom teacher, auxiliary staff member (including counsellors, tech support, etc.), and the teacher-librarian is managed by a member of this Executive Leadership team. Classroom teachers often exhibit traits of both Instructional and Transactional leadership, since they are crucial in the daily instruction of students and are required to utilise both the reward and punishment aspects of classroom management. Teacher-librarians can support this core work of teaching and learning in many ways by adopting a Servant leader approach, and I’ve previously discussed in my blog some of the ways teacher-librarians can help our time-poor colleagues through this leadership approach.

ETL504 2.3: Promoting the Teacher-Librarian’s Visibility and Value

How can we take the perception of the TL’s role from the keeper and stamper of books in the quiet place to something different?

I think it’s fair to say that as a profession teacher-librarians have an image problem. Way back at the start of this degree I wrote about Bonanno’s keynote speech in which she described teacher-librarians as an ‘invisible profession’ (Lysaught, August 29 2021a) and the misconception that the library is purely about books (Lysaught, August 29 2021b). A 2021 study revealed that in the US, teacher-librarian numbers declined 20% in the past decade (Ingram, July 19, 2021), and this trend of shrinking school libraries is being replicated in Australia (Tidball, February 10, 2023) alongside stagnating or declining budgets, staffing levels, and staff engagement or support (Softlink, 2022, p.6-7).

Maybe, like a good dancer, we make our work look effortless. Maybe too much of what we do is in the background of busy teachers’ days. One thing that’s for sure is that we need to work on improving our visibility and perceived value to our school community if we are to ensure the future of our profession (Weisburg, 2020).

Moir, Hattie and Jansen (2014, p.37) identified a number of key attributes that teachers perceived as important for leaders:

They also state that “Trust is often best developed in team environments, as then there is opportunity for collaboration and shared decision-making, especially when there is a common focus on improving teaching and learning” (p.39). Bush and Glover (2014, p.554) also discuss the idea of leadership as influence rather than stemming from formal authority, which suits teacher-librarians since we often lack official leadership positions in school hierarchies. Both discussions relate beautifully to the work of the teacher-librarian as literacy expert and information specialist, and they highlight a key way that teacher-librarians can both improve their visibility and their perceived value to their school community through collaborative programming, teaching, and assessment which supports the work of time-poor classroom teachers.

The work of Crippen and Willows (2019, p.174) highlights the 10 characteristics of servant-leaders, and teacher-librarians are uniquely placed to assist healing for colleagues overburdened by heavy workloads, administrivia, and poor student behaviour: “Through their actions as servant leaders they are facilitating a healing process and followers often look to them for support when times are difficult or something traumatic has occurred (Barbuto and Wheeler, 2007).” Teacher-librarians can also exhibit the persuasion trait of servant-leaders: “Supovitz (2018) also describes how teacher leaders use strategies such as leading by example, earning their colleagues trust and encouraging and collaborating with their peers.” 

Another area where teacher-librarians can shift the perception of the school community is in the space surrounding emerging or rapidly changing technologies. A 2016 article notes that “By virtue of their training, relationships, systems knowledge, and instructional roles … teacher librarians are ideally suited to lead, teach, and support students and teachers in 21st century schools” (Digital Promise, 2016). Digital literature has the potential to move students from passive consumers to active creators of content while engaging them with the process and ethics of digital content creation (Lysaught, October 4 2022), and Artificial Intelligence is another emerging space where teacher-librarians can position themselves as experts to increase their visibility and perceived value (Lysaught, March 5 2023). It is imperative that we stay current with new and developing technologies to best position ourselves as experts in this field. Our expertise in copyright and the ethics of digital tools alongside our ability to connect the General Capabilities to specific learning programs is invaluable – however, we need to ensure that we’re promoting our abilities in this area and marketing collaborative teaching and planning as a benefit to time-poor teachers rather than just another thing to add to their plates. 

Weisburg (2020) argues that while there are numerous barriers to showcasing our value, as a profession we have no other option. We must make it a priority to develop our visibility and promote our value to our school community or we run the risk of becoming obsolete. Weisburg suggests that teacher-librarians should start by looking for ways to showcase what we’re already doing; social media posts, visible displays, and staff emails can promote this work among the school community, while annual library reports can increase the perception of our professionalism and showcase for senior leaders much of the behind the scenes work that goes into running a library (Lysaught, March 5 2023). Weisburg’s suggestion about speaking at P&C meetings is another interesting one which links well to our aforementioned technology expertise. The most crucial aspect of Weisburg’s article for me was the concept of “chopportunities” – “challenges that can be turned into an opportunity.” So much of what affects the library is decided without our input and while it can be tempting to fall into the “why bother?” disheartened state of mind, for our own protection (and sanity!) reframing these issues as “chopportunities” can be a way to reclaim some sense of agency and showcase the benefits we provide to our school communities. 

 

References:

Bush, T. & Glover, D. (2014). School leadership models: What do we know? School Leadership and Management, 34(5), 553-571. https://doi.org/10.1080/13632434.2014.928680

Crippen, C. & Willows, J. (2019). Connecting teacher leadership and servant leadership: A synergistic partnership. Journal of Leadership Education, 18(2), pp. 171-180. https://journalofleadershiped.org/jole_articles/connecting-teacher-leadership-and-servant-leadership-a-synergistic-partnership/

Digital Promise (2016). The new librarian: Leaders in the digital age. In SCIS Connections, (96). https://www.scisdata.com/connections/issue-96/the-new-librarian-leaders-in-the-digital-age/

Moir, S., Hattie, J. & Jansen, C. (2014). Teacher perspectives of ‘effective’ leadership in schools. Australian Educational Leader, 36(4), 36-40.

Softlink (2022). 2022 Australian and New Zealand school library survey report. https://www.softlinkint.com/resources/reports-and-whitepapers/

Weisburg, H. K. (2020). Leadership: There is no other option. Synergy, 18(1). https://slav.vic.edu.au/index.php/Synergy/article/view/369/364

ETL504 2.2 Leadership Theory

This week I’ve been reading up on different leadership styles and the ways that they can impact school culture and student outcomes. As with all worthwhile things in life, I’ve tried to wrap my head around these new concepts by comparing them to The Lord of the Rings. One does not simply understand these things straight away, so here’s my attempt at analysing the different leadership styles of the LotR characters.

Autocratic leadership: Autocratic leadership is characterised by decisions made from the top with very little input by followers, negatively impacting relationships and job satisfaction. I highly doubt Sauron was consulting with his orc generals, and neither Saruman nor Denethor seem particularly happy in their middle management roles. F for fail in 21st century educational leadership theory.

Transactional leadership: This style is based heavily on following processes and policies, and rewarding or punishing followers based on their performance. Saruman lures Wormtongue with the promise of Eowyn as a reward yet belittles him constantly once he fails at his task. Saruman gets a knife in the back as a result. Don’t lead like Saruman.

Instructional leadership: Instructional leaders lead from a place of official authority and have long range plans for their organisation. However, if you’re not particularly charismatic (or you’re corrupted by the One Ring) you might not be able to inspire the required action from your followers. Poor Boromir. He tried.

Distributed leadership: One of my favourite quotes from this week’s readings was from Harris, who said “empower others to bring things to you.” Elrond absolutely embodies this since he empowers the hobbits to bring the One Ring to Rivendell, and later inspires the Fellowship to volunteer for their mission … quest … thing. Ted Lasso is another pop culture distributed leader that springs to mind.

Laissez-faire (delegative) leadership: I love Gandalf, I really do. But we can’t deny that he has a habit of disappearing at key moments (“Look to my coming on the first light of the fifth day; at dawn, look to the East” – really, dude?). Lucky for Gandalf (and the rest of Middle Earth), he’s got a cracker of a team behind him whom he trusts and empowers to do the right thing when he takes a step back.

Situational leadership: This style requires flexibility and adaptability dependent on the situation, and is often contingent on the followers’ abilities. Frodo goes through a lot and relies heavily on the people around him as he adapts to the needs of his current situation. Lucky for him his Fellowship care for him (though let’s be honest, Aragorn could have totally gone after him if he’d really wanted). However, if the situational leader’s team aren’t top-notch (I’m looking at you, Gollum!) then they might not be as effective and their goals may remain unachieved.

Transformational leadership: Transformational leaders are people who see the big picture and work towards creating a sense of unity and shared vision amongst their team. They lead by example and have to make tough decisions. Aragon, son of Arathorn, Isildur’s Heir is no mere ranger, but even when without his official title manages to instill trust amongst the hobbits, and later puts himself on the line multiple times to serve the greater good.

Servant leadership: This is my personal favourite and one which I aspire to achieve in my own personal practice. Servant leaders put the needs of others first, make ethical decisions and are loyal, people-driven all-round good guys. They genuinely care about the people in their team and as a result engender an environment of high trust and inspire others to work with them. Samwise typifies this style of leadership – he’s not a powerful king or wizard, just a gardener with a heart of gold. When Frodo stumbles he picks him up and gets the job done. His line, “I can’t carry it for you, but I can carry you!” seems so pertinent to the teacher-librarian’s role as leader within a school context. Everyone needs a Sam!

 

 

ETL504 2.1: Organisation Theory Introduction

Informed by Robinson’s presentation, think about the influences upon a school – structural, cultural and societal and identify a key driver for change in each area that the teacher librarian could respond to through school library programs.

A lot has changed in the 13 years since Robinson’s video was first published to Youtube. When this video was published, Youtube was still a fairly new and groundbreaking platform, Facebook was still a relative baby, Instagram had only just been launched, and TikTok wasn’t even a twinkle in its creators’ eyes. Early in my studies I was introduced to the concept of the changing infosphere (Lysaught, 2021, August 30) and my understanding of these issues and their relationship to the role of the teacher librarian has continued to develop as I’ve moved through this degree.

Since 2010, a multitude of new apps, sites, and other assorted technologies have emerged. The big one causing much consternation in the education community at the moment is the rise of AI tools such as ChatGPT. While there’s a lot of fear and uncertainty about the role artificial intelligence will play in the future of education, I strongly feel that this emerging technology is one area where effective teacher librarians can position themselves as leaders and drivers of innovation in their school communities. While some concerns are not without merit (especially around potential student plagiarism and the ethics of AI), at the moment my experiences have led me to view AI tools such as ChatGPT as a sort of “Google on steroids” and a valuable time-saver for overworked, time-poor teachers. As such, for this reflection I used it to get my head around the idea of what could be meant by structural, cultural and societal influences upon schools. I was rather pleased with the results:

Let’s address some of these influences more directly.

Structural influences upon a school:

  • School funding: obviously a teacher librarian in a school setting (especially one without formal leadership credentials) will have limited impact on the way schools are funded. However, through advocating for our role, our value to our school community and our professionalism I believe that teacher librarians can in some cases successfully apply for a greater slice of the funding pie. I used our 2021 Annual Library Report as evidence to request more funding and was granted additional support for my 2022 Wide Reading Program trial.
  • Curriculum: again, teacher librarians have an extremely limited ability to determine the curriculum set by National and State educational bodies (beyond participation in focus groups and curriculum groups when these documents are reviewed). However, our role within schools has the potential to act as the “glue” which draws together different curriculum areas (Lysaught, 2021, October 5) and the general capabilities (Lysaught, 2021, November 22), and can unite otherwise isolated subject ‘silos’ to ensure cross-curricular learning.
  • School policies: through participation in school-wide teams and committees, teacher librarians can help guide and implement these policies and procedures. For instance in the past I have been a member of our school’s Gifted and Talented Education committee, and when that was dissolved I moved into the Technology in Education committee.
  • Physical facilities: often the physical layout of the school is beyond the teacher librarian’s control; however, we can absolutely make a difference in the design and layout of the library space, and can develop and manage efficient collections which meet the learning and recreational needs of our school community. As noted in my 2022 Annual Library Report (Lysaught, 2023, March 5), 49% of library purchases were patron-led acquisitions to build student and staff ownership over the collection.

Cultural influences upon a school:

  • School culture: building respectful relationships and trust is crucial with both staff and students. Bonanno (2011, via Lysaught, 2021, August 29) emphasises the importance of building relationships with the 10-30% of staff who are likely to work with us to ensure that we are maximising our potential and adding value to our school community efficiently and meaningfully. My own experience has revealed that this takes time, but once I made progress with one teacher and the word spread about how I could help time-poor staff with their work, soon I was inundated with requests. 
  • Diversity: representation matters. Decolonising collections and ensuring inclusivity and diversity in resources and their promotion is one area where teacher librarians can positively affect school culture.
  • Parental involvement: communication to parents and caregivers via channels such as social media and parent bulletins is important for promoting the library as a useful resource centre for their children.

Societal influences upon a school:

  • Community resources: effective promotion of library educational and recreational resources can build a positive school culture where students and staff feel supported, valued and can take ownership of the space. Student-created social media posts is one of my favourite ways of helping promote library resources while encouraging students to take ownership of the space.
  • Economic factors: teacher librarians can’t change the socio-economic demographics of their school community, but they can provide access to tools and resources which can ameliorate the effects of potential disadvantage (Krashen, 2011). The ISCEA value of my school has gone down in the last few years; my implementation of the Wide Reading Program aims in part to mitigate some of the disadvantages our students face by drawing on research into pleasure reading and by providing time and access to reading materials.
  • Political climate: well, ain’t this one a tough nut to crack. It seems that everywhere we look teachers are easy pickings for politicians wanting to stoke the fires of the culture wars for their own gain. However, advocacy and professionalism can go some way towards easing public and political misconceptions about the role of teachers in society. Would it be cheeky of me to add media and digital literacy teaching programs here?

Annual Library Report 2022

One key tool I use to advocate for my school’s library is our Annual Library Report. I give this to all members of the Senior Executive at my school to remind them of the value our library provides to our school learning community. While time-consuming to create, I strongly believe that this is an important promotional tool which projects my image as a professional, a team player and a leader. The full report can be accessed here: https://bit.ly/3Jg1e7k 

          

ETL504 1.1: How School Leaders Can Build Hope and Prevent Teacher Burnout

Beachboard, Cathleen (Feb 25, 2022). How school leaders can build hope and prevent teacher burnout. Edutopia.  https://www.edutopia.org/article/how-school-leaders-can-build-hope-and-prevent-teacher-burnout

Some of the key points I took from this article are:

  • There’s three key components which lead to burnout – exhaustion, cynicism, and inefficacy (these three factors are sadly very common at the moment!)
  • Hope is crucial to safeguarding identity, which can be built by discovering and developing goals, having autonomy over one’s purpose, and finding opportunities to exercise this potential and purpose
  • If people feel needed, respected, and valued, they have a higher perception of their own agency (this is true of students and staff alike!)
  • Recognising and acknowledging competence, granting autonomy, and fostering relatedness among staff are three ways school leaders can build hope and protect against burnout
  • “One of the ways leadership can aid teachers is to give staff an abundance of resources to assist with mounting workloads.” I’ve noted a few times in my blog ways in which an effective TL can assist time-poor, overworked classroom teachers (January 10, 2022February 27, 2022August 7, 2022October 4, 2022) and thus potentially act as leaders in schools.

ETL533 Assessment 4: Part D – Critical Reflection

My understanding of digital literature has grown significantly over the last few months. From my early definitions to the creation of my own narrative, I’ve gained a solid understanding of what digital literature is, why it’s beneficial and how it can be implemented to support my school.

My preliminary definitions of digital literature focused on the distinction between the digital and the digitised (Lysaught, 2022, July 19; Lysaught, 2022, July 25). As my research progressed I consolidated these distinctions by combining Unsworth’s (2006, p.2-3) and Allan’s (2017, p.22-23) categories (Lysaught, 2022, August 7). Like my peers (Curtis, 2022, July 19), I believe digital literature should be quality and meet community needs, which led me to consider what makes quality digital literature (Lysaught, 2022, August 14) and to design my own evaluation criteria where I determined three key aspects: multimodality, interactivity, and connectivity (Lysaught, 2022, August 28). Self-evaluations and peer feedback reveals – despite the amateur multimodal features – mine’s an effective, quality text suitable for its intended purpose and audience:

Evaluation of The Shakespeare Chronicles

However, defining digital literature is arguably less important to teacher-librarians than understanding how to incorporate it effectively. Digital literature provides exciting opportunities to move students from passive consumers to active creators of content  (Morra, 2013, para.2; Kitson, 2017, p.66), and as new technologies and communication tools emerge, students require new literacies to ensure they’re critically consuming and ethically creating texts (Walker et al., 2010, p.214-216; Kearney, 2011, p.169; Leu, 2011, p.6-8; Mills & Levido, 2011, p.80-81, 89; Leu et al., 2015, p.139-140; Serafini et al., 2015, p.23; Combes, 2016, p.4). In 2009 students spent an average four hours a day online (Weigel, 2009, p.38); by 2015 US teens consumed between 6-9 hours of media a day (Common Sense Media, 2015, para.6), while Australian teens now spend an average of 14.4 hours a week online (eSafety Commissioner, 2021, p.4). Digital literature therefore harnesses our students’ preferences and familiarity with technological platforms (Figueiredo & Bidarra, 2015, p.323; Skaines, 2010, p.100-104; Stepanic, 2022, p.2; Weigel, 2009, P.38). Digital literature incorporating interactivity, multimodality, and connectivity can develop ‘nöogenic narratives’ wherein personal growth is achieved by viewing our lives as a story (Hall, 2012, p.97), a key element of the English syllabus (NSW Standards Authority, 2019, p.10). Research shows that educators can exploit digital narratives to create meaningful and authentic learning opportunities for students to create personal and academic growth (Bjørgen, 2010, p.171-172; Dockter et al., 2010, p.419; Hall, 2012, p.99; Reid, 2013, p.38-41; Smeda et al., 2014, p.19; Sukovic, 2014, p.222-226).

However, educators must carefully consider the purpose of integrating digital narratives into their programmes. While research reveals digital texts’ benefits supporting young, emerging, or struggling readers and developing transliteracy (Tackvic, 2012, p.428; Cahill & McGill-Franzen, 2013, p.32-33; Matthews, 2014, p.29; McGeehan et al., 2018, p.58), others raise issues regarding reading comprehension, retention, and attention (Cull, 2011, para.35-38; Goodwin, 2013, p.79; Jabr, 2013, p.5-30; McGuire, 2015, para.30-35). Technology should be used as a meaningful tool, not just as a gimmick. Monsen (2016) explored the idea that we are “quintessentially cyborgs” due to the symbiotic relationship between humanity and technology. My research into digital learning frameworks such as the SAMR model (Lysaught, 2022, August 6) revealed that effective implementation of technology should not replace, but co-exist with and supplement existing print literacies. Printed choose-your-own-adventure narratives arguably improve literacy (Chooseco & Hofmann, 2016, para. 8-9) and can be updated using digital features to form powerful digital texts (Farber, 2015, para.1-2). Thus, my own digital narrative was designed as an immersive, interactive, multimodal resource to develop students’ understanding of life in Shakespearean England while supplementing traditional print resources and online information sources.

Throughout ETL533 I have examined how I currently incorporate digital literature into our school and considered ways to increase this in future (Lysaught, 2022, July 31; Lysaught, 2022, August 7; Lysaught, 2022, August 13). As discussed with my peers (Macey, 2022, September 24; Barnett, 2022, September 27; Facey, 2022, September 29) difficulties arise surrounding cost-effectiveness, storage, access, and user preferences that often impede digital literature’s success in schools. Despite these challenges, after creating my own digital narrative I strongly believe that student-created digital texts can enhance their own learning and connections to content, and integrate well with Guided Inquiry units and literary learning (Lysaught, 2022, January 27; Lysaught, 2022, August 14; Lysaught, 2022, September 3; Lysaught, 2022, September 16). Peer feedback also supports this (Lysaught, 2022, September 3). Due to this unit I am more aware of my students’ discussions around digital literature (Lysaught, 2022, July 25; Lysaught, 2022, August 28), revealing these are powerful texts with which students are already engaging. Literature in digital environments allows teacher-librarians to show our value to our school community, as we can support time-poor staff as they include more captivating, rich resources and utilise digital narratives to support our students with various interests and literacy needs.

 

 

Word count: 806

Reference list: https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2022/10/04/etl533-assessment-4-reference-list/

ETL533 Assessment 4: Part A – Context For Digital Storytelling Project

The Shakespeare Chronicles is a digital choose-your-own-adventure narrative created using Canva. Also known as a pick-a-path story or a gamebook, these narratives were popular during the 1980s due to their interactivity and appearance of choice for children who otherwise lacked agency (Hendrix, 2011, para.29; Jamison, 2022, para.4). Falling out of favour due to the rise of video games in the 90s (Jamison, 2022, para.46), these printed narratives can be updated for new audiences and technologies in our electronic age by incorporating the digital features which once superseded them (Stuart, 2011, para.1-2; Figueiredo & Bidarra, 2015, p.330).

The Shakespeare Chronicles was designed to support EHS’s Year 7 English Guided Inquiry Design unit ‘Shakespeare’s Bawdy Mouth’. It can also be used to support revision for Stage 5 and 6 English students studying a variety of Shakespeare’s plays. In this narrative, students follow the adventures of an actor in Shakespeare’s theatre company. They are presented with choices to guide the narrative and learn about life in Shakespeare’s time. Utilising interactivity, multimodality, and connectivity – key elements of quality digital literature (Lysaught, 2022, August 28) – it supports students as they explore the following questions:

  1. How different or similar are our experiences to peoples’ experiences in Shakespeare’s time?
  2. Why is Shakespeare considered a significant composer?
  3. How can understanding Shakespeare’s works and the experiences of people living during his lifetime help us understand ourselves and our world?

Due to its historical focus, stage-appropriate language features and dual function as a research pathfinder, this resource allows teachers to meet multiple English and History outcomes, while the inclusion of ICT and the cause-and-effect nature of this interactive narrative allows staff to link to a number of General Capabilities:

This digital narrative taps into what Figueiredo and Bidarra (2015, p.324) call the ‘ludic’ or game-based learning model and draws on students’ predilections towards digital, interactive media (Figueiredo & Bidarra, 2015, p.323; Skaines, 2010, p.100-104; Stepanic, 2022, p.2; Weigel, 2009, P.38). Introduced in the Immerse inquiry stage as a resource to assist student engagement and build background knowledge (Kuhlthau  et al., 2012, p.61-66, 70; Maniotes, 2017, p.8), its secondary purpose as a research pathfinder supports students as they move into the Explore, Identify and Gather stages of Guided Inquiry (Kuhlthau  et al., 2012, p.75-82, 93-98, 109-116; Maniotes, 2017, p.8-9).

Currently the summative assessment for this unit requires students to produce three diary entries from the perspective of someone living during Shakespeare’s time, to be viewed and marked by a teacher. The Shakespeare Chronicles provides a model for students to create their own digital narrative, supporting their digital literacy and social development in interesting and relevant ways with an authentic audience of peers to promote engagement (Dockter et al., 2010, p.419-420; Weigel, 2009, p.40). Multimodal aspects build understanding of life during Shakespeare’s time, supporting students’ use of visual and auditory imagery in their own writing and moving students from consumers to creators of content – a key element of digital literature (Morra, 2013, para.2; Kitson, 2017, p.66).

In designing this resource, I considered the questions posed by Reid (2013, p.41) to ensure my community’s learning needs were being met. EHS is a comprehensive, co-educational public school in South-West Sydney. Enrolments increased 10% in the 2016-2020 period, though decreased in 2021 (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority [ACARA], 2021a). New housing developments changing our catchment demographics lowered our ICSEA score from 1017 in 2014 to 995 in 2021 (ACARA, 2021a). NAPLAN results are below average (ACARA, 2021b) while Sentral data shows increasing disengagement, with suspensions increasing 96.6% and expulsions 600% since 2014 (Sentral, 2021).

This digital narrative engages students visually and emotionally with the experiences of past people, supporting a variety of literacy needs and growing student independence (Foley, 2012, p.8; Cahill & McGill-Franzen, 2013, p.33, 35-36; Chooseco & Hoffman, 2016, para.8-9; Towndrow & Kogut, 2020, p.4, 14, 147-148). Access to 1:1 devices is limited to shared, bookable banks of often unreliable laptops or iPads, so the resource is accessible on a variety of devices (including student phones) via an easily shared Canva link and can be uploaded to subject learning platforms and the library website for future reference and to support social connection. While our students frequently engage with digital media, they often lack the skills to effectively navigate web content or critically evaluate online information; hyperlinked resources provide students with quality information to use in their own research. Teaching time is limited, as are student attention spans; a short narrative counteracts this peripatetic “grasshopper mind” (Weigel, 2009, p.38), though multiple pathways invite replay and continued enjoyment. Choice encourages interactivity and engagement (Hendrix, 2011, para.19, 29), aiming to overcome disengagement and encourage students to make personal connections with the content (Weigel, 2009, p.40; Bjørgen, 2010, p. 171; Hall, 2012, p.99; Lambert, 2012, p.37-38; Towndrow & Kogut, 2020, p.148).

 

 

Word count: 798

Reference list: https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2022/10/04/etl533-assessment-4-reference-list/

ETL533 Assessment 4: Reference List

Allan, C. (2017). Digital fiction: ‘Unruly object’ or literary artefact? English in Australia, 52(2), 21-27.

Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority [ACARA] (n.d.a). Literacy (Version 8.4). https://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/f-10-curriculum/general-capabilities/literacy/

Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority [ACARA] (n.d.b). Information and communication technology (ICT) capability (Version 8.4). https://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/f-10-curriculum/general-capabilities/information-and-communication-technology-ict-capability/

Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority [ACARA] (n.d.c). Personal and social capability (Version 8.4). https://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/f-10-curriculum/general-capabilities/personal-and-social-capability/

Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority [ACARA]. (2021a). Elderslie High School school profile. My School. https://www.myschool.edu.au/school/41597

Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority [ACARA]. (2021b). Elderslie High School NAPLAN student progress. My School. https://www.myschool.edu.au/school/41597

Bjørgen, A. (2010). Boundary crossing and learning identities – digital storytelling in primary schools. Media, Technology & Life-Long Learning, 6(2), 161-178.

Cahill, M., & McGill-Franzen, A. (2013). Selecting “app” ealing and “app” ropriate book apps for beginning readers. Reading Teacher, 67(1), 30–39.

Combes, B. (2016). Digital literacy: A new flavour of literacy or something different? Synergy, 14(1).

Common Sense Media (2015). Landmark report: U.S. teens use an average of nine hours of media per day, tweens use six hours. https://www.commonsensemedia.org/press-releases/landmark-report-us-teens-use-an-average-of-nine-hours-of-media-per-day-tweens-use-six-hours#:~:text=Other%20key%20findings%3A,than%208%20hours%20with%20screens

Chooseco & Hofmann, M. (2016, May 19). Choose your own adventure books increase kids’ reading comprehension and literacy rates more quickly than linear stories. Choose Your Own Adventure [blog]. https://www.cyoa.com/blogs/press/117605637-choose-your-own-adventure-books-increase-kids-reading-comprehension-and-literacy-rates-more-quickly-than-linear-stories

Cull, B. W. (2011). Reading revolutions: online digital text and implications for reading in academe. First Monday, 16(6). http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3340/2985

Dockter, J., Haug, D., & Lewis, C. (2010). Redefining rigor: Critical engagement, digital media, and the new English/Language Arts. Journal Of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 53(5), 418-420.

eSafety Commissioner (2021). The digital lives of Aussie teens. https://aifs.gov.au/media/australian-children-spending-more-time-screens

Farber, M. (2015, August 14). Interactive fiction in the classroom. Edutopia. https://www.edutopia.org/blog/interactive-fiction-in-the-classroom-matthew-farber#:~:text=Research%20suggests%20it%20only%20holds,for%2010%20to%2020%20seconds.

Figueiredo, M., & Bidarra, J. (2015). The development of a gamebook for education. Procedia Computer Science 67, 322-331.

Foley, C. (2012).  Ebooks for leisure and learning. Scan 31, 6-14.

Goodwin, B. (2013). The reading skills digital brains need. Educational Leadership, 71(3), 78-79.

Hall, T. (2012). Digital renaissance: The creative potential of narrative technology in education. Creative Education, 3(1), 96-100.

Hendrix, G. (2011, February 17). Choose your own adventure: How The Cave of Time taught us to love interactive entertainment. Slate. https://slate.com/culture/2011/02/choose-your-own-adventure-books-how-the-cave-of-time-taught-us-to-love-interactive-entertainment.html#pagebreak_anchor_2

Jabr, F. (2013). The reading brain in the digital age: The science of paper versus screens. Scientific American. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reading-paper-screens/

Jamison, L. (2022, September 12). The enduring allure of choose your own adventure books: How a best-selling series gave young readers a new sense of agency. The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/09/19/the-enduring-allure-of-choose-your-own-adventure-books

Kearney, M. (2011). A learning design for student-generated digital storytelling. Learning, Media and Technology, 36(2), 169-188.

Kitson, L. (2017). Exploring opportunities for literary literacy with e-literature: To infinity and beyond. Australian Literacy Educators’ Association. Literacy Learning, 23(2), 58-68.

Kuhlthau, C., Maniotes, L., & Caspari, A. (2012). Guided Inquiry Design: a framework for inquiry in your school. Libraries Unlimited.

Lambert, J. (2012). Digital storytelling: capturing lives, creating community. Routledge.

Leu, D. J. et al (2011). The new literacies of online reading comprehension: Expanding the literacy and learning curriculum. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 55(1), 5-14.

Leu, D. J, Forzani, E., Timbrell, N., & Maykel, C. (2015). Seeing the forest, not the trees: Essential technologies for literacy in the primary-grade and upper elementary-grade classroom. Reading Teacher, 69(2), 139-145

Maniotes, L. (2017). Guided inquiry design in action: high school. Libraries Unlimited.

Matthews, J. (2014). Voices from the heart: The use of digital storytelling in education. Community Practitioner, 87(1), 28-30.

McGeehan, C., Chambers, S., & Nowakowski, J. (2018). Just because it’s digital, doesn’t mean it’s good: Evaluating digital picture books. Journal of Digital Learning in Teacher Education, 34(2), 58-70.

McGuire, H. (2015, April 22). Why can’t we read any more? Can books save us from what digital does to our brain?  Medium. https://hughmcguire.medium.com/why-can-t-we-read-anymore-503c38c131fe

Mills, K.A., & Levido, A. (2011). iPed: pedagogy for digital text production. The Reading Teacher, 65(1), 80-91.

Monsen, Y. (2016, December 16). Brave new literature; Digital textuality, technology, and cyborgian humanity. Medium. https://medium.com/publishizer/brave-new-literature-digital-textuality-technology-and-cyborgian-humanity-5d8f40bf3094

Morra, S. (2013). Eight steps to great storytelling. EdTeachTeacher [Blog]. http://edtechteacher.org/8-steps-to-great-digital-storytelling-from-samantha-on-edudemic/

NSW Education Standards Authority [NESA] (2012). History K-10 syllabus.

NSW Education Standards Authority [NESA] (2019). English K-10 syllabus.

Reid, K. (2013).  Creating e-books in the classroom. In J. Bales (Ed.), E-books in learning – a beginner ‘s guide. Australia: Australian School Library Association.

Sentral (2021). Elderslie High School: wellbeing. Retrieved September 24, 2022.

Serafini, F., Kachorsky, D. & Aguilera, E. (2015). Picture books 2.0: Transmedial features across narrative platforms. Journal of Children’s Literature, 41(2), 16-24.

Skaines, R. L. (2010). The shifting author-reader dynamic: online novel communities as a bridge from print to digital literature. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 16(1), 95–111.

Smeda, N., Dakich, E., & Sharda, N. (2014). The effectiveness of digital storytelling in the classrooms: a comprehensive study. Smart Learning Environments 1(6), 1-21.

Stepanic, S. (2022, May 20). ‘Dracula Daily’ reanimates the classic vampire novel for the age of memes and snark. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/dracula-daily-reanimates-the-classic-vampire-novel-for-the-age-of-memes-and-snark-183084

Sukovic, S. (2014). iTell: Transliteracy and digital storytelling. Australian Academic & Research Libraries, 45(3), 205–229.

Stuart, K. (2011, January 11). Interactive fiction in the ebook era. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/gamesblog/2011/jan/11/interactive-fiction-ebooks-apple-kindle

Tackvic, C. (2012). Digital storytelling: Using technology to spark creativity. The Educational Forum, 76(4), 426.

Towndrow, P. A., & Kogut, G. (2020). Digital storytelling for educative purposes: providing an evidence-base for classroom practice. Studies in Singapore Education: Research Innovation & Practice 1. Singapore: Springer.

Unsworth, L. (2006). E-literature for children: Enhancing digital literacy learning. Routledge.

Walker, S., Jameson, J., & Ryan, M. (2010). Skills and strategies for e-learning in a participatory culture (Ch. 15). In R. Sharpe, H. Beetham, & S. Freitas (Eds.), Rethinking learning for a digital age: How learners are shaping their own experiences. New York, NY: Routledge

Weigel, M. (2009). The best of both literacies. Educational Leadership, 66(6), 38-41.

ETL533 6.2: Issues in Management

Do you know what type of lending models and licences are available for the distribution of literary resources? Have you considered the challenges involved for education/libraries with digital literature licensing agreements? What are some issues involved in DRM, and how can they best be handled?

Once upon a time before I began my teaching career in 2011 I was lucky enough to work at a bookstore. We sold physical books as well as CDs of audiobooks. Life was simple. Life was grand.

Technology has dramatically changed the publishing landscape and while increased accessibility and functionality are definite benefits to readers, new lending models, licences and DRMs have irrefutably complicated the situation for schools and libraries.

We currently pay over $3000 each year to provide our students access to a variety of e-books and audiobooks as part of the Wheeler’s consortium. While it was popular during the period of online learning, it’s less popular now and not exactly what I’d call cost-efficient. We’ve had students request certain books on the Wheeler’s e-platform, but the price of these digital resources is significantly higher than if we were to purchase a physical copy, and we lose access to the resource if we drop our subscription. We’re also having issues with security, since our shared iPads are logging in the first user and not allowing new students to login. If we move to another service we’d be faced with different licencing and DRM models. And if I encourage students to create their own personal accounts for services like Amazon Kindle, it’s wonderful that they can link their Goodreads account and become socially connected, but also problematic that their data is being tracked and potentially sold.

A few weeks ago I had one of our Learning and Support Teachers approach me about getting an audiobook for one of our year 8 teachers to play to her class while they read the physical novel, so that she could wander the room dealing with behaviour issues instead of being stuck reading to the class. Whaddayaknow – it was impossible to source a copy of this text as an audiobook! If we had, we’d have been faced with issues around access (what device to play it on? How long do we have access to it? Do we need a subscription?) and if we wanted to create our own audiobook of the teacher recording herself reading, we’d be in violation of copyright laws. Call me old-fashioned, but I just wanted a CD audiobook that the English staff could keep in their book room to accompany the class set of novels. 
Sometimes I really miss the good old days!

ETL533 6.1: Fair Use vs. Fair Dealing

Why did the judge consider Google’s Book search project to be transformative? What are some of the possible benefits and possible issues with such a project? What are some differences between Fair Use (US copyright law) and Fair Dealing (Australian copyright law)?

As so often appears to be the case with new developments in technology, Google Books is simultaneously democratising and ultra-capitalistic. Google’s aim of bringing literature and research to the masses is a wonderful equiliser which increases access to quality resources, but isn’t purely altruistic or without benefit to the corporate giant behind the move since they stand to profit from advertising and potential future subscription models. I’m no lawyer, but it seems that Google is prevailing on a technicality – namely, that according to US laws a class action must be brought by a ‘class’ or group with similar facts (in this case, I think this refers to similar losses). If I’m understanding this case correctly, the ‘injuries’ or financial losses by the authors involved in the class action are potentially not similar enough for them to be counted as a class, which means that each individual author would have to sue Google separately – and who has the time, money, and resources to go up in a David vs. Googliath battle like this? Google Books is also an internationally accessed resource affecting international authors, though it seems like this case is being decided in US courts under US laws. Since Australia’s Fair Dealing provisions seem more prescriptive than the USA’s Fair Use laws, I wonder what the implications will be for local publishers. I’m also concerned about the possibility that in future, Google can restrict access to these materials again in the name of profit or lock users in to access via certain devices (which, of course, will also financially benefit Google!).

ETL533 4.2: Digital Tools

Why incorporate digital texts and storytelling into your programs? What new tools or approaches have you discovered that are interesting and worthwhile trying for you?

As a high school teacher with History and English classes, I’m always on the lookout for new ideas and resources that can enhance the my students’ engagement and learning. However, with so many options it can definitely be overwhelming for teachers to consider how to most effectively implement ICT and digital storytelling into their practice! I really enjoyed the questions presented by Reid (2013) which teachers should consider before embarking on this journey:

  • What do you want your e-book to do?
  • What kind of technology do you have access to?
  • What ratio of technology to students do you have?
  • What basic skills and knowledge do your students already have?
  • Which curriculum outcomes do you want your students to achieve?
  • What are the minimum expectations?

It’s crucial to consider these questions in order to ensure our use of digital storytelling and digital resources has a sound pedagogical foundation and avoids falling into the realm of the gimmicky, or being what the SAMR model designates as Substitution.

I’m really intrigued by the possibilities of digital poetry at the moment. One of my year 11 English Extension students has discussed the possibility of writing a suite of poetry for the Extension 2 course in Year 12, and I think that exploring this emerging form could be an exciting pathway for her. I also really like the idea of the digital interview suggested by Kolk (n.d.), which could fit our current year 7 English unit on Respecting Differences and support our students’ developing empathy.

 

Kolk, M. (n.d.). Six ways to implement digital storytelling. Retrieved from https://creativeeducator.tech4learning.com/2016/articles/six-ways-to-implement-digital-storytelling

Reid, K. (2013). Creating e-books in the classroom. In J. Bales (Ed.), E-books in learning – a beginner ‘s guide (pp. 37-43). Australia: Australian School Library Association.

ETL533 Assessment 3: Digital Storytelling Proposal

Working titles: Shakespeare’s Age and Stage OR The Shakespeare Chronicles OR Shakespeare Transformed

Topic: This digital storytelling project aims to help secondary students understand Shakespeare’s life and times through an interactive, multimodal choose-your-own-adventure digital narrative. 

Platform/tool: Canva

Rationale: 

This digital narrative is intended to support the EHS Stage 4 English unit Shakespeare’s Bawdy Mouth, where students explore Elizabethan England to gain an understanding of Shakespeare’s context and works. It could also be used as revision for Stage 5 or 6 English students studying a variety of Shakespearean plays. 

In this choose-your-own-adventure narrative, students will follow the adventures of a young actor in Shakespeare’s theatre company, The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, as they prepare for the opening night of Macbeth in 1606. Students will be presented with choices to guide the narrative and learn about Shakespeare’s life and times. It aims to utilise the three elements of quality digital literature I’ve previously identified – interactivity, multimodality, and connectivity – to support students’ developing understandings. 

Ideally, this resource will also function as a research pathfinder, as student’s choices will be supplemented by hyperlinks to external resources in order to support literary learning and develop their information literacy skills. Currently, students are assessed on their knowledge of this unit via their composition of three diary entries from the perspective of someone in Shakespeare’s time. Students could potentially use this narrative as a model for their own digital diary entries, thus updating the task for a digital environment and supporting student learning needs in the 21st century.

I initially investigated PowerPoint and Microsoft Sway for this task but chose to use Canva for a variety of reasons.  I enjoyed using Microsoft Sway but its inability to link between pages meant that it wasn’t viable for a hyperlinked choose-your-own-adventure narrative. I am proficient with PowerPoint and could utilise many of its features to construct a hyperlinked narrative, but felt that Canva was easier and more appealing for Stage 4 students due to its user-friendly interface, cloud storage, collaborative potential and its wide database of images and graphics. It is also free to access for NSW Department of Education students via their student portal. However, I am finding it difficult to inset audio to different slides since Canva is limited to one audio file per design. 

You can view the work in progress here.

ETL533 Assessment 2 Part B: Critical Reflection of Digital Literature Experiences

In the light of your readings and your experience of different digital literatures write a critical reflection which considers the following issues:
• What makes a good digital text, what counts as one, and what purpose do digital texts serve?
• Compare your experience of reading digital texts with reading print.
• Choose the digital text you most enjoyed and discuss how you might incorporate it into a program at your institution.

As my research into digital literature has progressed, my understandings have simultaneously narrowed and blurred regarding this nebulous topic. I have encountered numerous definitions, categories, and subcategories in my research, including the commonly repeated broad distinction between the digital and the digitised (Strickland, n.d., para. 3; Hayles, 2007, para.10; Bourchardon & Heckman, 2012, p.1; Heckman & O’Sullivan, 2018, para.4). 

Many attempts to define digital literature have focused on what it is not. For instance, electronic literature is not something that can be printed (Strickland, n.d., para.3; Sargeant, 2015, p.455; Wright, 2019, para.2), thereby excluding e-books which digitise existing print texts (Writerful Books, n.d., para.10) as ‘paper-under-glass’ texts (Allan, 2017, p.22) which, while popular with publishers, do not take advantage of many potential features offered by emerging digital platforms (McGeehan et al., 2018, p.62-63). However, excluding these texts from discussions about digital literature arguably ignores their popularity and potential as learning and engagement tools, especially in schools; after all, this unit is called ‘Literature in Digital Environments’ and not ‘Digital Literature’ for a reason, and it would be unwise to eliminate digitised texts from discussion altogether. I personally prefer to read digitised e-books due to the ability to increase font size and define unknown words, yet my favoured features were missing from many of the digital texts I’ve explored so far (Lysaught, 2022a).

Other definitions focus on common features of digital texts, such as their exploitation of digital characteristics (Bourchardon & Heckman, 2012, p.1), their inherent multimodality (Walker et al., 2010, p.219; Mills & Levido, 2011, p.80; Heckman & O’Sullivan, 2018, para.11) or the way they use interactivity and connectivity to position the audience in the process of either constructing meaning or constructing the text itself (Serafini, 2013, p.403; Walsh, 2013, p.181; Bell, 2016, p.295-296; Wall, 2016, p.35; Allan, 2017, p.23-24). These multidimensional features allow readers a different experience to that of reading a traditional unidimensional printed text, with some research suggesting that changes to reading speed and navigation in digital environments can affect comprehension and memory (Jabr, 2013, para.10, 20). Lending data and anecdotal discussions in my school suggest printed texts have maintained their top position as preferred reading materials amongst both staff and students, though this may have more to do with digital poverty, lack of exposure and competing distractions on devices than the potential offered by digital texts.

Another useful categorical framework I used to structured my reviews resulted from my early combination (Lysaught, 2022b, para.2-3) of Allan (2017, p.22-23) and Unsworth’s (2006, p.2-3) distinctions between recontextualised or digitised literary texts, enhanced app or electronically augmented texts, and ‘born digital’ texts. However, my increased exposure to digital literature revealed that often digital narratives defy simplistics attempts at categorisation, with all three reviewed texts blurring boundaries depending on whose definition one applied (Lysaught, 2022c, 2022d, 2022e).

Inspired by my reviewed texts, I decided to play with the multimodal potential offered by this blog to create a word-cloud of my notes so far. Several key ideas emerge, including: a focus on the relationship between readers, authors, teachers and the act of reading; the relationship between technology and meaning-making processes; and new literacies focused on mixed media and formats such as digital devices and internet platforms.

As a result of this research, I conclude that quality digital literature involves the interplay of three core elements: multimodality, interactivity, and connectivity (whether to the world or content of the text and/or to other users and platforms). Early attempts to construct an evaluative criteria (Lysaught, 2022f) have solidified into the criteria below:

😍 = yes, love it!

🤔 = hmm … somewhat?

👎 = not really/not evident

Arguably, defining digital literature is less important in school contexts than how it can be used to support the needs, interests and abilities of the school community. I discussed in each review how these texts could effectively support teaching and learning in my school community (Lysaught, 2022c, 2022d, 2022e). Early in my journey I posited that teacher-librarians could be invaluable in aligning new pedagogies with innovative digital narratives to support time-poor staff (Lysaught, 2022g, 2022b). Anecdotal evidence suggests that digital literature is a powerful tool for engaging students as readers (Lysaught, 2022h). Moving forward, I am interested in harnessing digital literature and its associated social networking to motivate reluctant students (Lysaught, 2022a) as part of my Year 7 Wide Reading Program.

 

 

747 words.

Reference list:

Allan, C. (2017). Digital fiction: ‘Unruly object’ or literary artefact? English in Australia, 52(2), 21-27.

Bell, A. (2016). Interactional metalepsis and unnatural narratology. Narrative, 24(3), 294-310.

Bourchardon, S., & Heckman, D. (2012). Digital manipulability and digital literature. Electronic Book Review.

Hayles, K. (2007). Electronic literature: What is it? https://www.eliterature.org/pad/elp.html

Heckman, D., O’Sullivan, J. (2018). Electronic literature: contexts and poetics. Literary Studies in the Digital Age: An Evolving Anthology.

Jabr, F. (2013, April 11). The reading brain in the digital age: The science of paper versus screens. Scientific American.

Lysaught, D. (2022a, August 13). ETL533 3.2 Exploring digital forms. All you read is love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2022/08/13/etl533-3-2-exploring-digital-forms/

Lysaught, D. (2022b, August 7). ETL533 2.3: Challenges of using digital literature in the classroom. All you read is love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2022/08/07/etl533-2-3-challenges-of-using-digital-literature-in-the-classroom/

Lysaught, D. (2022c, August 28). ETL533 Assessment 2 Part A: Review 1 – Over the Top by The Canadian War Museum (n.d.). All you read is love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2022/08/28/etl533-assessment-2-part-a-review-1-over-the-top-by-the-canadian-war-museum-n-d/

Lysaught, D. (2022d, August 28). ETL533 Assessment 2 Part A: Review 2 – iPoe by iClassics Collection (2012-2015). All you read is love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2022/08/28/etl533-assessment-2-part-a-review-2-ipoe-by-iclassics-collection-2012-2015/

Lysaught, D. (2022e, August 28). ETL533 Assessment 2 Part A: Review 3 – Dracula Daily by Matt Kirkland (2021). All you read is love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2022/08/28/etl533-assessment-2-part-a-review-3-dracula-daily-by-matt-kirkland-2021/

Lysaught, D. (2022f, August 14). ETL533 Evaluating digital literature: Deeper considerations. All you read is love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2022/08/14/etl533-evaluating-digital-literature-deeper-considerations/

Lysaught, D. (2022g, July 19). ETL533 Evaluating digitally reproduced stories. All you read is love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2022/07/19/etl533-1-2-evaluating-digitally-reproduced-stories/

Lysaught, D. (2022h, July 25). ETL533 Assessment 1: Online reflective journal blog task. All you read is love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2022/07/25/etl533-assessment-1-online-reflective-journal-blog-task/

McGeehan, C., Chambers, S., & Nowakowski, J. (2018). Just because it’s digital, doesn’t mean it’s good: Evaluating digital picture books. Journal of Digital Learning in Teacher Education, 34(2), 58-70. https://doi.org/10.1080/21532974.2017.1399488

Mills, K.A., & Levido, A. (2011). iPed: pedagogy for digital text production. The Reading Teacher, 65(1), 80-91.

Sargeant, B. (2015). What is an ebook? What is a book app? And why should we care? An analysis of contemporary digital picture books. Children’s Literature in Education, 46(4), 454-466.

Serafini, F., Kachorsky, D. & Aguilera, E. (2015). Picture books 2.0: Transmedial features across narrative platforms. Journal of Children’s Literature, 41(2), 16-24.

Strickland, S. (n.d.). Born digital. Poetry Foundation. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69224/born-digital

Unsworth, L. (2006). E-literature for children: Enhancing digital literacy learning. Routledge.

Walker, S., Jameson, J., & Ryan, M. (2010). Skills and strategies for e-learning in a participatory culture (Ch. 15). In R. Sharpe, H. Beetham, & S. Freitas (Eds.), Rethinking learning for a digital age: How learners are shaping their own experiences (pp. 212-224). New York, NY: Routledge

Wall, J. (2016). Children’s literature in the digital world: how does multimodality support affective, aesthetic and critical response to narrative? by Alyson Simpson and Maureen Walsh. An extended abstract by June Wall. SCAN 35(3), 34-36.

Walsh, M. (2013). Literature in a digital environment (Ch. 13). In L. McDonald (Ed.), A literature companion for teachers. Marrickville, NSW: Primary English Teaching Association Australia (PETAA).

Wright, D. T. H. (2019, July 10). From Twitterbots to VR: 10 of the best examples of digital literature. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/from-twitterbots-to-vr-10-of-the-best-examples-of-digital-literature-110099

Writerful Books (n.d.). New $10,000 digital literature award. https://writerfulbooks.com/digital-literature-award/

ETL533 Assessment 2 Part A: Review 3 – Dracula Daily by Matt Kirkland (2021).

Dracula Daily (Kirkland, 2021) is an excellent example of a recontextualised or digitised literary text (Lysaught, 2022a). Kirkland has updated Stoker’s original 1897 Dracula for modern readers by recontextualising it as a narrative delivered episodically via a free email subscription. Dracula Daily conforms to many definitions of digitised works (Strickland, n.d.; Hayles, 2007, para.10; Bourchardon & Heckman, 2012, p1; Heckman & O’Sullivan, 2018, para.4), since Stoker’s original was conceived for the print medium. It might also be designated as a ‘paper-under-glass’ text (Allan, 2017, p.22). However, Kirkland’s recontextualisation cleverly utilises many features of the digital environment to enhance readers’ understanding, which is a key consideration when evaluating digital literature (Lysaught, 2022b) and not unique to ‘born digital’ texts.

Firstly, the novel’s content is largely unchanged, but Kirkland enhances the original’s epistolary form by delivering the narrative gradually to subscribers’ inboxes on the date each event occurred (Kirkland, 2022, para.1), helping readers build a sense of time. In the original, it feels like the characters speed through the plot. Dracula Daily is delivered in instalments from May to November, allowing readers to gain a sense of just how much time passes. This also builds on the original’s suspense – a key element of the Gothic genre, since readers must await the next instalment instead of reading ahead. Although this chronological delivery loses some of the original’s dramatic irony, footnotes in misordered entries remind readers of key plot points while the reader’s anticipation of the next portion emulates the characters’ anticipation as they put together the clues about Dracula. While not technically an interactive feature – an element important to digital literature (Lysaught, 2022b) – this digitised recontextualisation allows readers to form a closer vicarious connection to the characters and events than the original. 

Secondly, innovative use of email technology evokes the optimistic modernity present in Stoker’s novel. One of the key tensions in the original is the dichotomy between the modern and the traditional. By updating Stoker’s printed text to a digital environment, Kirkland has recaptured the sense of technological innovation that Mina, Jonathan and the others champion through their use of now-outdated communicative developments such as short-hand, phonographs, typewriters, and telegraphs.

Finally, Kirkland’s daily delivery and recontextualisation of Dracula in a digital format allows the expansion of the novel into other adjacent digital spaces. Towndrow and Kogut (2020, p.14, 148) argue that “digital storytelling is fundamentally an active social process” while Leu et al. (2011, p.6-8) posit that collaborative, social practices are one key difference between online and offline reading experiences. Likewise, Valenza and Stephens (2012, p.75-77) assert the relationship between author, reader, and text is evolving alongside the reading experience due to the rise of socially connected digital communities; Skaines agrees (2010, p.96, 102). Dracula Daily is popular on social media sites such as Twitter and Tumblr, with discussions expanding into new digital spaces and offering readers opportunities to connect with the text and other readers in ways Stoker could never have imagined. Stepanic (2022, p.2) notes Dracula Daily’s social media popularity taps into modern snark and meme culture. In an age of on-demand entertainment consumption, Dracula Daily harkens back to the days of ‘appointment viewing’ and allows for a flourishing “ecosystem” (Stepanic, 2022, p.2) of online content to develop, further enhancing readers’ engagement and interaction with the text in new contexts. It also democratises Stoker’s classic text, opening it up for interpretation and engagement with new audiences on new platforms.

Discussions about Dracula Daily on Twitter reveals that digital texts can move into adjacent digital spaces to enhance reader connectivity.

Likewise, Dracula Daily’s popularity on Tumblr democratises the original novel in digital spaces and keeps it relevant for modern audiences.

Dracula Daily reveals the potential for digital texts to move into adjacent online spaces and foster connection between readers and other texts, as seen through this meme.

However, this expansion into adjacent online spaces raises further questions around how we define and categorise digital texts. While I categorise Dracula Daily as a recontextualised or digitised literary text due to Kirkland’s transformation of the printed original to a digital environment, Kitson defines electronically augmented texts as ones where online resources expand opportunities for commentary, interpretation, and engagement  (2017, p.59). Dracula Daily could arguably be an electronically augmented text, highlighting the difficulty around defining nebulous digital literature. 

This text is certainly not without criticism. The email format and associated substack archive of past episodes is difficult to navigate, lacking the ability to move easily between posts. Kirkland’s digital reworking of Stoker’s original removes many peritextual elements which enhanced verisimilitude, such as the note explaining that all documents were truthful reflections of actual events. However, new peritextual features are added; each episode features funny captions which encourage the cynical, irreverent tone of the aforementioned online discussions and maintain the narrative’s relevance for modern audiences. 

The substack archive with its snarky, humorous subheading summaries of each episode’s content taps into modern attitudes towards reading.

Dracula Daily could potentially use more features offered by its new digital format, such as interactive maps, images, and sounds which could further enhance readers’ engagement and understanding. However, anecdotal discussions with students in my Year 11 English Extension class reveal it’s an engaging way to explore the original; recently I’ve enjoyed having my students run up excitedly to discuss the latest instalment. Dracula Daily could be a meaningful resource to study alongside Stoker’s Dracula, and can inspire similar recontextualisations with other texts as a learning activity to explore how we value literature and how responses to texts change over time.

 

 

814 words.

Reference list:

Allan, C. (2017). Digital fiction: ‘Unruly object’ or literary artefact? English in Australia, 52(2), 21-27.

Bourchardon, S., & Heckman, D. (2012). Digital manipulability and digital literature. Electronic Book Review.

Hayles, K. (2007). Electronic literature: What is it? https://www.eliterature.org/pad/elp.html

Heckman, D., O’Sullivan, J. (2018). Electronic literature: contexts and poetics. Literary Studies in the Digital Age: An Evolving Anthology.

Kirkland, M. (2021). Archive. Dracula Daily. https://draculadaily.substack.com/archive

Kirkland, M. (2022). About. Dracula Daily. https://draculadaily.substack.com/about

Kitson, L. (2017). Exploring opportunities for literary literacy with e-literature: To infinity and beyond. Australian Literacy Educators’ Association. Literacy Learning, 23(2), 58-68.

Leu, D. J. et al (2011). The new literacies of online reading comprehension: Expanding the literacy and learning curriculum. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 55(1), 5-14.

Lysaught, D. (2022a, August 7). ETL533 2.3: Challenges of using digital literature in the classroom. All You Read Is Love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2022/08/07/etl533-2-3-challenges-of-using-digital-literature-in-the-classroom/

Lysaught, D. (2022b, August 14). ETL533 Evaluating digital literature: Deeper considerations. All You Read Is Love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2022/08/14/etl533-evaluating-digital-literature-deeper-considerations/

Skaines, R. L. (2010). The shifting author-reader dynamic: online novel communities as a bridge from print to digital literature. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 16(1), 95–111.

Stepanic, S. (2022, May 20). ‘Dracula Daily’ reanimates the classic vampire novel for the age of memes and snark. The Conversation.

Strickland, S. (n.d.). Born digital. Poetry Foundation. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69224/born-digital

Towndrow, P. A., & Kogut, G. (2020). Digital storytelling for educative purposes: providing an evidence-base for classroom practice. Studies in Singapore Education: Research Innovation & Practice 1. Singapore: Springer.

Valenza, J. K., & Stephens, W. (2012). Reading remixed. Educational Leadership, 69(6), 75-78.

ETL533 Assessment 2 Part A: Review 2 – iPoe by iClassics Collection (2012-2015).

iPoe by iClassics Collection is a wonderful example of the second category of digital text defined by both Unsworth and Allan (Lysaught, 2022): an enhanced app or electronically augmented text. 

Published across three volumes between 2012-2015 for Apple and Android devices, iPoe is a creative augmentation of several Edgar Allan Poe texts alongside contextual information and details about the app designing process. Each volume recontextualises Poe’s original texts alongside interactive illustrations, music, and sound effects which effectively utilise the multimodal and interactive potential of digital environments to enhance the reader’s experience and understanding. This resource would suit our Year 8 unit on suspenseful stories, therefore I’ll focus on two texts relevant to this unit: The Tell-Tale Heart (vol.1) and The Raven (vol.2).

Unsworth defines electronically augmented literary texts as those which take traditionally published print texts and augment them with digital resources to “enhance and extend” the original (2006, p.2). This can be through the addition of digital features such as interactivity and multimodality (Walsh, 2013, p.187) or supplementary digital resources designed to extend commentary, discussion, and interpretation of the text (Kitson, 2017, p.59). Arguably, iPoe features both. Allan (2017, p.22) defines narrative apps as digital, interactive remediations of print narratives – a category into which iPoe seems to fit nicely. However, as with my other reviews (Lysaught, 2022), looking at iPoe from different angles raises questions regarding definition and categorisation of digital texts. Much like the paradoxical ‘ship of Theseus’, I wonder how much has to be changed before it is considered a new, ‘born digital’ text in its own right, since the combination of iPoe’s multimodal and supplementary features greatly enhanced my experience of Poe’s stories, especially through the app’s original artwork and soundtrack. Furthermore, iPoe could fit Unsworth’s sub-category of a linear e-narrative digitally originating text (2006, p.3-4), since it presents an illustrated traditional, linear narrative on screen. Clearly defining digital literature is not so clear!

The interactive multimodal features of iPoe are testament to the transformative potential of literature in digital environments. The iClassics website claims 85 minutes of original soundtrack by Teo Grimalt and Miquel Tejada, 185 sound effects and 95 original interactive illustrations by David G. Forés (iClassics Productions, 2018a, 2018b, 2018c) – reflecting that ‘authorship’ in digital contexts is often shared (Bowler et al., 2012, p.43). 

In The Raven, readers can touch the titular bird to hear it croak ‘Nevermore’, while their understanding of Gothic metonymy and atmosphere is enhanced through other sound effects such the knocking on the door, the fire’s crackling, the hinges creaking, and the wind’s howling. In one dramatic moment, touching the raven led to a shift in camera focus to the ponderous protagonist, while in another readers are invited to touch Lenore’s portrait; the subsequent cracking glass emphasised the protagonist’s fracturing mental state. Likewise, the penultimate image of the protagonist wavering alongside Lenore’s ephemeral ghost was a brilliant representation of grief.

Readers are invited to touch the characters, resulting in a perspective shift.

The ‘camera’ focus shifts to the ponderous protagonist.

Readers are invited to touch the photograph, with the ensuing cracking of the glass acting as an effective visual symbol of the protagonist’s fracturing state of mind.

The protagonist beseeches the reader, inviting their interaction…

… only to be reminded that he is forever haunted by Lenore’s ephemeral ghost.

These multimodal features similarly enhanced my experience reading The Tell-Tale Heart. The old man’s eye shifted into a vulture’s, supplementing the written text with the visuals. The interactive image of the old man, shivering under the reader’s watchful gaze, accentuated his fragility and aligned the reader with the protagonist’s perspective, as did the dark page where text could only be partially illuminated by moving the reader’s finger. The masterful soundtrack underscored the climactic moment of murder through its overwhelming crescendo and fading heartbeat. I experienced genuine discomfort as I watched a dolly zoom of the protagonist murdering the old man before literally turning his gaze to me. The protagonist’s increasing paranoia was stressed with visuals and associated sound effects, particularly when I was invited to touch a close-up of his panicked eyes. His final admission of guilt was brought to life through these multimodal elements – when readers touch the still-beating heart, bloody fingerprints appear on the page.

In this point of view shot, readers assume the position of the insane protagonist as he silently watches the fearful old man.

Readers are encouraged to run their finger over the screen, illuminating the text like the protagonist’s lamp illuminates the room.

The reader’s finger falls upon the old man’s ‘vulture’ eye – much like the protagonist’s lamp, emphasising the horror.

The reader watches as the protagonist murders the struggling old man …

… only to have the protagonist’s murderous gaze fall upon the reader!

Bloody fingerprints follow the protagonist’s confession.

Interactive, multimodal elements are supported by mobile features such as gyro-perspective, flash, and vibration ((iClassics Productions, 2018a, 2018b, 2018c), though I didn’t notice these to any great extent. Also, while some multimodal elements greatly enhanced my reading experience, others were distracting, such as the initial photo and the dismembered corpse in The Tell-Tale Heart. However, the contextual information amplified my understanding of Poe’s life, times, and works (James & Kock, 2013), p.108). 

However, logistical issues around cost, access, and other required technology should also be considered when evaluating digital texts for school libraries (Lysaught, 2022a). The app bundle cost $8.99 on the Apple Store, expensive to replicate on 1:1 devices. Aural elements required additional headphones and were fiddly, while constant review pop-ups interrupted immersion. Also, I couldn’t adjust the font size or define unknown words –  favoured features of digitised texts. Overall, I greatly enjoyed iPoe since it effectively utilised the multimodal and interactive potential of the digital format to enhance my understanding and engagement, especially compared with other gimmicky narrative apps such as Alice for the iPad (Lysaught, 2022b).

 

 

821 words.

Reference list:

Allan, C. (2017). Digital fiction: ‘Unruly object’ or literary artefact? English in Australia, 52(2), 21-27.

Bowler, L., Morris, R., Cheng, I-L., Al-Issa, R., Romine, B., & Leiberling, L. (2012). Multimodal stories: LIS students explore reading, literacy, and library service through the lens of “The 39 Clues”. Journal of Education for Library and Information Science, 53(1), 32-48.

iClassics Productions (2018a). Deliciously dark, devilishly fun. http://iclassicscollection.com/en/project/ipoe1/

iClassics Productions (2018b). Ravings of love & death. http://iclassicscollection.com/en/project/ipoe2/

iClassics Productions (2018c). The master of macabre returns. http://iclassicscollection.com/en/project/ipoe3/

James, R. & de Kock, L. (2013). The digital David and the Gutenberg Goliath: The rise of the enhanced e-book. English Academy Review: Southern African Journal of English Studies, 30(1), 107-123.

Kitson, L. (2017). Exploring opportunities for literary literacy with e-literature: To infinity and beyond. Australian Literacy Educators’ Association. Literacy Learning, 23(2), 58-68.

Lysaught, D. (2022a, August 14). ETL533 Evaluating Digital Literature: Deeper Considerations. All you read is love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2022/08/14/etl533-evaluating-digital-literature-deeper-considerations/

Lysaught, D. (2022b, August 13). ETL533 3.2: Exploring Digital Forms. All you read is love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2022/08/13/etl533-3-2-exploring-digital-forms/

Unsworth, L. (2006). E-literature for children: Enhancing digital literacy learning. Routledge.

Walsh, M. (2013). Literature in a digital environment (Ch. 13). In L. McDonald (Ed.), A literature companion for teachers. Marrickville, NSW: Primary English Teaching Association Australia (PETAA).

ETL533 Assessment 2 Part A: Review 1 – Over the Top by The Canadian War Museum (n.d.)

Unsworth’s (2006, p.2-3) and Allan’s (2017, p.22-23) three main categories of digital texts provided me with a structural framework for this assessment. As such, each review will focus on one format of digital literature:

  1. A recontextualised or digitised literary text
  2. An enhanced app or electronically augmented text
  3. A ‘born digital’ text.

Over The Top by the Canadian War Museum is a fine example of the third category. This digitally originating narrative updates the choose-your-own-adventure format, allowing readers to electronically explore life in World War I trenches. Multimodal moving visuals and sound effects support readers’ understanding of the 1916 Battle of the Somme, as do interactive choices leading to a variety of possible outcomes and emphasising the difficult decisions faced by soldiers. Based on eyewitness historical accounts, Over The Top successfully utilises digital features to teach students about conditions in WWI while simultaneously developing their empathy and literacy skills. 

‘Born digital’ texts are created for and on digital devices and mix different systems and media to make meaning for their audience (Di Rosario, n.d., 1:10-1:59; Hayles, 2007, para.10; Kitson, 2017, p.59): “if it could possibly be printed out, it isn’t e-lit” (Strickland, n.d., para.3). Over The Top is a browser-based interactive narrative which cannot be printed, thus fitting the definition of a ‘born digital’ text. Unsworth further subdivides digitally originating texts (2006, p.3-4), and Over The Top’s features potentially fall into his hypermedia narrative sub-category due to its combination of hyperlinks, text, and images. However, its prominent interactivity raises questions about the distinction between digital literature and games (Strickland, n.d., para.4, 8; Sargeant, 2015, p.461-463; Kitson, 2017, p.59, 66). Hayles notes that in games users interpret in order to configure while digital narratives allow the user to configure in order to interpret  (2007, para.16); as such, Over The Top is not a game. As with the other three texts examined for this task (Lysaught, 2022), attempts to categorise Over The Top reveal that defining digital literature is no easy task.

Lambert (2012, p.37-38) notes that a key component of the Center for Digital Storyteling’s definition of digital stories is reader participation and ownership of a text. Over The Top successfully utilises what I consider the three core elements of digital literature – mutlimodality, interactivity, and connectivity (Lysaught, 2022) – to ensure active participation in the text’s construction. It begins with the option to enter the reader’s name alongside a friend’s name; this personalisation creates immediate connection between reader and text, allowing for stronger vicarious engagement with the narrative’s content.

Over The Top invites personalisation and immersive interactivity

This vicarious engagement is furthered by the use of second person ‘you’, a common feature of traditional choose-your-own-adventure narratives (Morse, 2019, para.9-16). An optional narrator’s voice-over reads the written text to the audience, supporting a wide range of literacy ability levels. Moving images are supplemented by sound effects such as the wind and explosions to further enhance engagement and understanding. Hyperlinks encourage readers to define unfamiliar words such as ‘dugout’ or ‘duck-board’, developing their understanding of historical metalanguage. Walsh (2013, p.187) notes that non-linear story progression is a feature made possible in digital environments; navigation between pages in Over The Top is easy, as readers can click arrows to advance the story or move backwards, while multiple possible endings expand on traditional linear narrative structures. If the reader’s ‘character’ dies, they are invited to replay and explore the outcomes of different choices, promoting multiple read-throughs and supporting what Bell calls interactional media-specific metalepsis wherein multiple reading paths encourage multiple analytical perspectives by the reader, leading to their immersion in narrative content and new interpretations in new contexts (2016, p.295-6). This non-linear reading behaviour taps into trends regarding engagement with texts in digital environments, as both Cull (2011, para.58) and Liu (2005, p.707) note that non-linear reading has increased and is affecting the way readers understand and interact with digital texts. 

Readers are presented with multimodal image, sound, and text to support their understanding.

Readers must choose to progress the story, inviting interactional media-specific metalepsis which promotes immersion.

The outcome of choice 1: the reader lives and continues to progress with the story.

Strong textual features supported by visuals and sound elements enhance immersion.

Readers are invited to replay.

Logistically, this is an easy to access, free resource that is suitable for a variety of literacy abilities. It is supported by teacher notes and, despite its focus on the Canadian experience, has strong links to the current NSW History Stage 5 topic Australians at War (WWI), while its excellent literary qualities support use in English classrooms. Teachers would need to have access to a bank of laptop or desktop devices to utilise this resource in the classroom and would find it a useful digital narrative to use in conjunction with other historical sources. 

 

 

732 words.

Reference List:

Allan, C. (2017). Digital fiction: ‘Unruly object’ or literary artefact? English in Australia, 52(2), 21-27.

Bell, A. (2016). Interactional metalepsis and unnatural narratology. Narrative, 24(3), 294-310.

Canadian War Museum (n.d.). Over the top. https://www.warmuseum.ca/overthetop/

Cull, B. W. (2011). Reading revolutions: online digital text and implications for reading in academe. First Monday, 16(6). http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3340/2985

Di Rosario, G. (n.d.). Are pixels the future of literature? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CAaoWcknvM

Hayles, K. (2007). Electronic literature: what is it? https://www.eliterature.org/pad/elp.html

Kitson, L. (2017). Exploring opportunities for literary literacy with e-literature: To infinity and beyond. Australian Literacy Educators’ Association. Literacy Learning, 23(2), 58-68.

Lambert, J. (2012). Digital storytelling: capturing lives, creating community. Routledge.

Liu, Z. (2005). Reading behavior in the digital environment: Changes in reading behavior over the past ten years. Journal of Documentation, 61(6), 700-712.

Lysaught, D. (2022). ???. All you read is love.

Morse, L. (2019, November 30). How to write a choose-your-own-adventure story: all protagonist POV, all the time. Medium.
https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-write-a-choose-your-own-adventure-story-9d353fa84ce4

Sargeant, B. (2015). What is an ebook? What is a book app? And why should we care? An analysis of contemporary digital picture books. Children’s Literature in Education, 46(4), 454-466.

Strickland, S. (n.d.). Born digital. Poetry Foundation. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69224/born-digital

Unsworth, L. (2006). E-literature for children: Enhancing digital literacy learning. Routledge.

Walsh, M. (2013). Literature in a digital environment (Ch. 13). In L. McDonald (Ed.), A literature companion for teachers. Marrickville, NSW: Primary English Teaching Association Australia (PETAA).

ETL533 Evaluating Digital Literature: Deeper Considerations

As I’m preparing to review my three chosen digital literature texts for Assessment 2, I thought it would be a beneficial exercise to reconsider how to evaluate digital literature in light of my developing understandings and ongoing research. 

So, what makes a good digital literature text?

To answer this question, I’ve examined some of the judging criteria for digital literary awards. Here’s a run-down of some of my findings:

  • Woollahra Municipal Council (n.d.) states that winners of its Digital Innovation category should be works “where digital technology is used in an innovative way to enhance written storytelling” and which “seamlessly integrate digital elements in the story in a new and dynamic way to generate mood, tone and genre.”
    • In the Judges Comments, one of the judges of the 2021 winner wrote: “the innovative elements included with the story aided my appreciation and enjoyment of the work. The idea that new digital technologies can be employed by writers presents them with a new balancing act. How do they introduce the right digital enhancements, ones that aid the reading experience, that support and expand the experience of imagining or understanding a story? […] The innovative aspects were relevant and exciting and seamlessly part of the story.” 
  • In their report on the 2016/2017 Queensland University of Technology Digital Literature Award, Writerful Books (n.d.) stated that “Works that demonstrate innovation and creativity in storytelling, combined use of media or interactive features will be highly regarded.” 
  • The Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC, n.d.) listed the following evaluation criteria for their Excellence in Early Learning Digital Media Award:
    • Effective utilization of selected platform(s)
    • Meets high aesthetic and technical standards
    • The skills required to navigate the media should be appropriate and suitably challenging for the intended audience
    • Facilitates active and creative use by children ages 2-8 in exemplary ways
    • Respects the early learning audience’s intelligence and imagination by offering a  rich and diverse experience
    • Allows for meaningful joint media engagement, co-viewing, shared play  experiences and/or guided play
    • Media reflects/embodies its stated mission and purpose
  • While the Electronic Literature Organization (2001) outlined the following criteria for its 2001 award: 
    • Innovative use of electronic techniques and enhancements.
    • Literary quality, understood as being related to print and electronic traditions of fiction and poetry, respectively.
    • Quality and accessibility of interface design.
    • Collections will be accepted if they are intended to be read holistically as a single work.

Conclusions:

This list is certainly not exhaustive, but I feel that they’ve helped me deepen my understanding of how to evaluate quality digital literature. The comments above support the idea that good digital literature includes texts where:

  • The form supports the function. Innovation should not be used in a gimmicky way; the digital format’s multimodality, interactivity and potential for further connection (to further information or other readers) should support the responder in understanding the key ideas of the text.
  • Responders are positioned not just as passive receivers of information, but as active participants in content and knowledge construction through the use of interactive, immersive and/or socially connected features.
  • Navigation is appropriate to the texts’ function and the abilities of the responder.

The transmedial features examined in Serafini et. al. (2015) also provide a useful framework for evaluating the multimodal aspects of digital literature:

  • Visual images
  • Sound effects, music, voice
  • Textual elements
  • Paratextual and peritextual elements
  • Navigational elements
  • Transitions

I would also argue that traditional concepts of quality literature (discussed previously) such as “superior or lasting artistic merit” or “high and lasting artistic value” still apply.

Likewise, in a school library digital literature resources can still be evaluated against selection criteria for traditional print texts which consider the resource’s relevance and suitability for a school’s learning community (discussed here and here):

  • Does the resource meet the needs and interests of students, staff and/or parents?
  • Does the resource have curriculum links? Can it be incorporated as a literary learning strategy?
  • Is the content of the resource appropriate to the developmental and ability levels of users?

Finally, I believe that logistics must also be considered when considering the use of digital literature resources in the context of a school library:

  • Cost
  • Storage
  • Access
  • Other required technology e.g. iPads, software downloads, headphones
  • Cataloguing and collection management
  • Data and privacy issues

 

 

 

Association for Library Service to Children [ALSC] (n.d.). Welcome to the Excellence in Early Learning Digital Media Award home page. https://www.ala.org/alsc/awardsgrants/bookmedia/EELDM

Electronic Literature Organization (2001). Judging criteria.

Serafini, F., Kachorsky, D. & Aguilera, E. (2015). Picture books 2.0: Transmedial features across narrative platforms. Journal of Children’s Literature, 41(2), 16-24.

Woollahra Municipal Council (n.d.). Woollahra Digital Literary Award. https://www.woollahra.nsw.gov.au/news/articles/newly-expanded-woollahra-digital-literary-award-calling-for-entries

Woollahra Municipal Council (n.d.). Past winners of the Woollahra Digital Literary Award: 2021 Winners. https://www.woollahra.nsw.gov.au/library/whats_on/digital_literary_award/past_winners

Writerful Books (n.d.). New $10,000 digital literature award. https://writerfulbooks.com/digital-literature-award/

ETL533 3.2: Exploring Digital Forms

Explore innovative digital literature sites. What did you enjoy most? How could you incorporate social networking sites for literature organisation and access, such as Inside a Dog, GoodReads or LibraryThing into your practice?

 

This week I explored a few of the immersive multimedia journalism resources such as K’gari and My Grandmother’s Lingo, and thought that they could be an interesting way to engage students with non-fiction texts and current affairs (typically perceived as ‘boring’ by many teens). I personally found that the multimodal, immersive nature of these resources helped me remember the key points and allowed me to connect the information in the articles to my prior knowledge and experiences very effectively.

I also looked into Beowulf in 100 Tweets, which I thought was a fantastic resource that I could easily incorporate into my Year 11 English Extension program where we look at the relationship between texts, cultures and values. I think that my students would respond well to a similar learning activity where they could take one of the texts we study and recontextualise it as a tweet or social media post to explore the ways that context affects response over time. Beowulf in 100 Tweets also linked really nicely to one that my students showed me this week: Dracula Daily, where the epistolary form of the original novel is harnessed by networking technologies such as email, Tumblr and Twitter. While anecdotal, the conversations in my classroom suggest that these types of recontextualised literary texts can be powerful and engaging learning tools.

There were some resources that I enjoyed less, however. War Horse (the app for the iPad) had a timeline along with some interesting links, videos, and interviews to help readers understand the context, but the text itself was just a digitised version of the print novel (with an accompanying audio version). I didn’t feel that this app utilised the immersive, interactive possibilities afforded by the format to enhance reader experience or support the function of the text as effectively as it could have. Likewise, Alice for the iPad seemed rather gimmicky and its ‘interactive’ elements were distracting rather than elevating my understanding and enjoyment.

I like the idea of incorporating social networking sites into my practice, since it expands my students’ sense of connection to the world of the text and allows them to feel a sense of belonging with other readers. I personally have experimented with tracking my reading journey this year via Instagram, GoodReads and The Storygraph App. While I like the way these resources use my data to help me reflect on my reading preferences and connect me with similar books and readers, I am concerned about the privacy implications of encouraging their use in my classrooms by my students, though it would be a great opportunity to discuss digital citizenship. They also take a lot of time to keep up to date, and you can see from my Instagram experiment that it has fallen by the wayside.

ETL533 2.3: Challenges of using digital literature in the classroom

There is an enormous difference between facility with technology and being able to engage with the content of digital literature as a consumer or a creator. What are some ways (small or large) you could alter your pedagogy to ensure technology and digital literature is embedded in your educational practices?

In this week’s readings I liked the distinction made by Allan (2017) between the different types of digital fiction:

1. eBooks or “paper-under-glass” texts;

2. Narrative or enhanced apps; and

3. “Born digital” multimodal narratives.

This distinction fit nicely with Unsworth’s classifications (via Walsh, 2013) from the Module 1 readings, where he identified three main categories of e-literature:

1. Recontextualised literary texts;

2. Electronically augmented literary texts; and

3. Digitally originated texts.

This also links with previous discussions I’ve read about what counts as digital literature, which emphasise the difference between “the digitised and digital literature” (for more on this, please feel free to check out my blog post).

In our school we have a virtual library with eBooks and audiobooks that our students, staff and parents can engage with, but it’s an expensive subscription (last year’s invoice was over $3000 – more than a third of our yearly budget!) with logistical issues around promotion and access. It also falls into the digitised, ‘paper-under-glass’ or ‘recontextualised literary texts’ category where technology facilitates access rather than exists as an innovative and inherent aspect of the texts. While it was a useful resource during last year’s lockdowns, data suggests that average use each month is down on last year’s figures. This year our school removed the DEAR (Drop Everything and Read) program, so I’ve been trialing a Wide Reading Program with a few Year 7 classes (initially 4, now dropped back to 2). Given Foley’s (2012) findings about student engagement with ebooks, it might be worthwhile creating activities for the Wide Reading Program which target and promote our virtual library.

One of the texts I’ve been investigating for the second assessment is the iPoe app by iClassics Collection. From my engagement with this app so far, it appears to fall under the ‘enhanced app’ or ‘electronically augmented literary text’ categories outlined above. I chose this because a) Poe is awesome fun and b) we have a Year 8 unit on suspenseful stories that this would work well with. I had a great time exploring this app and playing with its features, designed to immerse the reader with the texts’ Gothic emotions, settings, and atmosphere. I think this is a resource that could work really well with our Year 8 unit, though it cost $8.99 for all three volumes/apps, therefore presenting a financial and logistical issue for faculties with tight budgets.

This week I also had a little play with Microsoft Sway, in an attempt to create my own ‘born digital’ narrative in preparation for the final assessment. One of my projects this year has been to build up the Student Media Team I introduced to the school last year, and Microsoft Sway was one of the tools we were investigating for our student-designed newsletter. While it has many useful features and is (mostly) user-friendly, one issue I found while playing with it is that this tool lacks the ability to link to content within the Sway, and thus might not work for my intended ‘choose your own adventure’ style narrative. However, this investigation did remind me that for larger projects teachers might have, it takes time to find the right tools with the right features for their vision. While wonderful guides exist (such as http://www.schrockguide.net/bloomin-apps.html and https://instructionaldesignbykelly.wordpress.com/2016/03/01/the-evolution-of-blooms-taxonomy-and-how-it-applies-to-teachers-today/ from this week’s readings) these take time to investigate and, given the current educational climate, this is time that many teachers simply cannot spare. This is where an innovative, technologically current teacher-librarian could be an invaluable resource for time-poor teachers!

 

 

Allan, C. (2017). Digital fiction: ‘Unruly object’ or literary artefact? English in Australia, 52(2), 21-27.

Foley, C. (2012). Ebooks for leisure and learning. Scan, 31, pp. 6-14.

Walsh, M. (2013). Literature in a digital environment (Ch. 13). In L. McDonald (Ed.), A literature companion for teachers. Marrickville, NSW: Primary English Teaching Association Australia (PETAA).

ETL533 2.2: Digital Learning Frameworks

For my own future purposes, I thought it would be a good idea to create a summary of various frameworks designed to help educators incorporate technology into their practice.

Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy is familiar to many teachers, and has been updated for digital environments:

Kelly (2016).

 

Another way of looking at Bloom’s Taxonomy in the digital world is provided by Schrock, who adjusts the conceptual stages so that they all feed into the higher-order tasks surrounding the creation of new content:

 

Schrock (n.d.).

 

Schrock also compares their view of the updated Bloom’s Taxonomy to the SAMR model:

Schrock (n.d.).

The T3 Framework identifies three stages of digital learning:

  1. Translational = focus on automation, consumption of digital knowledge
  2. Transformational = focus on production and contribution of digital knowledge
  3. Transcendent = focus on inquiry design and social entrepreneurship

 

 

Finally, there is the TPACK model, which “attempts to identify the nature of knowledge required by teachers for technology integration in their teaching, while addressing the complex, multifaceted and situated nature of teacher knowledge”:

http://tpack.org

 

 

 

Kelly (2016 March 1). The evolution of Bloom’s Taxonomy. https://instructionaldesignbykelly.wordpress.com/2016/03/01/the-evolution-of-blooms-taxonomy-and-how-it-applies-to-teachers-today/

Schrock, K. (n.d.). Bloomin’ apps. Retrieved from http://www.schrockguide.net/bloomin-apps.html

tpack.org

ETL533 2.1: Literature in the classroom

Think about your own journey as an educator – what has changed in your teaching practice over the course of your career with regards to technology use and literature? Is that change embedded at a core level, or is it a matter of changing tools?

As I completed the readings for this topic, I was struck by how many of the websites, tools or apps discussed by the authors are now superseded or simply unavailable. Adobe Flash, for instance, was an interesting tool with potential that is no longer supported, causing many of my early teaching resources to be redundant. 

We’ve also moved from the 1:1 device arrangement made possible by the Digital Education Revolution funding to banks of devices which consist of outdated and slow technology to be shared among classes. At the start of my career in 2011 we were excited by the possibility of these 1:1 devices which, although not without their own challenges (such as student distraction and technical difficulties), allowed teachers to broaden their lessons beyond the traditional written page. We spent a lot of time reconfiguring our teaching and learning programs, only for the device roll-out to be discontinued. Due to the simultaneous release of the new Australian Curriculum (and several successive new syllabi) we never had the time to revisit our programs in the depth required to do these new circumstances and changing technological landscape justice. 

While we are constantly encouraged to utilise technology to engage our students, in my experience there is still little training, time, and support for staff to do so. I feel like we’re constantly playing catch-up, and as a result I feel that we often neglect fundamental aspects of digital literacy. One of our Deputies recently purchased two class sets of iPads that can be booked via the library and shared amongst students. He has also organised for one of our Year 7 classes to be a ‘Tech Elect’ class which focuses on the use of technology (especially student-owned 1:1 iPads) as a tool for learning across all subjects. This is definitely an exciting development which has the potential to be beneficial for our students and teaching staff. However, the incorporation of these devices has not been without significant logistical and pedagogical challenges, and excludes students without the financial ability and technological understanding required to participate. Our students often lack the fundamentals of traditional literacy needed as a foundation for exploring digital texts (Leu et. al., 2011; Combes, 2016), and despite their status as ‘digital natives’ often don’t have the ability or knowledge to navigate these rapidly evolving digital spaces effectively; sadly, as teachers, we often lack these skills too.

 

Combes, B. (2016). Digital literacy: A new flavour of literacy or something different?Synergy, 14(1). Retrieved from https://www.slav.vic.edu.au/index.php/Synergy/article/view/v14120163

Leu, D. J. et al (2011). The new literacies of online reading comprehension: Expanding the literacy and learning curriculum. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 55(1), 5-14. Doi: 10.1598/JAAL.55.1.1

ETL533 Assessment 1: Online Reflective Journal Blog Task

Using your readings and interaction with the subject to date, develop a statement about your current knowledge and understanding of concepts and practices in digital literature environments, tools and uses, within the context of your work or professional circumstances.

As I start ETL533, I’m already struck by its relevance to my experiences as a secondary English teacher. Digital literature is exciting and full of potential, but also fraught with uncertainty due to its complexity and relative obscurity when contrasted with the traditional literary forms familiar to classroom teachers. 

Even understanding the definition of digital literature is more complex than it first appears. Rowland (2021, para.2) notes that digital literature is difficult to determine, while Heckman and O’Sullivan state that it is “ambiguous because it is amorphous” (2018, para.1), evolving as new technologies, forms, and uses emerge. Hayles defines electronic literature as “digital born” (2007, para.10), while the Electronic Literature Organization states it combines literary elements alongside computer technology (Rowland, 2021, para.2) – though this seems outdated, since computers aren’t the only (or even the most popular) tool used to create and access digital resources. I personally like Groth’s focus on digital literature showcasing innovation and creativity via technology (Groth, via Rowland, 2021, para.3). However, users should be aware of the distinction between “the digitised and digital literature” (Heckman & O’Sullivan, 2018, para.4), with traditional printed texts which have been digitised (e.g. eBooks) often not making the cut as digital literature (Wright, 2019, para.2).

Part of the difficulty in defining digital literature is that understandings of traditional literature are also hotly debated (Krystal, 2014, para.1). When exploring this concept with my English Extension students, I often show them a variety of different definitions:

Screenshot from my introductory “Texts, Culture and Values” PowerPoint

We have great fun discussing what counts as “lasting artistic merit” and whose values are evident in the judgment of texts as “beautiful” or “excellent”. I imagine many traditional defenders of the Western Literary Canon would find it difficult to accept that digital literature meets these criteria, despite their potential as tools to engage and extend students in our classrooms (Wall, 2016, p.35). Yet these preconceived notions of what constitutes ‘literature’ also extend to our students. Hayles argues that readers approach texts with expectations formed by their knowledge of print works, and “electronic literature tests the boundaries of the literary and challenges us to re-think our assumptions of what literature can do and be” (2007, para.11). Clearly, the emergence of digital literature requires a paradigm shift as we expand our understanding of literature to include new forms reliant on new technologies and literacies. 

Yet where do we draw the line? If wordless picture books can count as literature, then why not immersive games with textual elements, such as The Witcher 3 or Horizon: Zero Dawn? Hayles notes that the line is far from clear, but perhaps depends on the ways users configure or interpret texts: “with games the user interprets in order to configure, whereas in works whose primary interest is narrative, the user configures in order to interpret” (2007, para.16).

The Witcher 3 allows players to explore and read in-game books – often with cheeky intertextual nods to pop culture. But is it digital literature?

Another challenge in pinning down digital literature emerges from the plethora of potential forms such storytelling can take. In addition to those listed previously (Lysaught, 2022, para.2-5), Rowland (2021) discusses four types of digital literature:

  1. Twitterature
  2. Hypertext
  3. Generators
  4. Video poetry

Several of my Year 10 students have recently raved about Markiplier, who uses YouTube to create exciting, interactive choose-your-own-adventure style narratives. 

As my students’ obsession reveals, digital storytelling can be a powerful way of engaging today’s students.

 

Words: 550

 

Reference list:

Hayles, K. (2007). Electronic literature: What is it? https://www.eliterature.org/pad/elp.html

Heckman, D., O’Sullivan, J. (2018). Electronic literature: Contexts and poetics. Literary Studies in the Digital Age: An Evolving Anthology. https://dlsanthology.mla.hcommons.org/electronic-literature-contexts-and-poetics/

Krystal, A. (2014, March). What is literature? In defense of the canon. Harper’s Magazine. https://harpers.org/archive/2014/03/what-is-literature/1/

Rowland, R. (2021, July 8). What is digital literature? Understanding the genre. Book Riot. https://bookriot.com/digital-literature/

Wall, J. (2016). Children’s literature in the digital world: How does multimodality support affective, aesthetic and critical response to narrative? by Alyson Simpson and Maureen Walsh. An extended abstract by June Wall. Scan 35(3), 34-36.

Wright, D. T. H. (2019, July 10). From Twitterbots to VR: 10 of the best examples of digital literature. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/from-twitterbots-to-vr-10-of-the-best-examples-of-digital-literature-110099

ETL533 1.2: Evaluating Digitally Reproduced Stories

After completing the readings from Module 1.2, consider your understanding of ways of evaluating digital narratives in this forum. What are some similarities and differences you identify in the readings? What are the key elements involved in evaluating digital narratives? 

Digital narratives are, simply put, narratives that are told and/or originate in digital forms. Lamb (2011) identified 5 different types of electronic reading environments:

  • ebooks,
  • interactive storybooks,
  • reference databases,
  • hypertext and interactive fiction, and
  • transmedia storytelling.

This contrasts with Unsworth’s three main categories of electronic literature (cited in Walsh, 2013):

  • electronically augmented texts,
  • recontextualised literary texts, and
  • digitally originated texts (including eStories for early readers, linear enarratives, enarratives and interactive story contexts, hyptertext narratives, hypermedia narratives and electronic game narratives).

Clearly, the landscape for digital storytelling is quite complex!

However, Jabr (2013) identified several issues around the different ways we process and remember information on the screen versus on a page, noting that screens drain more of our mental resources and can be more difficult to navigate. Leu et. al. (2015) likewise noted that students’ online reading skills are often limited. McGeehan et. al. (2018) noted that despite the availability of varied, innovative digital features, many publishers fail to use them effectively or use them in ways which deepen conceptual knowledge. I would argue that effective incorporation of digital narratives therefore needs a two-pronged approach, relying on the production of quality, effective digital narratives (an aspect that is often in the hands of publishers) alongside the best-practice utilisation of these resources by teachers. As such, this could be a key area where qualified teacher-librarians could step in to serve their school community by aligning new pedagogies with innovative digital narratives to serve the needs of their students and staff.

When it comes to evaluating what counts as a quality digital narrative, I would argue that many of the criteria for selecting print resources still apply to digital texts: does this resource serve the learning and leisure needs and interests of our school community? However, there are added layers of logistical complexity when considering the incorporation of digital narratives into our school library collections, and teacher-librarians should also consider how they can store, access, and utilise these resources alongside budgetary concerns.

ETL505 Assessment 3 Part C: Genrefication Essay

The literature provides good arguments for arranging primary school library collections by genres. Is this also the case for high school library collections? Choose two of the advantages and disadvantages mentioned in the literature and critically discuss these in relation to arranging a high school library collection by genres.

When deciding to genrefy a high-school library’s collection, teacher-librarians should consider the multiple roles a library performs within a school community, the specific needs of their adolescent users, and which aspects of genrefication (if any) best suit these purposes and user needs. While genrefication has gained popularity amongst practitioners for its ability to increase circulation and promote lifelong reading habits, issues around logistics and lack of standardised organisation remain.

Genrefication is a relatively new topic in information sciences (Outhouse, 2017, p.43). Broadly speaking, genrefication constitutes organising resources by a system other than the traditional Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) (Outhouse, 2017, p.44). Organisation can be based on resources’ formats, literacy levels, subject headings (such as those assigned by SCIS), or literary genres (Wall, 2019, p.11). Genrefication exists on a spectrum, from labelling books in their original DDC location, to separating ‘mini-collections’ in distinct displays, to completely reorganising the layout and position of resources (National Library of New Zealand, n.d., para.33-36; Gray, 2019, p.25; Wall, 2019, p.11). There is also an imbalance in the treatment of fiction and non-fiction collections in genrefication discussions, with greater emphasis on its benefits to fiction collections (Wall, 2019, p.11).

School librarians espouse numerous benefits to genrefying their collections. Increased circulation statistics are cited as one crucial benefit (Gray, 2019, p.18-22). Many practitioners claim that genrefication has made their collections more accessible and more appealing (Davenport, 2017, p.7; Dawson, 2019, p.23; Mathur, 2019, p.6; Wall, 2019, p.14; Davenport, 2021, p.12). Hider (2018, p.24) argues that effective information resource description should help users obtain information, and librarians should therefore understand their users’ specific needs. In high-schools, when student pleasure-reading declines (Dickenson, 2014, p.10), genrefying fiction can be a game-changer. Many teenagers prefer to browse to find interesting and relevant resources (Bessman Taylor et. al., 2019, p.862); therefore, organising fiction according to similar subjects or themes is a useful way to promote positive reading habits in adolescents. Pleasure-reading has numerous academic and social benefits which overcome socio-economic disadvantage (Krashen, 2011, p.1-9), and research shows that access to reading materials increases adolescents’ reading motivation (Manuel and Carter, 2015, p.126). Therefore, genrefication supports adolescent information behaviours, encouraging browsing and selection of resources relevant to their needs, interests, and abilities.

While reading promotion is one aspect of high-school librarianship, promoting information literacy is also crucial. Forsaking standardised methods of organisation like the DDC is a frequent objection to genrefication (Gray, 2019, p.23; Wall, 2019, p.13) since students require the skills to navigate standardised systems utilised by most libraries worldwide. Greater emphasis is placed on genrefication’s benefits to fiction than on non-fiction collections, possibly because the DDC already groups similar resources by discipline to facilitate browsing (Hider, 2017, p.193). However, Outhouse (2017, p.36) argues the DDC is not a browsable system for today’s students due to its technical nature. The DDC has been described as a ‘secret code’ that students today do not understand (LaGarde, 2018, para.10). Outhouse (2017, p.41-42) argues that one of the DDC’s faults is that it is difficult for young children to search effectively due to its reliance on mathematical knowledge and seemingly unrelated subject order; high-school students with poor numeracy or pre-existing negative perceptions about the library would likewise be frustrated by its complicated numerical classification system. Some high-school teacher-librarians have therefore partially genrefied their non-fiction resources to support specific subject areas such as English, or to support specific groups of students, such as senior students (Dawson, 2019, p.23).

One frequently cited disadvantage of genrefication relates to the logistics of such reorganisation. Rearranging sections of a collection, let alone the entire library, takes time, effort, money, and training to ensure effective organisation and cataloguing of the changes (Gray, 2019, p.24; Mathur, 2019, p.6; Wall, 2019, p.14). However, LaGarde argues that if we value improving our users’ reading experiences and volume, then genrefication is worth prioritising (2018, para.26). Yet it must be stated that by replacing the ‘secret code’ of the DDC with genre classifications such as those assigned by SCIS, teacher-librarians might just be replacing one code with another, and replacing the standardised DDC subject groupings with another, non-standardised genre grouping (such as SCIS categories) might not suit all texts and users (Hamm, 2019, para.1; Wall, 2019, p.14), especially considering recent trends towards genre-blending (Barone, 2010, p.15-17). The ongoing flexibility needed to maintain a genrefied collection and keep it up-to-date with teen reading needs and expectations might be more than some teacher-librarians are willing or capable of providing.

Teacher-librarians considering genrefying their own collections should thus weigh the benefits to their specific clientele against the logistical realities of such an undertaking. They may choose to genrefy ‘mini-collections’ or to label resources in their current DDC position, using SCIS categories and user input as a guide. Ultimately teacher-librarians must use their technical expertise alongside their knowledge of their specific users’ needs, abilities, and interests to make the right decision for their context.

 

Reference List

Barone, D. M. (2010). Children’s literature in the classroom: Engaging lifelong readers. Guildford Publications.

Bessman Taylor, J., Hora, A., Steege Krueger, K. (2019). Self-selecting books in a children’s fiction collection arranged by genre. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 51(3), 852-865. https://doi.org/10.1177/0961000617743088

Davenport, S. (2017). Genrefying the fiction collection. Connections, 102(3), 6-7. https://www.scisdata.com/media/1511/connections102.pdf

Davenport, S. (2021). Genrefication 3.5 years later: Reflections. Connections, 117(2), 12-13. https://www.scisdata.com/media/2283/scis_connections_117_web.pdf

Dawson, T. (2019). Genrefying nonfiction at Parkes High School. Scan, 38(2). https://education.nsw.gov.au/teaching-and-learning/professional-learning/scan/past-issues/vol-38–2019/make-a-difference-mad-spotlight-on-teacher-librarians#tabs1

Dickenson, D. (2014). Children and reading: literature review. University of Western Sydney, Australian Government, and Australia Council for the Arts.

Gray, M. (2019). Genre fiction collections in Australian school libraries. Scan, 38(10). https://education.nsw.gov.au/teaching-and-learning/professional-learning/scan/past-issues/vol-38–2019/genre-fiction-collections-in-australian-school-libraries

Hamm, S. (August 5, 2019). Why I chose not to genrify the fiction section. Teen Services Underground [blog]. https://www.teenservicesunderground.com/why-i-chose-not-to-genrify-the-fiction-section/

Hider, P. (2018). Information resource description: Creating and managing metadata (2nd ed.). London: Facet.

Krashen, S. D. (2011). Free voluntary reading. ABC-CLIO, LLC.

LaGarde, J. (October 24, 2018). Genrefying your collection without changing call numbers. The Adventures of Library Girl [blog]. https://www.librarygirl.net/post/genrefying-your-collection-without-changing-call-numbers

Manuel, J., & Carter, D. (2015). Current and historical perspectives on Australian teenagers’ reading practices and preferences. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy 38(2), 115-128.

Mathur, P. (2019). Genrefication @ The Kings’ School Senior Library. Scan, 38(9). https://education.nsw.gov.au/teaching-and-learning/professional-learning/scan/past-issues/vol-38–2019/genrefication—the-kings-school-senior-library

National Library of New Zealand (n.d.). Arranging library fiction by genre. https://natlib.govt.nz/schools/reading-engagement/libraries-supporting-readers/arranging-library-fiction-by-genre

Outhouse, A. R. K. (2017). Genrefication: Introducing and explaining the exponential trend in public and school libraries. https://cdr.lib.unc.edu/concern/masters_papers/kk91fq479

Wall, J. (2019). Genrefication in NSW public school libraries: A discussion paper. Scan, 38(10). https://education.nsw.gov.au/teaching-and-learning/professional-learning/scan/past-issues/vol-38–2019/genrefication-in-nsw-public-school-libraries

ETL505 4.2: Subject Heading Lists

Perform some subject searches on the Library of Congress catalogue, by choosing ‘Browse’ and using the ‘SUBJECTS beginning with’ option.  Conduct a search for any term, such as ‘Cats’ or ‘Libraries’.  You will see a list of headings, with the subject terms on the left and the type of subject heading on the right.  Check those to identify which headings are Library of Congress subject headings.

Note how many headings are ‘strings’ of terms.  Can you interpret them correctly?  Click through various headings to the records that include them, and see if the resources are the kind that you were expecting.

Log into SCISData, choose the SCIS Catalogue, then search by ‘Subject’ repeating some of the searches you did in the Library of Congress catalogue.  Again you will be taken to lists of headings.  Those identified as SCIS subject headings are the ones you are looking for.  What similarities and differences to LCSH have you noticed?

I initially did a Library of Congress search for ‘dogs’, and as Lisa said, there were so many results to the point where it was almost overwhelming.

I then did a search for ‘Pompeii’, where I found the subject headings and strings to be more useful and not quite as overwhelming (perhaps because there’s not as many terms/resources?). I could see this being a useful search strategy to narrow down relevant resources:

When I clicked on the subject heading ‘Pompeii (Extinct city)–Civilization, it brought up the 13 resources relevant to this topic. I found it interesting that when I typed the terms ‘Pompeii civilisation’ directly into the search bar it took me straight to one resource rather than bringing up all the resources that were listed under the subject heading, while the search terms ‘Pompeii civilization’ showed 81 search results. Clearly it’s not a perfect system and the differences in language (e.g. US spelling vs. Australian spelling) create issues. However, I still think that it’s a useful tool for when we need to find information on a particular subject.

I clicked on Joanne Berry’s book “The Complete Pompeii” and saw that there were three different LC subjects assigned to it, which would also be useful for someone looking to find other related relevant resources.

When I conducted the same search on SCIS, there were fewer results but they seemed more relevant to a school search:

To further test the functionality of these subject headings, I then tried a search for the books based on the stories created by Critical Role. This created an extra layer of difficulty for the cataloguers, since these comics are a) based on a Dungeons and Dragons Twitch game, so not exactly traditional media; and b) created by a group of actors before being c) adapted into comic book form. When I searched the LC subject heading ‘Dungeons and Dragons (Game)–Fiction’ a number of titles came up, including one title relating to the Critical Role universe: ‘Kith and Kin’. However, none of the actors in the original Twitch game are listed as authors; considering most fans of this show would search for resources using the names of the original actors/creators, this might make it difficult for users to find this resource. In SCIS the same author issues arose; for one resource the actor who created the world and ran the original game the stories are based on (Matthew Mercer) is listed as a contributor, while for another he’s not listed at all, despite being the first name on the cover:

Plus, neither Dungeons and Dragons nor Critical Role are listed as subject headings!

I guess it just goes to show how complicated cataloguing is, and despite the best intentions of the people designing these systems, sometimes (perhaps due to lack of familiarity or new forms which defy traditional standards) they’ll create a catalogue record which is unlikely to be easily found by users who aren’t familiar with cataloguing standards. It’s another reason why it’s so important to have trained teacher librarians recognised as information specialists in schools!

ETL505 3.2: Metadata Quality – Authority Files

Take some time to explore the Library of Congress authority files, particularly its “Help on Searching Authorities“. Search the authority file for the subject, name and title authority headings for your favourite topic, author and book. Are they included in the authority files?  If you haven’t been able to find them, do you have any thoughts about why they are not there?

I typed in one of my favourite historical figures, Agrippina the Younger. As you can see I got an overwhelming number of results, most of which were not relevant to my search due to the fact that so many ancient Romans shared the same name:

When I clicked the first option it showed me a cross-reference for Agrippina, Minor:


Most users wouldn’t search for this particular Agrippina using these terms but it was interesting to see that it was still listed as a possible access point for the users who might.

Once I found the correct Agrippina, I was intrigued by the number of headings that Library of Congress had created in anticipation of user searches, including her historical roles, her fictional representation, and resources in different languages:


When I clicked on the MARC record I was completely overwhelmed by the layout and what all the numbers could mean. The labelled display option was a little easier to read, but it just goes to show how this is really like learning a whole new language!


Interestingly, one of the texts I read while studying and teaching Agrippina the Younger – Anthony Barrett’s Agrippina: Sex, Power, and Politics in the Early Empire (1996) – had the subject headings

  • Agrippina, Minor, 15-59
  • Empresses — Rome — Biography
  • Rome — History — Julio-Claudians, 30 B.C.-68 A.D.

which, as stated above, would limit the number of people recalling this resource since most would now use the search terms Agrippina the Younger when searching for resources on this topic. This reinforces Hider’s point that metadata doesn’t always support user needs (2018, p.101).

ETL505 2.1: Digital Libraries – Organising Digital Content for Schools

Consider how a school might organise digital content.

For a high school library, I feel like the following might be important to consider when organising digital content:

  • student literacy needs
  • student attention span
  • student access to technology
  • student ability to navigate online spaces
  • student information behaviours (sadly they often take the easy, convenient way out)
  • student information needs (such as for specific subjects or assessments)

Due to this, a school’s digital collection should be organised with accessible language and formatting, in a visually appealing manner. Visuals such as book covers could support simple summaries of the text, while simple bibliographic details and subject headings could help users determine whether content is relevant to them or not. For instance, most students probably wouldn’t select a resource based on its size or page numbers. I think that having groups of similar resources would be an effective way of organising digital content for students who are looking for quick fixes with their research. Teacher librarians, working alongside classroom teachers, could curate reading lists for specific assessments which can help students navigate their way through the digital catalogue, and TLs should teach specific strategies (such as boolean operators, filters) to help students access and find relevant, quality information. Access to these digital libraries should be provided within the library and promoted to the school community to ensure students can independently access these resources in their classrooms and, where possible, at home.

ETL505 2.1: Tools of Library Organisation – Scootle Digital Library

Comment on Scootle as a starting point when searching for electronic resources.

Scootle appears to be a very useful starting point for electronic resources aligned to the Australian Curriculum. It is easy to navigate, uses a convenient range of filters, and allows users to explore resources based on subject, year, or curriculum outcome. I also like that it takes you straight to the resource or unit of work, though due to the dynamic nature of the internet it would be a lot of work for site administrators to ensure that the links are all correct and still live!

Despite its use as a starting point when searching for electronic teaching resources, I had never heard of Scootle prior to starting this degree so I’m not sure how well it’s advertised and promoted to the wider teaching community. A resource is only useful if users know about it and how to use it.

ETL505 2.1: Tools of Library Organisation – Federated Search Systems

Conduct a search on Primo or Trove to see the wide range of sources that are brought together by these federated search engines. What have you observed?

Inspired by our recent spate of bad weather, I decided to search for information about Camden’s history of flooding by using the phrase “Camden floods” to search Trove’s databases.

I found it interesting that Trove organises the results by categories. The Newspapers & Gazettes, Magazines & Newsletters, and Images, Maps & Artefacts sections would be very useful for people researching local or family history, but they could be potentially overwhelming for our students (especially those with literacy issues). Each category only shows three resources and while it is possible to click a button to view more results in that category, I can’t see many of my students doing this. Nonetheless, it presented me with some interesting resources which satisfied my curiosity and taught me something about my home town. Some of my favourites were an article dating from 1890, and historic photos from the 40s and 50s. I wouldn’t necessarily be able to find these resources searching via Google!

Because of the apparent usefulness of these resources to genealogists, I decided to type my last name in to see what would appear. The first result was an article from The Sun in 1926 about one of my ancestors’ weddings – a lovely surprise! I can see myself having a lot of fun with this wonderful resource! Clicking through on one article I could see that it had a scan of the original article, next to a transcription which had been indexed into the database. One thing I noticed is that spelling of the indexed resources will make a difference to the search results. Because my ancestors were illiterate Irish convicts there’s a lot of ways our last name can be spelled in the records, as you can see from this article about a rather exciting and tragic thunder storm in 1861:

No wonder our students can feel overwhelmed when they are researching and choose the convenient first options regardless of relevance and quality. I guess it goes to show how important it is for us to teach a variety of search strategies, such as how to use filters and boolean operators to narrow down a search.

ETL505 2.1: Tools of Library Organisation – Databases

Search one of the CSU Library databases and note the fields included in the records.  How much overlap is there with the fields and elements used in library catalogues?

The database that I’m most familiar with is JSTOR (thanks, Arts degree!). For this activity I went with an old favourite, Mary Beard, and compared the fields and elements used to describe one of her articles.

Beard, M. (1980). The sexual status of vestal virgins. The Journal of Roman Studies 70, 12-27.

JSTOR Content Metadata:

JOURNAL ARTICLE
The Sexual Status of Vestal Virgins
Mary Beard
The Journal of Roman Studies
The Journal of Roman Studies
Vol. 70 (1980), pp. 12-27 (16 pages)
Thoughts on the JSTOR resource description:
This record also allowed me to see thumbnails of each page as well as the notes and references (113 footnotes total) which would help in the ‘select’ FRBR task. The ability to access and download a copy of the resource would also be useful for the ‘obtain’ FRBR task.
The Primo resource details are:
ARTICLE
The Sexual Status of Vestal Virgins
Beard, Mary
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press
The Journal of Roman studies, 1980-11, Vol.70 (2), p.12-27
The Vestal Virgins have often been the subject of close scrutiny by classical scholars…
PEER REVIEWED
Available Online
Details
Title: The Sexual Status of Vestal Virgins
Creator: Beard, Mary
Is Part Of: The Journal of Roman studies, 1980-11, Vol.70 (2), p.12-27
Subject:
– Ambiguity
– Atriums
– Ceremonies
– Flames
– Men
– Priestesses
– Religious rituals
– Virginity
– Weddings
– Wives
Language: English
Description
The Vestal Virgins have often been the subject of close scrutiny by classical scholars. Indeed many articles have been devoted to a careful analysis of individual, apparently trivial, aspects of their legal rights, their privileges, their cult obligations and even their dress. In the same tradition I intend in this paper to consider just one element of their priestly position: their sexual status and its relationship to their sacred status. It is however an element which will be seen to have wider implications for their cult as a whole and for ancient religion in general.
Publisher: Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press
Source: JSTOR Arts & Sciences II, Scopus, Periodicals Index Online
Rights
Copyright © Mary Beard 1980. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies
Copyright 1980 The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies
Copyright 2016 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
Identifier
ISSN: 0075-4358
EISSN: 1753-528X
DOI: 10.2307/299553
Thoughts on the Primo resource description:
Primo also gives me the option to see other linked sources which cite this resource or are cited in it, which is similar to the JSTOR ‘notes and references’ feature. Primo also has a menu on the right-hand side which offers ‘related reading’ suggestions to further my potential research and would be very useful for users engage in the ‘explore’ FRBR task.
Primo is much more detailed than JSTOR and offers more information to help users determine a resource’s relevance. It’s clear why Primo has been given that name – it’s clearly the better option!

ETL505 2.1: Tools of Library Organisation – Library Catalogues

Go to the SCIS website https://www.scisdata.com/ then click on ‘Login’ in the right-hand panel.  Use your SCIS username and password to access SCIS Data.  Click on ‘Search’ and you will be in the SCIS catalogue (or SCIS database) which contains all the catalogue records created by SCIS for school libraries.  Guidance on using this catalogue is available at ‘Help’.

Locate three catalogue records of interest to you and explore which elements can be searched in this particular catalogue, and which elements describe a resource’s information content.  It is best to search for records from 2014 onwards to see recent examples of SCIS records.

 

Since I’m teaching HSC English Extension this year, I figured I’d search for some resources relevant to this course.

Search for Pettersson, B. (2016). How literary worlds are shaped: a comparative poetics of literary imagination.

This search was straightforward, with only two records describing this particular source (for a 2016 and a 2018 edition). Here are the record details for first one I chose:

SCIS number: 1898439
ISBN: 9783110483475
Main author: Pettersson, Bo.
Publisher: Berlin, De Gruyter, 2016
Publication date: 2016
Series: Narratologia ; 54
SCIS subjects: Literature, ComparativeLiterature–History and criticism
ScOT subjects: Literary criticism
Dewey: 809 PET
Description: viii, 326 pages.
Content type: text
Format: volume
Language: English
Additional terms
Learning area: Humanities and Social Sciences, English
Type: Book

Summary
Literary studies still lack an extensive comparative analysis of different kinds of literature, including ancient and non-Western. How Literary Worlds Are Shaped. A Comparative Poetics of Literary Imagination aims to provide such a study. Literature, it claims, is based on individual and shared human imagination, which creates literary worlds that blend the real and the fantastic, mimesis and genre, often modulated by different kinds of unreliability. The main building blocks of literary worlds are their oral, visual and written modes and three themes: challenge, perception and relation. They are blended and inflected in different ways by combinations of narratives and figures, indirection, thwarted aspirations, meta-usages, hypothetical action as well as hierarchies and blends of genres and text types. Moreover, literary worlds are not only constructed by humans but also shape their lives and reinforce their sense of wonder. Finally, ten reasons are given in order to show how this comparative view can be of use in literary studies. In sum, How Literary Worlds Are Shaped is the first study to present a wide-ranging and detailed comparative account of the makings of literary worlds.

Author notes
Bo Pettersson, University of Helsinki, Finland.

Search for Le Guin, U. K. (1969). Left Hand of Darkness.

This search gave me more results, since there have been multiple editions/formats published as well as criticisms and study guides. Interestingly, many of the top results when sorted by Relevance were not the text itself but study guides.


The record details for the edition that I’m using with my students are:

SCIS number: 1830065
ISBN: 9781473221628
Main author: Le Guin, Ursula K.
Publisher: London, Gollancz, 2017
Publication date: 2017
Series: SF masterworks
SCIS subjects: Life on other planets–FictionSex differences–FictionCivilisation–FictionHugo AwardNebula Award
ScOT subjects: AliensGender (Physical characteristics)Society
Dewey: F LE
Description: 304 pages.
Content type: text
Format: volume
Notes: First published: 1969. Winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards.
Genre: Science fiction.
Language: English
Additional terms
Type: Book
Summary
Genly Ai is an ethnologist observing the people of the planet Gethen, a world perpetually in winter. The people there are androgynous, normally neuter, but they can become male ot female at the peak of their sexual cycle. They seem to Genly Ai alien, unsophisticated and confusing. But he is drawn into the complex politics of the planet and, during a long, tortuous journey across the ice with a politician who has fallen from favour and has been outcast, he loses his professional detachment and reaches a painful understanding of the true nature of Gethenians and, in a moving and memorable sequence, even finds love…
Series
1 Rocannon’s world
2 Planet of exile
3 City of illusions
4 The Left hand of darkness
5 The Dispossessed
6 The Word for world is forest
7 Four ways to forgiveness (Collection)
8 The Telling
Author notes
Ursula K. Le Guin was born Ursula Kroeber in Berkeley, California on October 21, 1929. She received a bachelor’s degree from Radcliffe College in 1951 and a master’s degree in romance literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance from Columbia University in 1952. She won a Fulbright fellowship in 1953 to study in Paris, where she met and married Charles Le Guin. Her first science-fiction novel, Rocannon’s World, was published in 1966. Her other books included the Earthsea series, The Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia, The Lathe of Heaven, Four Ways to Forgiveness, and The Telling. A Wizard of Earthsea received an American Library Association Notable Book citation, a Horn Book Honor List citation, and the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award in 1979. She received the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 2014. She also received the Nebula Award and the Hugo Award. She also wrote books of poetry, short stories collections, collections of essays, children’s books, a guide for writers, and volumes of translation including the Tao Te Ching of Lao Tzu and selected poems by Gabriela Mistral. She died on January 22, 2018 at the age of 88. (Bowker Author Biography)

Thoughts:

While most of this information wouldn’t be used as an access point for someone searching for this resource, it would nonetheless help narrow down during the selection FRBR task.

On a side note, I love that SCIS often provides links to the Google Books version of the resource. I’ve found that accessing the Google Books samples (where possible) has helped me make the decision about whether a resource is relevant to my needs or not.

ETL505 1.4: Who Organises Information?

If teacher librarians don’t normally create metadata, such as catalogue records, why do you need to have an understanding of information resource description?

I found it interesting that the module noted that if the most noticeable feature about the catalogue is the number of users who bypass it, then something has gone wrong. It seems like hardly any of our users utilise the catalogue and instead either ask the front desk for resources or browse the shelves hoping for the best. While I’d like to attribute this to either laziness or a preference for personal interaction, clearly this is something I’ll have to rectify! It was good that the module reinforced that the one of the roles of the TL is to teach users how to effectively use the catalogue independently. It’s also an important skill for them to transfer this knowledge to other catalogues, such as public or university libraries.

As a NSW DoE school, we use SCIS as our supplier of catalogue records. I’m very fortunate to have a full-time library assistant who handles most of the cataloguing when we accession new resources but her position is not guaranteed and it’s important for me to know how the system works so that I can maintain our collection and ensure efficient access to our available resources.

I’ve noticed that while the records from SCIS certainly do save time, they aren’t necessarily describing or classifying our resources in a way which suits our students’ needs. For instance, many of our manga series are catalogued under their individual titles rather than the series title + number, which makes it difficult for people like me who are unfamiliar with the series to find whether we’ve got a requested book on our shelves. Series which have multiple authors also face this issue, as SCIS classifies them under each individual author instead of together which means that the books are scattered amongst our fiction shelves. The Australia’s Great War and the Twisted Tales series are the best examples I can think of with this issue. Last year I also undertook a stocktake and discovered a pile of never-borrowed verse novels which had been classified as non-fiction, the land that our students forgot. I’m in the process of reclassifying them as fiction texts, which will hopefully allow them to be found and used more regularly. If I have an understanding of information resource description I can hopefully combine this with knowledge of my users’ needs and preferences to create a more efficient collection.

 

ETL505 1.1: The Need For Information Resource Description

Why is it necessary for information agencies such as school libraries to organise information?

One of the key functions of the school library as an information agency is to ensure that our patrons can easily and efficiently access what they need, when they need it. We therefore need to organise our information effectively to:

  • avoid patron ‘infowhelm’
  • provide the right book to the right reader at the right time
  • reduce time wasted spent looking for resources
  • reduce dissatisfaction with library staff, services, and resources
  • support time-poor teachers
  • support reluctant students who might be turned off by inefficient organisation or difficulty locating resources
  • ensure equitable access to information i.e. give all users the skills and confidence to fulfil their information needs
  • ensure effective use of materials and justify costs
  • maintain our professionalism and advocate for our value to the learning community
  • keep up with a changing information landscape and ensure continued relevance

ETL503 Assessment 2 Part B: Reflective Practice

A school library without an effective collection is like a body without a working heart. Just as our hearts pump vital blood to our organs, the school library collection – developed and maintained by a qualified, perceptive, and vigilant teacher-librarian – ensures our learning communities get what they need to function and thrive.

The collection is so crucial to the library that the concept of a library is almost synonymous with its resources (Fieldhouse & Marshall, 2011, p.3). As information specialists, it is essential for teacher-librarians to provide balanced collections which serve the educational, socio-emotional, and recreational needs of our communities through the provision of relevant, accessible physical and digital resources. By providing equitable access to our collections, school libraries safeguard the right of users to seek, receive, and impart information (United Nations 1948, Article 19; South Australia Department of Education, 2020, p.2). Like many of my peers, I was shocked at the different types of censorship affecting libraries (Hilzinger, 2022, January 10; Abed Ali, 2022, January 12). We must be acutely aware of our own biases when managing our resources and resist attempts by others to censor our collections (Morrisey, 2008, p.165; Evans & Saponaro, 2012, p.306).

ETL503 exposed the complex paradigms underpinning the various approaches to collection management. The teacher-librarian in the Collection-Centred Model amasses resources “just in case” (Hughes-Hassell & Mancall, 2005, p.6). Conversely, the Learner-Centred Model and Collaborative Access Model create “just in time collections and position teacher-librarians as guides ensuring equitable, user-friendly access to materials serving user needs (Hughes-Hassell & Mancall, 2005, p.9, Crawford et. al, 2020, p.2). Yet patron-driven models, while increasing user connection to library resources, potentially lead to unbalanced collections where popular titles are prioritised over quality or curriculum resources (Fleishhacker, 2017, p.26, 31).

Therefore, in a rapidly changing information landscape and with increasing budget pressures, it is important for teacher-librarians to future-proof our collections through continual evaluation, ensuring a balance between “just in case” and “just in time” as well as popular and quality resources, and to extend our collections through the provision of curated digital resources and interlibrary loans (Evans & Saponaro, 2012, p.83; Albitz et. al., 2014, p.267; Gregory, 2019, p.9, 37). We must think carefully about the ongoing selection, acquisition, and promotion of our collections (Keeling, 2019, p.4) to ensure we combat overt and covert censorship and meet the ever-changing educational, cultural, recreational, and professional needs of our students (NSW Department of Education, 2017, p.8). Clearly, being an effective teacher-librarian is about so much more than just buying the books we love!

If a library without an effective collection is like a body without a heart, then a collection without a development or management policy is like a body without a brain. Just as the brain co-ordinates the body’s actions, so too does a collection development policy guide the library’s effective operation. A well-written manual with clear policies and procedures is essential for ensuring best practice and effective delivery of relevant, accessible resources and services for the library community (Australian Library an Information Association [ALIA], 2017, p.4).

Early in this course I learned that while collection management and collection development are often used synonymously, they can also refer to separate concepts (Lysaught, 2021a, para.3-4):

(Johnson, 2018, p.1; Gregory, 2019, p.xiv).

Gregory argues that effective collection development policies have three main purposes: to inform, direct, and protect (2011, p.31). Fieldhouse & Marshall extend on this, stating that effective collection development policies function as a ‘contract’ between the library and its community, and are powerful advocacy tools which inform users, guide administration, and justify funding decisions (2011, p.165-166). While Newsum argues that collection development is the teacher-librarians’ exclusive responsibility (2016, p.101), others argue that collection policies are most effective when planned and implemented democratically (Oberg & Schultz-Jones, 2015, p.34; Johnson, 2018, p.83). I believe that while the final responsibility lies with the teacher-librarian as qualified expert, libraries should be as democratic as possible (Lysaught, 2021b, para.14). A collaboratively designed collection policy is an important public relations tool which encourages ownership, understanding, and support from the school community regarding the library’s role, resources, and processes (Kimmel, 2014, p.70). It is crucial that school libraries have strong policies supported by their local community and colleagues (Lysaught, 2022a, January 17). Without them, a library and its resources are vulnerable to misuse and misunderstanding, exposed to challenges, and overall likely to be less effective at meeting users’ needs and interests.

When I inherited the library, the collection was damaged, outdated, and irrelevant (Lysaught, 2022b, para.4). Like many of my peers, there was no Collection Development Policy (Gemell, 2021, December 27; Losanno, 2022, January 1) and as a result the collection was not effectively meeting user needs (Lysaught, 2022b, para.3). The understandings developed during this unit assisted me in conducting my first ever Stocktake (Lysaught, 2022c, para.4), and helped me weed many resources that no longer met the needs and interests of our users (Lysaught, 2021b, para.10).

This is what happens when library hygiene is neglected – we have a collection in desperate need of a weed!

Moving forward, I intend to engage in the Continuous Review, Evaluation and Weeding cycle outlined by Larson (2012, p.13). Library hygiene is a key element of our role as information specialists (Fieldhouse & Marshall, 2011, p.36; Newsum, 2016, p.201). Just as we need to keep our hearts in shape, so too must we ensure that our collections are in shape via continuous needs assessment, evaluation, selection, acquisition, and promotion (Kimmel, 2014, p.17; Johnson, 2018, p.122). I’ve already created a draft selection criteria to help with ETL503 Assessment 1 (Lysaught, 2022b). One of my first priorities in 2022 will be to create a Library Committee where students and staff come together to collaboratively plan, implement, and promote our policy and resources (Lysaught, 2021b, para.12). Once our collection development and management policies are ratified, I intend to present the information to the whole staff body – though making it accessible and entertaining will likely prove to be a challenge (Lysaught, 2022d, January 14; Oddone, 2022, January 23)! By creating a collection development and management policy in partnership with my community, I hope to protect our collection against changes to user interests and needs, to the information landscape, and to the curriculum by planning for continual evaluation and improvement. To quote the well-known adage, if we fail to plan, then we plan to fail!

 

Word count: 1043

 

Bibliography:

Abed Ali, K. (2022, January 12). RE: Key takeaway from your readings on censorship [Online discussion comment]. Interact 2. https://interact2.csu.edu.au/webapps/discussionboard/do/message?action=list_messages&course_id=_58478_1&conf_id=_115077_1&forum_id=_260201_1&message_id=_3899339_1&nav=discussion_board_entry

 

Albitz, B., Avery, C., & Zabel, D. (Eds.). (2014). Rethinking collection development and management. ABC-CLIO, LLC.

 

Australian Library and Information Association [ALIA]. (2017). A manual for developing policies and procedures in Australian school library resource centres (2nd edition). Australian Library and Information Association.

 

Crawford, L. S., Condrey, C., Avery, E. F., & Enoch, T. (2020). Implementing a just-in-time collection development model in an academic library. The Journal of Academic Librarianship 46(2), p.102101.

 

Evans, G. E., & Saponaro, M. Z. (2012). Library and information science text : Collection management basics. ABC-CLIO, LLC.

 

Fieldhouse, M., Marshall, A. (2011). Collection development in the digital age.

 

Fleishhacker, J. (2017). Collection development. Knowledge Quest, 45(4), 24–31.

 

Gemell, L. (2021, December 27). RE: Editing a collection development policy [Online discussion comment]. Interact 2. https://interact2.csu.edu.au/webapps/discussionboard/do/message?action=list_messages&course_id=_58478_1&nav=discussion_board_entry&conf_id=_115077_1&forum_id=_260200_1&message_id=_3853862_1

 

Gregory, V. L. (2011). Collection development and management for 21st century library collections : An introduction. American Library Association.

 

Hilzinger, C. (2022 January 10). RE: Key takeaway from your readings on censorship [Online discussion comment]. Interact 2. https://interact2.csu.edu.au/webapps/discussionboard/do/message?action=list_messages&course_id=_58478_1&conf_id=_115077_1&forum_id=_260201_1&message_id=_3899339_1&nav=discussion_board_entry

 

Hughes-Hassell, & S., Mancall, J. C. (2005). Collection management for youth: responding to the needs of learners. American Library Association.

 

Johnson, Peggy (2018). Fundamentals of collection development and management. ALA Editions.

 

Keeling, M. (2019). What’s new in collection development? Knowledge Quest 48(2), 4-5.

 

Kimmel, S. C. (2014). Developing collections to empower learners. American Library Association.

 

Larson, J. (2012). CREWing children’s materials. In CREW: a weeding manual for modern libraries, (pp. 33-36), Austin, TX: Texas State Library and Archives Commission.

 

Losanno, J. (2022, January 1). RE: Editing a collection development policy [Online discussion comment]. Interact 2. https://interact2.csu.edu.au/webapps/discussionboard/do/message?action=list_messages&course_id=_58478_1&nav=discussion_board_entry&conf_id=_115077_1&forum_id=_260200_1&message_id=_3853862_1

 

Lysaught, D. (2021a, November 15). ETL503 1.1 definition of collection management and collection development. All You Read Is Love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2021/11/15/etl503-1-1-definition-of-collection-management-and-collection-development/

 

Lysaught, D. (2021b, November 22). ETL503 2.1 developing collections. All You Read Is Love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2021/11/22/etl503-2-1-developing-collections/

 

Lysaught, D. (2022a, January 17). RE: Editing a collection development policy [Online discussion comment]. Interact 2. https://interact2.csu.edu.au/webapps/discussionboard/do/message?action=list_messages&course_id=_58478_1&conf_id=_115077_1&forum_id=_260200_1&message_id=_3900966_1&nav=discussion_board_entry

 

Lysaught, D. (2022b, January 14). ETL503 6.1 editing a collection development policy. All You Read Is Love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2022/01/14/etl503-6-1-editing-a-collection-development-policy/

 

Lysaught, D. (2022c, January 6). ETL503 5.1 methods of collection analysis. All You Read Is Love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2022/01/06/etl503-5-1-methods-of-collection-analysis/

 

Lysaught, D. (2022a, January 14). RE: Editing a collection development policy [Online discussion comment]. Interact 2. https://interact2.csu.edu.au/webapps/discussionboard/do/message?action=list_messages&course_id=_58478_1&conf_id=_115077_1&forum_id=_260200_1&message_id=_3900966_1&nav=discussion_board_entry

 

Morrisey, L. J. (2008). Ethical issues in collection development.Journal of Library Administration, 47(3-4), 163-171.

 

Newsum, J. M. (2016). School collection development and resource management in digitally rich environments: An Initial Literature Review. School Libraries Worldwide, 22(1), 97–109.

 

Oberg, D., & Schultz-Jones, B. (eds.). (2015). 4.3.1 Collection management policies and procedures. In IFLA School Library Guidelines, (2nd ed.),  (pp. 33-34). Den Haag, Netherlands: IFLA.

 

NSW Department of Education [NSW DoE] (2017). “Handbook for School Libraries. https://education.nsw.gov.au/teaching-and-learning/curriculum/learning-across-the-curriculum/school-libraries/your-library

 

Oddone, K. (2022, January 23). RE: Editing a collection development policy [Online discussion comment]. Interact 2. https://interact2.csu.edu.au/webapps/discussionboard/do/message?action=list_messages&course_id=_58478_1&conf_id=_115077_1&forum_id=_260200_1&message_id=_3899262_1&nav=discussion_board_entry

 

South Australia Department of Education. (2020). Selecting and using resources for educational purposes guideline. https://www.education.sa.gov.au/doc/selecting-and-using-resources-educational-purposes-guideline

 

United Nations (1948). Universal Declaration of Human Rights. https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights

ETL402 Assessment 2 Part B: Reflective Blog Post

ETL402 has greatly expanded my understanding of how children’s literature is more than a literacy tool only useful in the English classroom. This unit has built on the knowledge I’ve developed over the last 10 years as an English/History teacher and expanded my understanding of new literacies and text types that have evolved (largely due to new technologies) since I finished my Master of Teaching in 2011.

Literary learning – teaching curriculum content through literature – is a powerful tool to develop students’ multiliteracies. In a changing information landscape, it is crucial that we develop multiliterate students who are flexible, have the skills to reformulate knowledge and practice, and can make meaning via multiple modes and formats (Anstey & Bull, 2006, p.19-21; Gorgon & Marcus, 2013, p.42). Sometimes as classroom teachers we can get stuck in a rut and it’s hard to find the time to explore new developments. ETL402 exposed me to new, exciting text types such as digital narratives (Lysaught, 2022a, para.4-6) and emphasised that teacher-librarians, acting as a mediators for time-poor classroom teachers, should seek out, explore, and curate useful resources to ensure that our colleagues have the best tools possible to teach our students (Braun, 2010, p.47; Lysaught, 2022b, para.6).

While many ETL401 readings emphasised that libraries were about more than just books (Lysaught, 2021a, para.8-9; Lysaught, 2021b, para.7-8, 15), ETL402 reminded me about reading’s importance and the value of literature across the curriculum (Lysaught, 2021c, para.1, 5). Like my peers (Poyitt, 2021, para.1), it troubles me that so many teens I work with simply don’t read. ETL402 made me question my own practices, preferences, and habits (Lysaught, 2021e, para.1-2). Many readings and discussions explored the reasons why people read or don’t, leading me to create these infographics:

These readings gave me valuable insights and inspiring strategies to inform my future practice as I work towards building a whole-school reading culture (Fulton, 2021, para.1; Shaw, 2021, para.2-9; Lysaught, 2022b, para.5; Lysaught, 2022c, para.2-3; Lysaught, 2022d, para.4-6). Literary learning is a particularly exciting way to build whole-school reading culture which I plan to implement to benefit my school community, as summarised in my infographics which I plan to share with my colleagues:

Moving forward, I understand that as information specialist, curriculum leader, and literacy expert, I should:

  • Offer professional development opportunities for staff wishing to engage their students with literary learning;
  • Collaboratively plan for the implementation of literary learning with classroom teachers;
  • Implement literary response strategies with my own classes and support colleagues’ implementation e.g. Book Bento Boxes, Literature Circles;
  • Curate appropriate resources to support staff and student needs and interests;
  • Encourage further investigation and continued pleasure reading with a diverse, relevant, accessible collection;
  • Effectively display and promote relevant materials as well as successful literary learning units via parent bulletins, social media, staff meetings, and school reports;
  • Work with other stakeholders (e.g. Head Teacher Teaching and Learning, Literacy Committee Co-ordinator) to collect and analyse data determining the efficacy of literary learning;
  • Draw upon the expertise and strengths of numerous staff to build a more effective whole-school reading culture which supports students’ personal and academic needs;
  • Be responsive to the changing information landscape, time-pressures, and other issues (e.g. Covid restrictions) which may hinder implementation of collaborative practice

 

Bibliography:

Allington, R. L., & Gabriel, R. E. (2012). Every child every day. Educational Leadership, 69(6), 10-15.

Anstey, M., & Bull, G. (2006). Chapter 2: Defining multiliteracies. In M. Anstey & G. Bull (Eds.) Teaching and learning multiliteracies: Changing times, changing literacies. International Reading Association.

Barone, D. M. (2010). Children’s literature in the classroom: Engaging lifelong readers. Guildford Publications.

Braun, P. (2010). Taking the time to read aloud. Science Scope, 34(2), 45-49.

Brugar, K. A., & McMahon Whitlock, A. (2019). “I like […] different time periods:” elementary teachers’ uses of historical fiction. Social Studies Research and Practice 14(1), 78-97.

Carrillo, S. (2013, June 14). The power of a single story. Facing History & Ourselves. https://lanetwork.facinghistory.org/the-power-of-a-single-story/

Combes, B., & Valli, R. (2007). Fiction and the twenty-first century: A new paradigm? Paper submitted to Cyberspace, D-world, e-learning. Giving schools and libraries the cutting edge, 2007 IASL Conference, Taipei, Taiwan.

Daley, P. (2014, November 6). Anzac and Gallipoli are the novelist’s terrain as much as the historians. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/books/australia-books-blog/2014/nov/06/-sp-anzac-gallipolli-novelists-terrain-as-much-as-historians

Dickenson, D. (2014). Children and reading: literature review. University of Western Sydney, Australian Government, and Australia Council for the Arts.

Donnelly, D. (2017). Multi-platformed historical fiction: Literacy, engagement and historical understanding. SCAN 36(3), 43-47.

Earp, J. (2015, March 3). The power of a good book. Teacher. https://www.teachermagazine.com/au_en/articles/the-power-of-a-good-book

Fulton, A. (2021, November 17). Re: 1.2: Affirmative action – examples of practice [Online discussion comment]. Interact 2. https://interact2.csu.edu.au/webapps/discussionboard/do/message?action=list_messages&course_id=_58477_1&conf_id=_115076_1&forum_id=_259135_1&message_id=_3855912_1&nav=discussion_board_entry

Gaiman, N. (2013, October 16). Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/15/neil-gaiman-future-libraries-reading-daydreaming

Gorgon, B. & Marcus, A. (2013). Lost in transliteracy: How to expand student learning across a variety of platforms. Knowledge Quest, 41(5), 40-45.

Howard, V. (2011) the importance of pleasure reading in the lives of young teens: Self-identification, self-construction and self-awareness. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 43(1), 46-55. https://doi.org/10.1177/0961000610390992

Ipri, T., & Newman, B. (2017). Beginner’s guide to transliteracy: Where did the term transliteracy come from? Libraries and Transliteracy. https://librariesandtransliteracy.wordpress.com/beginners-guide-to-transliteracy/

Jorm, M. & Robey, L. (2020, December 7). Libraries as literacy leaders. National Education Summit. https://nationaleducationsummit.com.au/new-blog/librariesasliteracyleaders

Kidd, D. C., & Castano, E. (2013). Reading literary fiction improves theory of mind. Science 342(6156), 377-380.

Krashen, S. D. (2011). Free voluntary reading. ABC-CLIO, LLC.

Lysaught, D. (2021a, July 19) ETL401 assessment 1: What is the role of the teacher librarian? All You Read Is Love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2021/07/19/etl401assessment1/

Lysaught, D. (2021b, August 29) ETL401 3.2 the role of the teacher librarian: LIBERating our perceptions.  All You Read Is Love.

https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2021/08/29/3-2-the-role-of-the-teacher-librarian-liberating-our-perceptions/

Lysaught, D. (2021c, July 19) ETL402 half-session reflections: The function of historical fiction in secondary schools. All You Read Is Love.

https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/category/etl402/

Lysaught, D. (2021d, December 26) ETL402 3.1 strategies to leverage a love of reading. All You Read Is Love.

https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2021/12/26/etl402-3-1-strategies-to-leverage-a-love-of-reading/

Lysaught, D. (2021e, December 31) Top reads 2021. All You Read Is Love.

https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2021/12/31/top-reads-2021/

Lysaught, D. (2022a, January 3) ETL402 5.1 practical idea and digital text to support literary learning. All You Read Is Love.

https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2022/01/03/etl402-5-1-practical-idea-and-digital-text-to-support-literary-learning/

Lysaught, D. (2022b, January 10) ETL402 6.1-2 teaching and promotion strategies for using literature. All You Read Is Love.

https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2022/01/10/etl402-6-1-2-teaching-and-promotion-strategies-for-using-literature/

Lysaught, D. (2022c, January 17) ETL402 6.3 responding to literature: The read aloud. All You Read Is Love.

https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2022/01/17/etl402-6-3-responding-to-literature-the-read-aloud/

Lysaught, D. (2022d, January 17) ETL402 6.2 curriculum-based literary learning: Year 9 English power and freedom. All You Read Is Love.

https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2022/01/17/etl402-6-2-curriculum-based-literary-learning-power-and-freedom/

Manuel, J., & Carter, D. (2015). Current and historical perspectives on australian teenagers’ reading practices and preferences. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy 38(2), 115-128.

Poyitt, B. (2021, November 29). Re: 1.2: Affirmative action – examples of practice [Online discussion comment]. Interact 2.

https://interact2.csu.edu.au/webapps/discussionboard/do/message?action=list_messages&course_id=_58477_1&conf_id=_115076_1&forum_id=_259135_1&message_id=_3855912_1&nav=discussion_board_entry

Rodwell, G. (2019). Using fiction to develop higher-order historical understanding. In T. Allender, A. Clark & R. Parkes (Eds.), Historical thinking for history teachers: A new approach to engaging students and developing historical consciousness (p.194-207). Allen & Unwin.

Shaw, B. (2021, December 22). Re: 3.1: Strategy to leverage a love of reading [Online discussion comment]. Interact 2. https://interact2.csu.edu.au/webapps/discussionboard/do/message?action=list_messages&course_id=_58477_1&nav=discussion_board_entry&conf_id=_115076_1&forum_id=_259138_1&message_id=_3855937_1

Smith, A. K. (2019, October 14). Literature has the power to change the world. Here’s how. Books At Work. https://www.booksatwork.org/literature-has-the-power-to-change-the-world-heres-how/

Stower, H. & Waring, P. (2018, July 16). Read like a girl: Establishing a vibrant community of passionate readers. Alliance of Girls Schools Australia. https://www.agsa.org.au/news/read-like-a-girl-establishing-a-vibrant-community-of-passionate-readers/

Taylor, T., and Young, C. (2003). Making history: a guide for the teaching and learning of history in Australian schools. Curriculum Corporation.

Wadham, R. L., Garrett, A. P., Garrett, E. N. (2019). Historical fiction picture books: the tensions between genre and format. The Journal of Culture and Values in Education 2(2), 57-72.

Whitten, C., Labby, S., & Sullivan, S. L. (2016). The impact of pleasure reading on academic success. The Journal of Multidisciplinary Graduate Research 2(4), 48-64.

Wu, Y., Mallan, K., & McGillis, R. (2013). Reimagining the world: Children’s literature’s responses to changing times. Springer.

Young, S. (2012). Understanding history through the visual. Language Arts 89(6), 379-395.

 

 

Creative Commons License The infographics in this post are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

ETL402 6.3 Responding to Literature: The Read Aloud

Select one of the strategies for sharing or responding to literature and identify a subject learning area that you could apply it to. Share your thoughts on why you think this strategy could support literary learning in that discipline and provide a starting point for implementing it.

I love a good read aloud. The read aloud strategy was a great way for me to not only ensure that the students in my classes actually read the novel we were studying in English but also gave me an opportunity to engage them with the content and construction of the text through social learning.

Even high school, students who had never willingly read a book independently would listen, follow along, and engage with the discussion around the novel throughout the read aloud activity, and this would set them up nicely to examine the text in the ensuing modified literature circles activity. They’d say it was “cringe” when I’d do the voices, but secretly they enjoyed it (especially Gollum in The Hobbit, or if a character swore!).

ETL402 6.2 Curriculum-Based Literary Learning: Year 9 English Power and Freedom

Consider a literature unit that you have taught. Provide a brief description and identify the theoretical stance taken. Share the highlights of this unit.

In my previous life as an English teacher I’ve had the privilege of being able to teach many literature units! Socio-cultural theories of learning underpin my approach to teaching in general, and as such I’ve always tried to consider the learning needs of my students and tried to create learning opportunities which rely on learning in a social context.

One unit which comes to mind was our Year 9 unit on the concept of Power and Freedom. When teaching this unit I generally elect to study the novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. I love using role-plays and simulation, and throughout the unit we play a ‘game’ where students are in a dystopia of sorts and have to obey ’10 Commandments’ to earn points. At the end of each week the students with the highest number of points gain the ability to change the rules (within reason and with my permission of course!) and getting other special treatments (silly things like being called ‘Exalted One’). Each year I’ve taught this unit it’s been a interesting way for students to connect with the novel and recognise the key concepts around power, freedom, and dystopia that I’m trying to teach. Factions form, students start negotiating with each other to pool points, coups are planned … it’s great fun.

I also often use a modified version of literature circles to help students form personal connections and interpretations of the novel. We’d read a section in class (if time allowed), then complete personal response questions:

  1. What do you think this was about (literally, thematically)?
  2. What did you like or dislike about it?
  3. Did anything confuse you? Were there any words or phrases you didn’t understand?
  4. Did you notice any patterns, techniques or connections which helped you make meaning?

While the unit parameters, time and access issues meant that I didn’t have the ability to give students free choice of text, they still took on roles (I used Summariser, Word Wizard, Character Captain, Literary Luminary, and Connector), examined the text in their ‘expert’ groups, then returned to their literature circles (or book clubs as I called them) to discuss and extend their understandings as a group. We then shared their findings through a whole class discussion. It was a far more effective strategy than the old comprehension chapter questions that I’d experienced as a student!

ETL503 6.1 Editing a Collection Development Policy

Discuss new areas needing coverage in your collection development policy, in view of the digital content of your collection.

Like so many newbie teacher librarians, I have been unable to locate a formal written collection development or collection management policy. As such, I’ve felt more than a little lost this year as I’ve floundered my way through budgeting, selection, and acquisition of resources to support my school community and feel like I probably haven’t made the best choices.

When I started this unit last October I saw the School Library Collection Rubric (ALIA, 2017) and quickly reflected on where I thought our school library collection sat. The results were eye-opening: out of the 31 elements I felt confident to assess, I deemed 8 to be developing, 20 to be at foundation level, and only 3 to be effective. Clearly there is a lot of work to be done to bring our collection up to scratch! 

I plan on using this rubric to set goals (some of which will even make it onto my PDP! What great evidence for accreditation maintenance!) and work towards improving our collection over the next year – though honestly, it will probably take much longer! As noted on my blog, I’ve already undertaken a stocktake and weeded many of our outdated, damaged, and irrelevant resources. It will be interesting to review my initial assessment at the end of the year with more qualitative and quantitative data. 

One of the tasks I set myself this year was to at least create a selection criteria which would guide the acquisition of future resources. This draft has drawn on a number of samples and will hopefully guide the development of a more effective collection in future and allow staff to see the complex nature of what teacher librarians actually do. 

1. Criteria
Relevance to Curriculum and Recreational Needs, Interests and Abilities of Users 1.1 Does the resource meet an existing or anticipated need?
1.2 Will the resource be well-used by students, staff, parents, or other community members?
1.3 Is the cost justified in terms of the potential use and value to the collection?
1.4 Is the print comprehensible and formatted to suit the age level and reading abilities of the target audience?
1.5 Are the content and vocabulary appropriate for the target audience?
1.6 Is the resource suitable to the interest level of the intended users?
1.7 Is this resource high quality?
2. Criteria
Currency of Content

 

2.1 Is the information current and up-to-date (especially regarding resources on topics such as science, technology, social issues, and geo-political content)?
2.2 Is the information and presentation in keeping with current educational practice?
2.3 Are the tables, charts and other relevant data in the resource recent?
2.4 Are links to websites active and current?
3. Criteria
Accuracy and Quality of Content

 

3.1 Is the content clearly factual or fictional?
3.2 Are facts and opinions identified and presented impartially?
3.3 Is the content correct?
3.4 Is the content of literary merit?
4. Criteria
Authority and Reliability of the Composer 4.1 Is the author or creator qualified in the field?
4.2 Is the publisher well-established/reputable in the field?
4.3 Has the author or creator produced other works in the same area?
5. Criteria
Presentation of the Resource

 

5.1 Is the style appropriate for the subject and use?
5.2 Do the illustrations extend the factual information?
5.3 Are the print, illustrations, multimedia, and sound of a high quality?
5.4 Is the resource physically attractive?
5.5 Is the resource durable and well-constructed?
6. Criteria
Accessibility

 

6.1 Is the format accessible for users?
6.2 Is the content easy to navigate?
6.3 Are ideas developed, organised, and presented clearly?
6.4 Does the resource have peritextual elements such as an index, author’s notes, table of contents, chapter summaries, glossaries, bibliography or menus to assist users to locate relevant information?
7. Criteria
Respectful to All Peoples

 

7.1 Is the resource free of bias or prejudice?
7.2 Does the resource present positive images of gender, disability, and cultural and ethnic groups?
7.3 Are the representations of people honest and accurate?
7.4 Is the resource free of stereotypical images and role definitions?
For resources dealing with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander issues, consider the following additional criteria:
7.5 Is the resource accurate in its presentation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander issues?

 

 

7.5.1 Authenticity – is the resource an authentic representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander issues? 
7.5.1.1 Is the material up-to-date?
7.5.1.2 Is the material accurate?

7.5.1.3 Does the material repudiate the concept of terra nullius?

7.5.1.4 Does the material accurately represent Aboriginal resistance to European occupation of the land?
7.5.1.5 Does the material avoid overgeneralisations?
7.5.1.6 Is the number and diversity of both Torres Strait Islander and Aboriginal languages and cultures represented?
7.5.1.7 Are illustrations and photographs positive and accurate portrayals of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and relevant to the text?
7.5.1.8 Are photographs accompanied by captions which name the Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person or group in a culturally sensitive manner, and indicate where they come from?
  7.5.2 Balanced nature of the presentation – is the representation of content balanced and representative of the diversity and complexity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures?
7.5.2.1 Is there a balanced representation of men and women in the material?
7.5.2.2 Does the material accurately represent women’s roles in First Nations societies?
7.5.2.3 Are stereotyping and racist connotations absent?
7.5.2.4 Does the resource include all readers by not assuming a European background?
7.5.2.5 Does the resource include Torres Strait Islander people?
7.5.2.6 Does the resource avoid over-representing the ‘exotic’ to the exclusion of other cultural aspects?
7.5.2.7 Does the resource acknowledge that First Nations practices continue to the present day?
  7.5.3 Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander participation – has the resource been created by, or in consultation with, members of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities?
7.5.3.1 Does the resource acknowledge Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander participation in the research, writing, and presentation processes?
7.5.3.2 Is the author Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander?
  7.5.4 Accuracy and support – does the resource accurately represent and support local First Nations groups?
7.5.4.1 Is the material about your local area or state?
7.5.4.2 Has the material been endorsed by local, regional, state, or territory Aboriginal education consultative groups?
7.5.4.3 Has the material been endorsed by other Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander groups?
7.5.4.4 Is the material acceptable to the local Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander communities?
  7.5.5 Exclusion of content of a secret or sacred nature – does the resource depict culturally sensitive materials?
7.5.5.1 Does the material avoid culturally insensitive references to information about secret and/or sacred items, practices, sites, and/or representations?
8. Criteria
Criteria Specific to the School’s Context: Support for school and local community issues

 

8.1 Does the resource support the school as it works to implement the School Improvement Plan (SIP)?
8.1.1 Strategic Direction 1: Student Growth and Attainment
8.1.2 Strategic Direction 2: Enhancing Learning Culture
8.1.3 Strategic Direction 3: Enhancing Wellbeing for Successful Learning
8.2 Does the resource support the socio-emotional needs of our current and emerging student populations?
8.3 Does the resource support the teaching needs of our current staff, such as a specific syllabus option or course?
8.4 Does the resource support specific school-based programs?
8.5 Does the resource support specific local community programs?

Bibliography and other useful resources for future reference:

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Library, Information and Resource Network (2012). Welcome to the ATSILIRN protocols for libraries, archives and information services. https://atsilirn.aiatsis.gov.au/protocols.php

Australian Library and Information Association. (2017). A manual for developing policies and procedures in australian school library resource centres. (2nd ed.). ALIA Library. https://read.alia.org.au/manual-developing-policies-and-procedures-australian-school-library-resource-centres-2nd-edition

Braxton, B. (2021, October 1). Sample collection policy. 500 Hats. https://500hats.edublogs.org/policies/sample-collection-policy/

Debowski, S. (2001). Collection management policies. In K. Dillon, J. Henri & J. McGregor (eds.), Providing more with less: collection management for school libraries (2nd ed.). (pp.126-136). Centre for Information Studies, Charles Sturt University.

Debowski, S. (2001). Collection program funding management. In K. Dillon, J. Henri & J. McGregor (eds.), Providing more with less: collection management for school libraries (2nd ed.). (pp.299-326). Centre for Information Studies, Charles Sturt University.

Dillon, K. (2001). Maintaining collection viability. In K. Dillon, J. Henri & J. McGregor (eds.), Providing more with less: collection management for school libraries (2nd ed.). (pp.241-254). Centre for Information Studies, Charles Sturt University.

Fieldhouse, M., & Marshall, A. (2012). Collection development in the digital age. Facet.

Fleishhacker, J. (2017). Collection development. Knowledge Quest, 45(4), 24–31.

Gregory, V. L. (2019). Collection development and management for 21st century library collections: an introduction. American Library Association.

Herring, J. (2007). Chapter 2: 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.

Hughes-Hassell, & S., Mancall, J. C. (2005). Collection management for youth: responding to the needs of learners. American Library Association.

Johnson, Peggy (2018). Fundamentals of collection development and management. ALA Editions.

Keeling, M. (2019). What’s new in collection development? Knowledge Quest 48(2), 4-5.

Kimmel, S. C. (2014). Developing collections to empower learners. American Library Association.

Librarians Portal (2013, October 24). Book selection principles. Librarians Portal: A Place For Library Professionals. https://newonlinelibrary.blogspot.com/2013/10/book-selection-principles.html

Queensland Studies Authority. (2007). Guidelines Indigenous perspectives: Selecting and evaluating resources. https://www.qcaa.qld.edu.au/downloads/approach2/indigenous_g008_0712.pdf

South Australia Department of Education. (2020). Selecting and using resources for educational purposes guideline. https://www.education.sa.gov.au/doc/selecting-and-using-resources-educational-purposes-guideline

 

ETL402 6.1-2 Teaching and Promotion Strategies for Using Literature

Reflect on your personal theoretical stance on the teaching of literature and how this is evidenced in your practice.

Reflect on your own and your professional colleagues’ knowledge of literature. Identify an occasion when you successfully connected a book with a child or group of students and how your knowledge of the book facilitated this process. Identify possible opportunities for a teacher librarian to respond to this research within the library and beyond to support teacher colleagues.

There are three theories regarding the teaching of literature. Transmission theories posit that the teacher transmits learning to the students, who are empty vessels willingly waiting to receive this information. While this approach can be useful for the direct, explicit instruction of certain aspects of literature (e.g. the definition of a literary device) the focus on the teacher at the expense of student involvement can limit engagement and higher order thinking. Student-centred theories put the focus back on students, allowing them greater control over their learning and thus more motivated to learn. However, student-centred theories are not without their flaws, since they fail to account for the social aspects of learning. Socio-cultural theories of learning fill this gap, arguing that learning takes place within specific social contexts and to serve specific needs. 

In my own teaching practice there is a definite focus on socio-cultural theories. Student ownership and engagement, adjustments to their zone of proximal development, and building strong relationships within the learning community of our classroom have been key elements that I have tried to implement in my own practice over the past decade. As such, I have been a strong proponent of literature circles in my time as an English teacher and have found that they can elevate the quality of literary understanding. This module has explored some other interesting strategies, some of which I’ve heard about before, some of which are new. I’m inspired to try a number or adjust of them in the context of the new understandings I’ve developed as a result of this unit: 

  • Publishing staff and student works in a school magazine (Reading Today [RT], 2010)
  • Writing competitions supporting curriculum outcomes (RT, 2010)
  • Silent and wide reading activities (Krashen, 2011; Fisher & Frey, 2018)
  • Read-alouds (Krashen, 2011; Jewett et. al., 2011)
  • Book displays (Krashen, 2011)
  • Food incentives (Krashen, 2011; Jewett et. al., 2011)
  • Recommendations or ‘blessed books’ (Krashen, 2011; Jewett et. al., 2011; Fisher & Frey, 2018)
  • Book clubs involving respected staff to model positive reading habits (Beach et. al., 2011; Jewett et. al., 2011; Fisher & Frey, 2018)
  • Book bento boxes (Bales, 2018)

I think that it is crucial for teachers to have a strong knowledge of children’s and young adult literature. However, the increasingly complex nature of teaching and escalating workloads often mean that staff have little time to read widely in these formats. This is where a well-read teacher librarian who prioritises this activity can show their value and provide displays and book lists to enable staff and students to make effective reading choices. Indeed, it is impossible to read all potentially engaging texts on one’s own, and this is where recommendations by trusted content creators such as Facebook book clubs, librarians on Instagram, GoodReads, practitioner blogs, and other publishers come in handy. Following hashtags such as #LoveOzYA, #booktok, and #WeNeedDiverseBooks can also benefit time-poor teachers looking to connect their students with meaningful, relevant literature.

Last year I can think of three separate occasions where I was in a position to have a positive impact on the reading choices of my students. The first was a Year 9 student who is already a voracious reader and had just devoured the Scythe series; I recommended the Obernewtyn Chronicles and the Throne of Glass novels, both of which spurred entrance into an additional fandom for this student. The second was a student in Year 7 who was looking for something to read for the Premier’s Reading Challenge. After a quick conversation I ascertained that her interests might be excited by Westerfeld’s Leviathan series, which presents an alternative steampunk version of WWI from the perspectives of a girl disguised as an British airman and the exiled son of the assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The third, and most rewarding, example was when I connected a disengaged Year 10 student (who had been forced to repeat) with The Story of Tom Brennan, and his English teacher told me later than he’d been talking about it in class. I was so proud of him and it was such a fantastic moment to see the impact that my recommendations could have on our students. 

It really comes back to the first two Australian Professional Standards for Teachers about professional knowledge: 1. know students and how they learn, and; 2. know the content and how to teach it. While we might not be teaching traditional content in a conventional classroom, our content is literature and we have to know our stuff and our students to effectively support our school’s learning needs. 

 

Bibliography:

Bales, J. (2018, September 24). Book bento boxes. JB on not Just Books [blog]. https://jenniebales.wordpress.com/2018/09/24/book-bento-boxes/ 

Beach, R., Appleman, D., Hynds, S., & Wilhelm, J. (2011). Teaching literature to adolescents. Taylor and Francis.

Fisher, D. & Frey, N. (2018). Raise reading volume through access, choice, discussion, and book talks. Reading Teacher, 72(1), 89-97. https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.1691

Jewett, P. C., Wilson, J. L. & Vanderburg, M. A. (2011). The unifying power of a whole school read. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 54(6), 415-424. https://doi.org/10.1598/JAAL.54.6.3 

Krashen, S. D. (2011). Free voluntary reading. ABC-CLIO, LLC.

A culture of reading (2010). Reading Today [RT], 27(6), 38.

ETL503 5.1 Methods of Collection Analysis

From your readings of module 5.1,  discuss which collection methods are suitable and practical in school libraries, and which ones you will use. 

As teacher-librarians, one of our core responsibilities is to identify the needs of our learning community and then figure out what we have and what we require to ensure those needs are served effectively and efficiently. The readings for this module reveal that a balance of qualitative and quantitative methods can help teacher-librarians discover and meet these needs with our existing collections and future purchases. Some of the methods outlined in Johnson’s (2018) chapter fit the ‘just in case’ collection development paradigm, while others exemplify the ‘just in time’ approach.

In my secondary library, I already use circulation statistics from our library management system, Oliver, as well as from Wheelers ePlatform which hosts our online library collection. For these eresources I will also conduct cost-per-use analysis to determine whether to renew all of our subscriptions later this year (we currently subscribe to 3 packages through Wheelers: ebooks, audiobooks, and the Wellness collection). 

I have just completed a stocktake of our non-fiction, biography, and senior fiction collections since circulation data indicated that they were our least used resources. During this process I was able to conduct a direct collection analysis/shelf scanning, though I didn’t realise that this was what it was called at the time! During this process I was able to not only become familiar with our collection, but also to determine whether these resources were still relevant and in good condition. Our shelves have gone from an overpacked, outdated, uninviting mess to a more streamlined collection which will hopefully allow students to identify relevant materials more effectively. One thing I realised was that sometimes poorly performing resources might still be valuable, but need to be displayed or promoted in a more effective manner. However, this was definitely a time-consuming process and not one which could be conducted easily every year!

 

I’d also love to begin more qualitative methods of collection analysis this year. One of my 2022 goals is to establish a student-led library committee, and we could incorporate other methods such as focus groups and more regular user opinion surveys (for my last one, only 11 staff out of 95 responded). I have also tried to get staff to share their assessments with me so that I can conduct curriculum mapping, but this task often gets put aside and forgotten amidst the rush of term so I’ll try to find new ways to get my hands on their tasks. List checking, for example against lists such as the Suggested Texts for the English K-10 Syllabus (2012) or the NSW Premier’s Reading Challenge, is another useful qualitative way to analyse the relevance and quality of our library collection. 

I think it would be interesting to see whether the gaps in our collection could be filled by resources available at other local libraries; however, while this might be a cost effective way to ensure the needs of our learning community are met, it is hard to quantify using data and when we pass these ‘sales’ (so to speak!) to other libraries they don’t appear on our statistics which makes it difficult to prove the value of the school library’s work to the powers that be. The importance of advocating our value is a recurring theme in this course, and I’d love to be able to include some of these qualitative and quantitative collection analysis methods in our annual School Report to show students, staff, and parents the complicated nature of our work and how we are supporting their learning and recreational needs.

ETL402 5.1 Practical Idea and Digital Text to Support Literary Learning

Explore a strategy, exemplified with a digital text, that will encourage teachers and/or students that would support literary learning.

Spinner, in his 2006 German article (translated into English by Anders, 2019), distinguished between the use of texts to support literacy development and the use of literary texts to support conceptual learning – what he termed literary learning. He argued that 11 aspects define effective literary learning:

  1. Developing the imagination when reading and listening
  2. Using the interaction between subjective involvement and accurate perception
  3. Active awareness of linguistic composition
  4. Understanding the perspectives of characters in literature
  5. Understanding narrative and dramaturgical logic of action
  6. Dealing consciously with fictionality
  7. Understanding metaphorical and symbolic language
  8. Engaging with the inconclusive nature of the process of constructing meaning
  9. Becoming familiar with literary discussion
  10. Understanding genres as prototypes
  11. Developing an awareness of literary history

I found this resource https://www.sbs.com.au/kgari/ on the English Teachers Association NSW Facebook group. It explores the story of Eliza Fraser, who was shipwrecked on K’gari (now more commonly known by its colonial name, Fraser Island). By presenting extracts of her sensationalised account alongside the perspective of the Butchulla people whom she portrays as “savages”, this interactive documentary encourages participants to “erase the myth that influenced history” by literally sweeping Eliza’s damaging lies off the page.

This would be a great resource for secondary students (some of the content may be a bit inappropriate for younger audiences). It presents Eliza Fraser’s story as Australia’s first example of ‘fake news’ and would therefore be a great resource to hook students into a study of news media or philosophical discussions about the nature of truth and representation. The dual perspectives challenge traditional narratives and representations of Australia’s First Nations peoples, which would serve a stage 4-5 English or History class well and develop students’ historiographical understandings, especially when contrasted with other primary and secondary sources. It presents strong links to the HSC Texts and Human Experiences Common Module, and could function as a potent related text. The importance of cross-cultural understanding and the issue of Native Title are also addressed, and at the end of the text it encourages participants to add their voice to the call to recognise the traditional name – K’gari – over the colonial name imposed in honour of a woman who lied about her treatment by the local Butchulla people.

This is a short resource; SBS states that it takes 10 minutes to view. Teacher notes, created by SBS in partnership with Reconciliation Australia, can be found here: https://www.sbs.com.au/sites/sbs.com.au.home/files/kgari_teacher_notes.pdf. In these teacher notes it provides a ‘mock trial’ activity where Eliza’s account is put on trial. Having conducted many of these in my past life as an English/History teacher, I can vouch for their incredible ability to engage even the most reluctant students. By using this interactive, multimodal documentary, teachers and teacher-librarians can explore many of Spinner’s 11 aspects of literary learning and develop their students’ conceptual, curriculum, and multiliteracy understandings.

Top Reads 2021

As 2021 draws to a close, I thought it would be a nice idea to reflect on  the 26 books that I managed to read this year. Here are my favourites!

I know it might not sound like much, but I’m proud of myself for carving out the time to read 26 books; I don’t think I’ve read that many since my carefree, idle days as a school student. Next year I’ll be aiming for 27 and will be tracking them on the newly-found The Storygraph. Wish me luck!

Cheers to the books I’ve read in 2021, and cheers again to the new ones I’ll discover in 2022! 🥳🍾🎉

ETL402 4.1 Digital Publishing Trends

Identify one trend that you have experienced in an educational or library setting and reflect on how this could shape or inform future library services.

Just before she left and I took over, the previous teacher librarian at our school purchased an ebook subscription via Wheelers ePlatform for our library. It was slow to take off (possibly because of our school’s mobile phone/BYOD policy and DEAR procedures) but became more popular during online learning and in the school holidays, which suggests that many of our students enjoy the continued flexible access it provides. A lot of our staff have also taken advantage of the online library collection. During online learning I expanded the collection to include an Audiobook and Wellness package, though I’m not sure if these are providing value for money at the moment. Based on our current data over the past 12 months, it’s worked out at around $13 per resource that has been borrowed. I suppose it’ll take time, effort, and patience (as well as continued advertising and promotion!) to build a general culture of reading in our school, let alone one that relies on digital access! 

However, one issue associated with these online collections (apart from the inequities around technology and internet access) is that the Australian Government’s lending rights payments aren’t currently extended to digital formats despite their increasing popularity. It’ll be interesting to see how this issue proceeds over the next few years.

I’m personally really interested in how transmedia storytelling and gamification can help build engagement with literature. As a classroom teacher I’ve often relied on role-plays and simulations to engage my students and deepen their understanding of historical periods and concepts as well as literary themes. The year I advertised Year 11 Ancient History by stating we’d be investigating Assassin’s Creed: Origins we had enough students to create an extra class!  While a lot of the articles in the readings for this module focused on technology-based gaming as a resource, I think there’s a lot of potential in analogue, ‘old-school’ games too. For instance, a few years ago I was able to teach a unit on ballads and narrative poetry by getting my Year 8s to play Dungeons and Dragons. In my experience I’ve found that Mary Poppins was right, and regardless of the way the game is delivered, if it’s fun, they’ll learn.

One particular example I can think of where transmedia storytelling could be used in the library to support curriculum outcomes and pleasure reading is our Year 9 English unit on Survival. Students could play/watch the prologue of a digital game such as The Last of Us as a fun hook activity; honestly, this introduction is one of the best, most emotional examples of digital storytelling I’ve ever played. This could be supplemented throughout by a role-play/simulation that drew on elements of tabletop gaming to test their own survival skills. The library could provide the space/resources for these activities, and the TL could co-teach the role-play lessons to encourage engagement with library resources and staff.

ETL503 4.2 Creative Commons Licensed Resources

Locate at least two Creative Commons licensed resources. Write a short description of each and explain the CC license chosen.

Resource 1: Disney by Marc Levin
I chose this resource because I know that the House of Mouse can be quite protective of its IP, and I wanted to ask whether this resource was actually covered by Creative Commons. I found it on Flickr at https://bit.ly/3HgzuLT with the generic attribution licence logo, but I’m wondering if it is legally covered by this licence since Disney (the creator and copyright holder) is not the poster of this material. Instead it looks like Levin has taken a screenshot (with a computer mouse icon included). What’s everyone’s thoughts on this?

Resource 2: How Disney Writes a Villain Song by Polyphonic

Watch Video

Duration: 9:42
User: n/a – Added: 19/10/18
I found this on YouTube by filtering my search using the Creative Commons option. This resource was shared under the Creative Commons Attribution licence allowing reuse. Again, I’d be interested to know if Polyphonic’s use of Disney’s images and music is legal to begin with. YouTube’s copyright policy states that creators shouldn’t use content in their videos that someone else owns the rights to; though this video might be covered by the USA’s Fair Use laws and Australian content creators might be covered by our similar Fair Dealing exemptions: research or study; criticism or review; parody or satire; reporting the news; enabling a person with a disability to access the material.

ETL503 4.1 Copyright Questions for Teachers and Students

From your reading of the Smartcopying website, choose some facts you think teachers or students in your school may not be clear about. Develop two questions for each fact – one for teachers and one for students.

From my experience, a lot of people in schools don’t seem to understand that their actions are “unreasonably prejudicing” the rights of the copyright holder and misunderstand the licensing terms we operate under – I’ll admit that prior to studying for this degree I was just as ignorant. Just recently I had a DP email me to check because a staff member thought it was ok to give our students access to free book torrent sites because it was ‘educational’. I also had to step in when a Year 12 student tried photocopying an entire textbook so he could have his own copy over the holidays!

I’ve come up with the following questions:

For staff: Can I show a movie from Netflix to my class as a reward for them finishing their assessment task?

Answer: Under section 28 of the Copyright Act 1968, staff are allowed to show films, television or radio in their classrooms when it is for educational instruction and not for profit. HOWEVER, if this activity does not have an educational purpose, our school is legally required to obtain a Co-Curricular Licence to avoid copyright infringement. Also, Netflix’s Terms of Use 4.2 state that their content may not be shared with individuals beyond your household and shall not be used for public performances, with the exception of a limited number of documentaries (you can find out more here).

If you wish to legally watch a film with your class please ensure that it is a) educational and b) does not break the service provider’s Terms of Use. You can use our school’s Clickview account to avoid these issues.

For more information please refer to the following resources:

Films and Videos in Schools: https://smartcopying.edu.au/guidelines/films-and-videos/

Netflix Terms of Use: https://help.netflix.com/en/legal/termsofuse

 

For students (though staff might need reminding too!): How much can I photocopy from this textbook?

Answer: It depends. You are allowed to copy limited amounts of material without seeking permission from the copyright owner as long as you are copying for:

  • research or study
  • criticism or review
  • parody or satire
  • reporting the news.

The amount you are allowed to copy depends on whether you are unreasonably affecting the rights of the copyright owner to be fairly paid for their work. If the resource is freely available for you to purchase, you should either a) purchase your own copy; b) only photocopy a reasonable portion (a good guide is 10% or one chapter – whichever is greater); or c) seek the copyright holder’s permission to copy more.

No matter how much you copy, you should be labeling it with the details of the copyright owner/author, the name of the resource, where it was copied from, and when it was copied. Where possible, try to copy only what is absolutely necessary or link to the original material instead. Using Creative Commons licensed material will also help you avoid copyright infringement.

For more information about photocopying, please explore the following resources:

Students and Copyright: https://smartcopying.edu.au/students-and-copyright/

Scanning – What am I allowed to do? https://smartcopying.edu.au/scanning-what-am-i-allowed-to-do/

 

Another student in this unit also posed this question, which I think is a great example of how social media in the school context can totally confuse the issue. I’ve copied the information here for future reference, since I’m now a member of the school’s Social Media Committee:

A student is filmed playing a copyrighted song. Can this recording be shared via the school’s Facebook page?

Answer: From https://smartcopying.edu.au/music-copyright-guide-for-schools/

Making audio or video recordings

Under the School Event Licence schools are able to make recordings (this includes both visual and audio recordings):

  • of school events at which musical works are performed or a sound recording is played
  • to play at a school event (eg copying music to CD or MP3 to play at a school graduation)
  • to include in a video or electronic presentation (eg classroom PowerPoint slides, or in presentations at assemblies or functions)
  • to play in class, whether face-to-face or virtual (eg in order to play musical works and sound recordings relevant to material being studied).

The recordings made by the school should display the following notice:

‘This recording has been made under a licence from AMCOS and ARIA for school purposes only’.

Schools must also display the following details of each musical work captured in the recording:

  • the title
  • the composer/arranger
  • the artist and recording company (if the school is using a backing track).

Schools can also authorise members of the school community to make recordings of music performed at school events for private and domestic listening or viewing by members of the school community (eg parents, guardians and friends can make a video of a presentation night at which the school band played).

Recording a school event

Schools can make a recording (including an audio or video recording) of a school event at which musical works are performed and/or sound recordings are played. Schools can also synchronise a musical work or sound recording with an existing recording of a school event (eg to add a backing track).

Remember to label the recording in the following way:

‘This recording has been made under a licence from AMCOS and ARIA for school purposes only’.

You must also display the following details of each musical work captured in the recording:

  • the title
  • the composer/arranger
  • the artist and recording company (if you are using a backing track).

For example, you could have this information flash up in the final credits.

What can I do with the recording of our school event?

Schools can do the following with recordings of their schools event(s):

  • upload the recording to the school website
  • upload the recordings to a password protected school server, intranet or DTE and make this available to parents, guardians and students. For example if parents and guardians are unable to attend an assembly or graduation day, the school could send them a link to the recording on the school’s password protected intranet and allow them to download a copy for their private use.
  • upload the recording to an app that is being used by the school for internal school communications to members of the school community, such as Schoolbag, Seesaw, Compass and SZapp. This is limited to apps being used by the school for internal school communications, and would not include apps like Snapchat or TikTok.
  • email/message a copy or make a physical copy of the recording (eg copy it on to a USB) and distribute it (for a no cost or on a cost-recovery basis) to members of the school community (eg students and parents or guardians)
  • provide a digital or physical copy of the recording to third parties , including other schools and administering bodies, for the purpose of events the school is or would like to participate in (eg competitions and festivals)
  • stream a live communication of the school event from the school’s website.

Uploading a recording or live streaming a school event to social media

Schools can rely on the school’s music licences to upload recordings of their school events, or live stream their school events, to the school’s official social medial page on social media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube. In order to communicate (ie make available) those recordings from those social media pages, school can rely on the licences that APRA AMCOS and record labels have with the social media platforms.

Note, that where a musical work or sound recording is being performed or played at a school event, the post may still be blocked or muted, see ‘Blocking or muting of events on social media’ below.

Blocking or muting of events on social media

Music recording companies (ie record labels) and some music publishers use software to identify potentially infringing content on social media platforms, such as Facebook. When a school live streams a performance where a musical work or sound recording is being played, or uploads a musical work or sound recording, this software may alert Facebook or other social media platforms to mute the recording or send a takedown notice to the school. If you are concerned about a live stream or recording being muted or your school being issued with a take-down notice, contact the National Copyright Unit.

Alternatively, you may want to consider uploading the recording to your school website or password protected digital teaching environment or intranet.

ETL402 3.1 Strategies to Leverage a Love of Reading

Consider the key arguments presented in the theory you have read and how this is evidenced in the varied activities incorporated in the Read Like a Girl project. Identify one strategy that you could leverage in your school or library to promote a love of reading.

 

The big takeaway I got from the readings on this topic was that access is the crucial first step in helping students develop a love of reading. Much like Kevin Costner’s character in Field of Dreams, if we offer enough opportunities for our students to engage with our collections then hopefully it will tap into the one of the 5 reasons Howard (2011) gave for personal pleasure reading: entertainment, escape, relaxation, imagination, and reassurance.

I work in a high school and since teenagers are naturally social creatures (despite their occasionally anti-social behaviours!) I’ve been trying to leverage their love of social capital with the activities I’ve implemented this year in the library, such as:

– Student Media Team which allows students to publish reviews and content that they’re passionate about

– Babble, Books and Breakfast which encourages students into the library space where they can catch up for breakfast with our Welfare team (and hopefully talk about and borrow reading materials while they’re there!)

– Staff and Student Book Club which I’ve been promoting via emails, social media and posters

Next year we’re unfortunately removing our DEAR program and shortening our roll calls to 10 minutes, which means that I’ll have to find new, creative ways to encourage students to read for pleasure. It’ll also be interesting to see if the current cohorting model remains in NSW, since this will drastically limit the scope of my plans. I’m taking a Year 7 English class in 2022, and I’m in discussions with the English faculty to encourage fortnightly lessons in the library which allow students to choose their own reading materials. I’m looking to implement new social gatherings such as First Chapter Friday (where I’ll read a chapter of a favourite book to our students; hopefully other teachers will also jump on board!) and fan-fiction competitions. I’d also love to show that our school values reading achievement in the same way it values sporting achievements, and have put in a budget submission to allow me to purchase and award medals to our monthly top borrowers. Fingers crossed that it gets approved, though even if it doesn’t I will probably take it out of the library budget anyway.

ETL402 Half-Session Reflections: The Function of Historical Fiction in Secondary Schools

Throughout history, humankind has been drawn to create and engage with fictional worlds to explore powerful, complex ideas which force us to question our assumptions, to connect with others, and to uncover deeper truths about ourselves and our world. Neil Gaiman (2013) identifies two key functions of fiction: first, fiction acts as “a gateway drug to reading” (para.9) by opening new worlds and possibilities while developing our literacy skills; secondly, fiction builds empathy, a necessary skill for citizens in our global world (para.9-10). Fiction helps expand our knowledge of the lives, thoughts, and feelings of others, and inhabiting the mind of another person helps us recognise our similarities, thus affecting what we think and how we respond to the world (Giles, n.d. para.3; Kidd & Castano, 2013, p.377; Whitten et. al., 2016, p.49; Short, 2018, p.291).

Some popular themes and trends influencing young adult literature include innovation and playfulness with content and form, multiple narrators, verse novels, and series fiction (Barone, 2010, p.15-17; Short, 2018, p.288). New technologies and the rise of social networking have also impacted children’s literature, increasing the accessibility of texts and authors while leading to a push for greater inclusivity and diverse representations by consumers (Barone, 2010, p.15-17). In recent years this intersection of technology and social awareness has seen the development of hashtags such as #WeNeedDiverseBooks and #LoveOzYA which connect readers with relevant content and build communities of like-minded consumers (We Need Diverse Books, 2021; #LoveOzYA, 2021).

Historical fiction is a powerful tool which can transform students’ understanding of the past while vicariously broadening their understanding of themselves, of others, and of the world around them. Recent Australian young adult historical fiction, such as Nanberry: Black Brother White (French, 2011), Crow Country (Constable, 2011), Sister Heart (Morgan, 2015), Freedom Ride (Lawson, 2015), Our Race for Reconciliation (Heiss, 2017), and Benevolence (Janson, 2020), focus on the experiences of Australia’s First Nations peoples. Through their portrayals of past injustices, texts such as these can play a crucial role in undoing prevailing misconceptions while promoting diversity and reconciliation.

Historical fiction novels, despite their focus on real events, ultimately fictionalise these events, and it can be a fine line between constructing an accurate, sensitive representation of the past and oversimplifying or trivialising peoples’ experiences (Wadham et. al., 2019, p.60, 62). Although historical acceptance is a key aspect of Reconciliation (Reconciliation Australia, 2021, 21-23), there is also the potential for First Nations students to be exposed to confronting material detailing their historical trauma. Historical fiction novels attempting to portray Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history, cultures, and experiences also run the risk of being didactic and tokenistic. Barone (2010, p.16) notes that didacticism has made a comeback in young adult literature, while McDonald (2013) observes that novels with cross-cultural friendships encouraging non-Indigenous characters to reject racism and embrace tolerance have recently become popular (p.120). Garrison (2019) rightly argues that any representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander characters should be genuine and sensitive to the realities of these cultures (p.21), while Heiss argues that many readers are turned off by tokenism in literature (as cited in Case, 2014, para.5). For this reason, many non-Indigenous authors now consult with Indigenous groups to ensure accurate, meaningful representation (McDonald, 2013, p.120). Author’s notes are another strategy employed by composers to add credibility and authenticity to their work and are increasingly popular because they provide much-needed contextualisation for readers keen to see how the fictional fits with the historical (Short, 2018, p.295; Wadham et. al., 2019, p.65). Historical fiction therefore provides educators with a rich stimulus for developing students’ skills in critical thinking and information literacy in addition to acting as a powerful tool to increase their interest, cultural literacy, and empathy.

Research repeatedly emphasises the social, personal, and academic value of reading for pleasure (Herbert, 2012, p.86; Earp, 2015, para. 2; Whitten et. al., 2016, p.48, 51). Yet secondary school teacher-librarians wishing to support their school community in this endeavour are faced with a number of challenges leading to a decline in students reading for pleasure in adolescence, such as lack of time allocated to pleasure reading, competing interests vying for student attention, and negative attitudes towards reading due to its perceived lack of value (Barone, 2010, p.2; Dickenson 2014, para.4; Manuel & Carter, 2015, p.116; Whitten et. al, 2016, p.57). Additionally, due to overcrowded curricula, novels are often used to teach literacy skills instead of as a means of understanding the human experience or for fun (Barone, 2010, p.2-3; Short, 2018, p.291). In secondary schools the so-called ‘educational silo’ mentality often impedes efforts at collaborative, cross-curricular planning (Sheninger, 2016, para.2-4), but teacher-librarians, who engage with a range of students, are uniquely placed to draw together the various syllabus strands into meaningful learning activities. Educators should utilise this expertise if they wish to create effective, authentic learning experiences for their students. Teacher-librarians should select quality resources for their collections which serve the interests and needs of our community (NSW DoE, 2017, p.8; Short, 2018, p.296), preferably from diverse publishers like Magabala Books, and build a culture of reading for pleasure which ideally includes staff, students, and parents by collaboratively teaching, promoting books via read-alouds and displays (both physical and digital), and encouraging activities prioritising student choice such as book clubs and literature circles (Clarke & Nolan, 2014, p.11; Manuel & Carter, 2015, p.124; Earp, 2015, para.15-20; Brugar & McMahon Whitlock, 2019, p.85; Victoria Department of Education and Training, 2020).

 

Bibliography:

Barone, D. M. (2010). Engaging teachers and their use of children’s literature. From: Children’s literature in the classroom: Engaging lifelong readers. Guildford Publications.

Brugar, K. A., & McMahon Whitlock, A. (2019). “I like […] different time periods:” elementary teachers’ uses of historical fiction. Social Studies Research and Practice 14(1), 78-97.

Case, J. (2014, November 5). ‘Getting it right’: Anita heiss on indigenous characters. Wheeler Centre: Books Writing Ideas. https://www.wheelercentre.com/notes/221927959a6b

Clarke, R., & Nolan, M. (2014). Book clubs and reconciliation: a pilot study on book clubs reading the ‘fictions of reconciliation’. Australian Humanities Review 56.

Dickenson, D. (2014). Children and reading: literature review. University of Western Sydney, Australian Government, and Australia Council for the Arts.

Earp, J. (2015, March 3). The power of a good book. Teacher Magazine. https://www.teachermagazine.com/au_en/articles/the-power-of-a-good-book

Gaiman, N. (2013, October 16). Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/15/neil-gaiman-future-libraries-reading-daydreaming

Garrison, K. (2019). What’s going on down under? Part 2: portrayals of culture in award-winning australian young adult literature. The Journal of Research on Libraries and Young Adults 10(2), 1- 34.

Giles, E. (n.d.). Navigating the common module. Literary Worlds Blog. https://englishliteraryworlds.weebly.com/literary-worlds.html

Herbert, B. (2012). When english meets history: exploring the faction genre through action learning. Literacy Learning: the Middle Years 20(3), 85-95.

Kidd, D. C., & Castano, E. (2013). Reading literary fiction improves theory of mind. Science 342, 377-380.

Lawson, S. (2015). Freedom ride. Walker Books.

LoveOzYA (2021). About #loveozya. https://loveozya.com.au/about/

Manuel, J., & Carter, D. (2015). Current and historical perspectives on australian teenagers’ reading practices and preferences. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy 38(2), 115-128.

McDonald, L. (2013). A literature companion for teachers. Primary English Teaching Association.

NSW Department of Education [NSW DoE] (2017). Handbook for School Libraries. https://education.nsw.gov.au/teaching-and-learning/curriculum/learning-across-the-curriculum/school-libraries/your-library

Reconciliation Australia. (2021). What is reconciliation? https://www.reconciliation.org.au/reconciliation/what-is-reconciliation/

Sheninger, E. (2016, December 4). The silo effect. A Principal’s Reflections: Reflections on Teaching, Learning, and Leadership. http://esheninger.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-silo-effect.html

Short, K. G. (2018). What’s trending in children’s literature and why it matters. Language Arts 95(5), 287-298.

Victoria Department of Education and Training. (2020, December 24). Literacy teaching kit: literacy circles. https://www.education.vic.gov.au/school/teachers/teachingresources/discipline/english/literacy/readingviewing/Pages/teachingpraccircles.aspx

Wadham, R. L., Garrett, A. P., & Garrett, E. N. (2019). Historical fiction picture books: the tensions between genre and format. The Journal of Culture and Values in Education 2(2), 57-72.

We Need Diverse Books (2021). Programs. https://diversebooks.org/programs/

Whitten, C., Labby, S., & Sullivan, S. L. (2016). The impact of pleasure reading on academic success. The Journal of Multidisciplinary Graduate Research 2(4), 48-64.

 

*This post has drawn on extracts from my ETL402 Assessment 1 response.

 

ETL402 2B.1a: Representing Indigenous Voices in Our School Library Collection

  • To what extent are indigenous OR multicultural voices represented in your school library or local public library collection?
  • Do you have an unstated or stated selection criteria in the provision of this type of resource?
  • Name children’s texts (2) that you could recommend as important additions to support either:
    • Cross currriculum priority of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Cultures or Asia and Australia’s Engagement with Asia or another indigenous group relevant to your location or context
    • General capability of Intercultural Understanding

To determine the extent to which Indigenous voices are represented in our school library, I searched through our Oliver catalogue. 

A search using the subject “Aboriginal” received 611 hits while the subject “Indigenous” received 57. There were 28 results for “Torres Strait Islander”. A search for “First Nations” only turned up 3 results. However, the three results for the First Nations search were far more recent (2017-2021), whereas the majority of the results for the others were outdated, perpetuating negative stereotypes or using insensitive terms. For instance, several resources were listed under NON305ABO (if I’m cringing, I can only imagine how our students feel when they see that word!), while the oldest resource was from 1972 and used the term ‘Aborigines’. Results for resources on the local Gundungurra, Dharawal, and Darug peoples were likewise limited. The subject search “Aboriginal peoples – Fiction” produced 35 results dating from 1983-2021.

These searches revealed that our library hosts a mix of fiction, nonfiction, picturebook, and audiovisual resources in both our physical and digital collections. A subject search for “authors, Aboriginal” received only 7 results and confusingly included The Rabbits by John Marsden and Shaun Tan, which suggests that our SCIS records are perhaps not up-to-date. 

Looking at the lists of texts and authors in the above searches, I conclude that our collection is largely outdated and seems to prioritise white representations of Indigenous cultures, histories, and experiences. As far as I have been able to determine, the school library does not have a collection development and management policy, let alone a selection criteria which guides the inclusion of relevant Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander resources. I am in the process of completing ‘ETL503 Resourcing the Curriculum’ and will hopefully soon be in a more informed position to construct such a policy for the library. 

Some more recent texts which I’ve added to our collection and could support the Australian Curriculum’s cross-curriculum priority of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Cultures are:

Sally Morgan. Sister Heart. 

  • This short verse novel details the experience of a young Aboriginal girl who is stolen from her family. This would be a fantastic cross-curricular resource for Stage 4 or 5 students. These teacher’s notes differentiate the text for older and younger readers: http://static.booktopia.com.au/pdf/9781925163131-1.pdf 

Anita Heiss. Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia.

Bruce Pascoe. Dark Emu and Young Dark Emu.

  • A controversial reconsideration of pre- and early-colonial Aboriginal Australian culture and farming practices. It would be interesting to consider the historiographical debates presented by contrasting it with Sutton and Walshe’s recent Farmers or Hunter-gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate. There’s a comprehensive teacher’s resource aligned to the Australian Curriculum available here: https://readingaustralia.com.au/lesson/dark-emu/ 

ETL503 2.1: Developing Collections

  • Discuss how the teacher librarian’s expertise and role is different from that required by all teachers.
  • Share ideas on how teacher librarians might effectively collaborate with the school community in the selection of resources in a school with which you are familiar.
  • Consider also how to engage your learners in selection of resources for their school library.
  • Who should have the final say on what is included? Why?

From my understanding of the readings set for this module (and my personal experience working in a high school library), there are a number of ways that the teacher librarian’s role and expertise differs from the expectations of all other teachers. The main three that I can tell are:

a) that the TL’s role is poorly defined and seems to be whatever the school requires, whereas a classroom teacher is working from a clearly defined curriculum document;

b) that the TL’s curriculum knowledge spans multiple subjects, general capabilities, and cross-curricular priorities, whereas in the secondary setting most classroom teachers might only have knowledge of two subject areas (and most likely only work within one); and

c) that TLs are in the privileged position of seeing students across different subject areas throughout their time at the school.

As a result, TLs are uniquely placed to know the diverse interests and capabilities of their students and can use their wide-ranging curriculum knowledge to develop collections to support the needs of their learning community.

However, it takes a village to raise a child and schools are no exception. I inherited a library that still has content from when the school was founded in 1976, which means that there is a lot of material that I simply don’t know about or that is irrelevant to the changing needs of today’s teachers and learners. One way I will get my head around this is by conducting a stocktake in a few weeks time, followed by a review of the physical resources once this subject is completed.

I have also collaborated with members of my school community by sending out a survey to staff asking if they had any recommendations for our library collection, and as a result I was able to stock up on relevant learning materials that will better support the staff as they implement their learning programs. I’m in the process of collecting the units of work for each faculty so that I can design displays and curate resources to help staff and students with their work.

Our library is sadly closed to students due to Covid restrictions and our finances had to be finalised in week 2 of this term so no more purchases can take place this year, but next year I plan to form a library committee with students who can help recommend books and other resources that they and their peers might enjoy and find useful. I feel that this will be useful especially with the development of our manga collection (one of the most popular in our library) since I’m not entirely up to speed with the different series that our students seem to love.

One final way that I’m collaborating with my school community is to build a digital space to complement our physical space. I’ve worked hard this year to build a virtual library using Wheelers ePlatform and promoting it via the school’s official Facebook and Instagram accounts. Next year I’d love to build more excitement and increase student ownership of the library collection by creating ‘unboxing’ videos which showcase our new purchases.

While I believe that libraries should be largely democratic, the final say will be mine. While staff and students can request resources and should definitely have a role in shaping a library that is relevant for them, the expertise and responsibility ultimately lies with the Teacher Librarian. After all, I’m the one who will cop the blame if there are any complaints, and therefore I’m the one responsible for creating a collection development and management policy that can justify purchases and stand up to potential challenges. It’s all well and good for a staff member to request that we stock the Outlander series (true story!) or for students to want more copies of the raunchy Food Wars series (it’s amazing how much our teen boys love these images 😂) but if it doesn’t serve the teaching and learning needs of our school community then I have to be prepared to reject these requests. A well-developed collection development and management policy can be a crucial tool in situations like these.

ETL402 2A: Introduction to Children’s Literature

As an English teacher, I am already quite familiar with children’s literature and the benefits of reading for pleasure. Nonetheless, it has been interesting starting this subject to consider recent research and trends in this area.

One thing mentioned in the research that I can definitely back up with anecdotal observation is the trend for interest in reading for pleasure to drop off between the ages of 9-12. The research mentioned that this could be because of competing demands on children’s time as they get older and a growing sense that reading for pleasure isn’t valued as a leisure activity, especially in contrast with competing entertainment platforms such as the internet and gaming. I also think that for many students their identity as ‘non-readers’ and the perception that reading is something ‘nerdy’ only done by a specific type of person has been established by the time they hit high school. This issue seems to be compounded by the limited amount of books relevant to struggling teen readers (especially boys!). If a student has a lower reading ability in high school they are often limited to texts where the content (characters, events, themes) is more relevant for a younger audience; it would be nice if publishers recognised the need for age-appropriate content and cover designs on easy-to-read books. This is perhaps one area where the flexibility of ebooks and audiobooks could be highlighted by school librarians as a potential solution for students who perceive themselves as ‘struggling readers’.

Also supported by my own observations are the statements in the research about the continued popularity of series fiction. The students who regularly borrow from our school library are often borrowing texts from the same authors or series, which shows that once you hook a reader with a specific set of characters or world they are more likely to continue to engage due to the comfort of familiarity. Many of our manga series such as My Hero Academia,  Death Note, Fullmetal Alchemist, and Fairy Tale are incredibly popular and many of the students read them as a friendship group, which increases their cultural capital within that group. Teacher librarians could capitalise on this by promoting Book Clubs where students and staff read from a curated book list and discuss their experiences of reading these texts. These book clubs can also serve the purpose of reframing student perceptions about who counts as a ‘reader’. Series fiction is also incredibly popular, with titles such as the Wings of Fire and Arc of the Scythe series providing students a chance to engage with an imagined world over the course of several books. Teacher librarians can capitalise on the popularity of these texts by promoting fan-fic activities and through displays recommending their next reads based on their previous favourites.

It can be hard to keep up with trends in children’s literature. One strategy that teacher librarians can utilise is to follow websites and blogs such as Goodreads and Booktopia. Another is to use technology and social media platforms as a way of tracking popular resources, such as the #booktok or #bookstagram tags. A third is to regularly visit bookstores and local libraries (either the physical location or their online space) to see which books are popular right now and engage with the people selling and promoting these resources in a different setting. Most important is the need for teacher librarians to carve out time for their own reading of these texts. Not only will this allow us to engage in meaningful conversations with our students about these texts (increasing our own cultural capital i.e. ‘cool’ factor with certain groups of students!) but it will also allow us to show that reading for pleasure is a valuable activity that should be likewise valued by our school community. It’s hard for us to advocate for the importance of reading for pleasure if we aren’t taking the time to walk the walk (or read the read, as the case may be).

ETL503 1.1: Definition of Collection Management and Collection Development

So here we are again, ready for another session of study! This week in ETL503 we’ve been looking at the idea of ‘collection management’ and ‘collection development’. What’s the difference?

ALIA (2017) notes that the terminology surrounding collection development and management have changed since 2007 due to changing technologies and the impact this has had on library services. Gregory (2019, p.1-2) emphasises the increased complexity of collection development and management in a rapidly changing information landscape.

Johnson (2018) states that when librarians use the terms ‘collection development’ and ‘collection management’ that they are referring to all the activities involved in building and managing library collections, including physical and electronic resources. She distinguishes that ‘collection development’ refers specifically to “the thoughtful process of developing or building a library collection” (p.1) to meet the specific needs of the library community, while ‘collection management’ refers to the treatment and handling of the collection once it has been developed, though these terms are often used interchangeably.

Gregory (2019) defines collection management as “the process of information-gathering, communication, coordination, policy formulation, evaluation, and planning that results in decisions about the acquisition, retention, and provision of access to information sources in support of the intellectual needs of a given library community” (p.xiii). Collection development, on the other hand, “is the subpart of collection management that has primarily to do with decisions that will result in the acquisition of materials” (p.xiv).

I work in a NSW DoE school. I haven’t found a specific definition of ‘collection development and management’ for this context, but the Handbook for School Libraries (NSW Department of Education, 2017) features a section on the provision and management of resources. This handbook outlines that one of the teacher librarian’s key roles is to manage the school’s collection of resources by “selecting, developing, organising and managing information sources, services and appropriate technology to meet the educational, cultural, recreational and professional needs of the school community” (p.8).

 

Sources:

Australian Library and Information Association [ALIA] (2017). “Manual for developing policies and procedures in Australian school library resource centres (2nd edition)”.

Gregory, V. L. (2019). Collection development and management for 21st century library collections: an introduction.

Johnson, Peggy (2018). Fundamentals of collection development and management.

NSW Department of Education (2017). “Handbook for School Libraries.”

ETL401 Assessment 3 Part C: Reflections

Starting out, I had a narrow understanding of the various roles and responsibilities of teacher-librarians. Comparing my blog posts reveals my developed understanding (Lysaught, 2021a cf. 2021b). I had never heard the terms information literacy or fluency, and although I am working in a TL position in a school with inquiry units, they’re mainly PBL units concentrating on the product rather than directed by an information literacy model focusing on the process.

This unit emphasised that students need multiple strategies to help them find, evaluate, and apply information in their lives so they can actively and ethically participate as lifelong learners in the workforce and global community. While nominally “digital natives”, our students aren’t inherently equipped to navigate information, often taking easy solutions, giving up, or believing misinformation (Coombes, 2009; O’Connell, 2012). This unit illustrated schools must explicitly teach information literacy to develop independent, responsible, and respectful information users (Berg et. al., 2018; Kulkarni, 2021). Students must understand their rights and responsibilities as global citizens and cannot do this effectively without the necessary preparation (Lysaught, 2021c).

Information Literacy, embedded in the Australian Curriculum as the oft-forgotten and poorly implemented General Capabilities, develops the 21st century learning skills our students need to navigate increasingly popular internet and social media platforms (Jacobson, 2010; Common Sense Media, 2019; Australian eSafety Commissioner, 2021). Our Generation Z/Alpha students look to their parents as trusted news sources (Notley et. al., 2020), a problematic approach given Generation Y’s ineptitude (Coombes, 2009, p.38). Government legislation has failed to keep up with the evolving information landscape and unethical behaviours (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, 2020, para.70). Schools must step in to fill this void.

This subject proved “information literacy is at the heart of inquiry learning” (Fitzgerald, 2015a, p.17). I now know inquiry units framed by an IL model support Generation Alpha’s preferred learning styles (McCrindle, 2019), accelerating social/emotional learning and learner autonomy (Consortium for School Networking, 2021). Inquiry learning framed by IL models benefits students, teachers, librarians, educational leaders, and parents (Maniotes et. al., 2015 p.212-215). Teacher-librarians should be familiar with multiple models to flexibly serve the learning needs of their students and so I expanded my awareness of inquiry learning models by exploring Big 6 (Big6.org, 2015), PLUS (Herring et. al. 2002, 2007, 2011), the NSW (2020) ISP and Information Fluency Framework (Wall, 2018, 2019, 2021; Cook, 2021; Grimmett, 2021). This gave me a deeper grasp of research processes, my own research methods, and an appreciation for the confused frustration that our students feel!

The ISP/GID model struck me as most useful for my context due to its emotional stages and collaborative practice (Lysaught, 2021d). My research expanded my comprehension of the way GI moves away from unenjoyable imposed questions (Gross, 2006, p.31) to promote the Third Space Merger (Maniotes et. al., 2015, p.22-23) and authentic learning for an authentic audience (Sorensen, 2019, p.30). Crucially, GI encourages transfer of skills across learning areas (Garrison & Fitzgerald, 2017). I envisage GI being successful at my school, though I need to ensure adequate time, planning, resourcing, and staff buy-in: “If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go slow” (Leung et. al., 2021).

One prevailing misconception is teacher-librarians primarily focus on books and reading (Lysaught, 2021a). While improving literacy is important, it isn’t the teacher-librarian’s sole responsibility (Herring, 2007, p.29). Bonanno (2011a) states we should promote our specialist services, look for ways to be relevant, and “claim our space” to avoid becoming an “invisible profession”. I’ve learned teacher-librarians, as information and curriculum specialists, are uniquely positioned to teach information literacy explicitly and develop transliterate communities in ways other teachers are not (Lysaught, 2021e). Research repeatedly shows the positive impacts trained teacher-librarians have on student achievement (Bonanno, 2011b). Active teacher-librarians – supported by and collaborating with their colleagues – act as the glue connecting otherwise disparate learning areas (Lysaught, 2021e, 2021f).

As a result of my work in ETL401, I can now see many ways to positively contribute to my school’s Strategic Improvement Plan goals to enhance learning culture and wellbeing to improve student engagement, results, and belonging. In addition to improving student achievement, collaborative teaching of information literacy through inquiry learning draws together both aspects of our position – our teacher hat and librarian hat – and allows us to increase our visibility, advocate our value, and change public perceptions about our roles. What has struck me throughout this unit is the power of social media/networking as a promotional tool for teacher-librarians; as I move forward in this role I intend to continue learning from colleagues and triumphantly claim my space.

To conclude, I leave you with one final wordcloud of my ETL401 posts:

Word Count: 746

 

Bibliography:

Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. (2020, August 5). The ACCC’s Digital Platforms Inquiry and the need for competition, consumer protection and regulatory responseshttps://www.accc.gov.au/speech/the-acccs-digital-platforms-inquiry-and-the-need-for-competition-consumer-protection-and-regulatory-responses

Australian eSafety Commissioner (2021). eSafety research: the digital lives of Aussie teens. https://www.esafety.gov.au/sites/default/files/2021-02/The%20digital%20lives%20of%20Aussie%20teens.pdf

Berg, C., Malvey, D., Donohue, M. (2018, April 7). Without foundations, we can’t build: information literacy and the need for strong school library programs. In the Library with the Lead Pipe. http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/strong-school-library-programs/

Big6.org (2015). Welcome to the Big6! Inquire every day and every way with the Big6! The Big6. https://thebig6.org/

Bonanno, K. (2011a). ASLA Keynote Speaker: A profession at the tipping point: time to change the game plan. [Video]. Vimeo. https://vimeo.com/31003940

Bonnano, K. (2011b). Opinion: do school libraries really make a difference? Incite 32(5), 5.

Common Sense Media (2019). The Common Sense census: media use by tweens and teens. https://www.commonsensemedia.org/sites/default/files/uploads/research/2019-census-8-to-18-key-findings-updated.pdf

Consortium for School Networking. (2021). Driving K-12 innovation: 2021 hurdles and accelerators. https://cosn.org/k12innovation/hurdles-accelerators

Cook, A. (2021). Shaping a framework for information fluency. Scan, 40(1), 4-10.

Coombes, B. (2009). Generation Y: are they really digital natives or more like digital refugees? Synergy 7(1), 31-40.

Fitzgerald, L. (2015a). Guided inquiry in practice. Scan 34(4), 16-27.

Garrison, K., & Fitzgerald, L. (2017) ‘It Trains Your Brain’: Student reflections on using the Guided Inquiry Design process. Synergy, 15(2), 1-6.

Grimmett, C. (2021). Trialling the Information Fluency Framework: a report from the pilot schools. Scan 40(9), 10-14. https://education.nsw.gov.au/content/dam/main-education/teaching-and-learning/professional-learning/scan/media/documents/vol-40/Scan_40-9_Oct2021_AEM.pdf

Gross, M. (2006). Studying Children’s Questions: Imposed and Self-Generated Information Seeking at School. Scarecrow Press.

Herring, J., Tarter, A. M., & Naylor, S. (2002). An evaluation of the use of the PLUS model to develop pupils’ information skills in a secondary school. School Libraries Worldwide 8(1), 1-24.

Herring, J. (2007). Chapter 2: 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.

Herring, J., & Bush, S. (2011). Information literacy and transfer in schools: implications for teacher librarians. The Australian Library Journal, 60(2), 123-132. https://doi.org/10.1080/00049670.2011.10722584

Jacobson, H. F. (2010). Found it on the internet: Coming of age online. American Library Association.

Kulkarni, M. (2021, January 27). Young people like me need to be taught how to navigate the news. ABC Education. https://education.abc.net.au/newsandarticles/blog/-/b/3926480/young-people-like-me-need-to-be-taught-how-to-navigate-the-news?sf242496742=1

Leung, N., Radziminski, F., & Tortevski, C. (2021, August). Leading literacy change in schools [webinar]. Edutech Conference 2021, Australia.

Lysaught, D. (2021a, July 19). ETL401 assessment 1: what is the role of the teacher librarian? All You Read Is Love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2021/07/19/etl401assessment1/

Lysaught, D. (2021b, August 29). 3.2 the role of the teacher librarian: LIBERating our perceptions. All You Read Is Love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2021/08/29/3-2-the-role-of-the-teacher-librarian-liberating-our-perceptions/

Lysaught, D. (2021c, July 31). 2.5 TL in the information landscape [Online discussion comment]. Interact 2. https://interact2.csu.edu.au/webapps/discussionboard/do/message?action=list_messages&course_id=_57504_1&conf_id=_114040_1&forum_id=_244142_1&message_id=_3722025_1&nav=discussion_board_entry

Lysaught, D. (2021d, September 14). 5.4a information literacy. All You Read Is Love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2021/09/14/5-4a-information-literacy/

Lysaught, D. (2021e, September 14). 5.4b convergence. All You Read Is Love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2021/09/14/5-4b-convergence/

Lysaught, D. (2021f, September 7). 4.3 the TL and the curriculum. All You Read Is Love. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/allyoureadislove/2021/09/07/4-3-the-tl-and-the-curriculum/

Maniotes, L., Harrington, L., & Lambusta, P. (2015). Guided Inquiry Design® in Action: Middle School. Libraries Unlimited.

McCrindle Research (2019). GenZGenAlpha [Information card]. https://2qean3b1jjd1s87812ool5ji-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/GenZGenAlpha.pdf

New South Wales Department of Education (2020). The information process. Learning across the curriculum. https://education.nsw.gov.au/teaching-and-learning/curriculum/learning-across-the-curriculum/school-libraries/teaching-and-learning

Notley, T., Dezuanni, M., Zhong, H. F., & Chambers, S. (2020).  News and Young Australians in 2020: How young people access, perceive and are affected by news media. [Research Report]. Western Sydney University and Queensland University of Technology. https://www.westernsydney.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/1717875/News_and_Young_Australians_in_2020_web.pdf

O’Connell, J. (2012). So you think they can learn? Scan 31, 5-11.

Sorensen, A. (2019). Guided inquiry in Stage 4 history: Collaboration between teacher-librarians and classroom teachers. Teaching History, 53(4), 30-32.

Wall, J. (2018). Information + competency + literacy = fluency. A thought piece. Scan 37(6). https://education.nsw.gov.au/teaching-and-learning/professional-learning/scan/past-issues/vol-37-2018/information-competency-literacy-fluency–a-thought-piece

Wall, J. (2019). Information fluency – a path to explore and innovate? Scan 38(9). https://education.nsw.gov.au/teaching-and-learning/professional-learning/scan/past-issues/vol-38–2019/information-fluency-a-path-to-explore-and-innovate

Wall, J. (2021). Information fluency – a NSW journey. Scan 40(9), 4-9. https://education.nsw.gov.au/content/dam/main-education/teaching-and-learning/professional-learning/scan/media/documents/vol-40/Scan_40-9_Oct2021_AEM.pdf

ETL401 5.4b Convergence

Has the school in which you work (or know best) developed an information literacy policy?

How is information literacy approached in your school or experience?

How is digital citizenship approached in your school or experience?

How can a transliteracy approach expand the teaching role of the TL beyond the traditional information literacy paradigm?

Unfortunately if the school in which I work has developed an information literacy policy, it isn’t widely publicised (and I would assume is therefore making less impact than it otherwise could). Before starting this course I had heard about Inquiry Based Learning; for instance, PBL (Project Based Learning) is a popular phrase and process on the various English and History Teachers Facebook groups I follow and many staff at my school (myself included) have created units based around student inquiry. However, Information Literacy is a completely new term! Oh brave new world, that has such programmes in it!

In my school, we do have a STEM course for our Year 8 students called Project Innovate (PI) which is focused on Inquiry Based Learning. However, lack of time, training, and resources have led to poor student achievement and lack of engagement; there have never been enough students who choose to continue it as a Year 9 elective for it to run. The overall negative experience with PI has resulted in staff reluctance to take this course. It feels more like a punishment than a privilege to be given a PI class! This is a shame because student-led learning should be encouraged and not seen as a chore. Apart from this school-wide Stage 4 initiative, information literacy and digital citizenship are largely left up to individual faculties and teachers to plan for and implement.

Transliteracy is another term I hadn’t heard before starting this course. As a practising English and History teacher I can see great value in a transliteracy approach, since the way students are engaging with information is no longer limited to the printed page but expanded to included a variety of different multimodal texts that they need to navigate, understand and evaluate; the transfer of these skills across KLAs is also something that we should be encouraging! If our students are to succeed in an ever-changing employment market and to become responsible citizens, they need the skills encouraged by a transliteracy approach. As the glue which seeps into the cracks and holds all the other KLAs together, adding elements of transliteracy to an information literacy programme will give teacher librarians even more value within the school community.

On that point, I’ll leave you with a meme (since that’s how so many of our students now communicate!).

ETL401 5.4a Information Literacy

Read:   Fitzgerald, L. & Garrison, K. (2017) ‘It Trains Your Brain’: Student Reflections on Using the Guided Inquiry Design Process. Synergy,    15/2

How might the TL help the school move towards integrated information literacy instruction?

What challenges lie in the way of such instruction?

How teacher librarians and teachers might encourage students to transfer information literacy skills and practices from one subject to another?

The teacher librarian can absolutely help the school move towards integrated information literacy instruction. As shown through the above article, effective collaboration between teacher librarians and classroom teachers in planning and implementing Guided Inquiry units can result in students having a greater understanding of the research process. The article also revealed that GI can increase students’ abilities to transfer knowledge and skills from one KLA to another and increase their confidence and capabilities as lifelong learners. In order to achieve this the teacher librarian must first have a deep understanding of the Guided Inquiry Design Process and be able to apply that understanding to different subject areas. It is important for the teacher librarian to ‘sell’ their skills in this area to ensure that staff are aware of the opportunity to work collaboratively on curriculum design, and for the teacher librarian to identify key staff who might be interested in working collaboratively in this way. The teacher librarian can also deliver professional development to relevant staff, leading their colleagues through the process of programming of a GI unit to ensure that staff are competent in developing and delivering their own GI units in future.

However, the article noted some challenges that can impede the implementation of such instruction. These challenges largely deal with the need for time to effectively collaborate, implement, assess and evaluate these types of programmes. The article revealed that it is important for staff collaborating on GI programmes to understand the philosophy behind Guided Inquiry as well as its processes and scaffolding. Time is also needed for staff to read and apply GI to their own learning and to consider how to best implement it for the students in their class; it is indeed true that what works for one class doesn’t necessarily work for another, and thus teachers are constantly required to rework existing units and resources. Time is a core requirement of collaborative practice and matching conflicting schedules can be a Herculean task. We haven’t even discussed the time it takes to plan and assess student learning and already I’m exhausted! The lack of time coupled with high workloads might also make people reluctant to take risks or leave them feeling uninspired to plan something new.

Another element that was not referenced in the article is the fact that it also takes time to change the public perception around the role of the teacher librarian and to promote our role as information specialists. In my school I have tried to start small by getting staff to share their assessment tasks with me so that I can help support our students and provide relevant resources to help them complete these tasks. Despite my fortnightly reminders, I often end up getting only one or two tasks each term. This is not because my colleagues do not see the value in what I do or the assistance that I can provide, but simply because this task (simple as it might be) is one of hundreds that might populate their weekly to-do lists and often doesn’t register as a priority. It often merits an “I meant to send something!” response. It is an uphill battle to break through the “survival” mode teaching that seems to have taken hold in recent years. However, just like Sisyphus, I’ll keep rolling that boulder up that hill and hope that one day I’ll reach the top. Maybe one day someone will find the energy and meet me there.

 

ETL401 5.3a Information Literacy Models

Discuss either of these two analyses and their potential impact on the need for an IL model in your school.

I chose to examine Bonanno, K. (2014) F-10   inquiry skills scope and sequence, and F-10 core skills and tools. I thought that this was a really useful document. Not only did it concisely sum up the different stages of Guided Inquiry, but it gave great suggestions for different activities and resources for each of the stages across different KLAs. I can see this being very useful in my school context. It would make it easier for staff from different faculties to work with me on a GI unit since the suggested activities mean that half the work has already been done for us. I also liked that it allows for cross-curricular unit design and easy integration of the general capabilities.

For instance, if I was working with an English teacher to plan a Year 9 GI unit on the Holocaust to support their study of Elie Wiesel’s autobiography Night, I could refer to this document’s suggested activities for History, Civics and Citizenship, Design and Technologies, Digital Technologies, ICT, as well as Critical and Creative Thinking. In the Open stage we could ask students to engage with the Ask 6 Ws (what, when, where, which, who, why) and get students to put their existing knowledge on this topic into a collaborative workspace such as Stormboard (suggested on the document) or Jamboard (available to DoE teachers via their Google Suite link). This could function as a sort of pre-test activity and allow students and staff to:

– look for aspects of the topic that engage

– identify key words, concepts, ideas

– pose leading questions for discussion and exploration

– use democratic processes to reach consensus on a course of action and plan for that action (i.e. it could help determine which students will work together for the remainder of the unit)

However, in my school context we have a number of students who are working well below their stage level in a number of subject areas. I suspect that the competencies described in each column might be a bit too much for some of our students. This wide variation in abilities could be a barrier or make it difficult to implement GI in my school. Therefore I would likely have to utilise suggested activities from the prior stage column to ensure that students are achieving within their zone of proximal development.

ETL401 4.3 The TL and the Curriculum

What is an appropriate role for the teacher librarian in curriculum development?

What benefits can a school obtain from the active involvement of the teacher librarian in curriculum development?

Should a principal expect that teachers would plan units of work with the teacher librarian?

How are students disadvantaged in schools that exclude the teacher librarian from curriculum development?

A key element of the teacher librarian’s position is as curriculum expert and this role provides TLs with the opportunity to be collaborative practitioners and leaders who see the “big picture” across the school. Particularly in the secondary setting, faculties often tend to be separated into distinct academic tribes and the TL can break through this division to unify programmes and allow the development of cross-curricular activities which allow students to achieve a variety of different outcomes more easily. Teacher librarians can also provide their colleagues with curriculum support and help develop resources that are relevant, current and differentiated according to the interests and abilities of their students. Since TLs are a constant presence in the school experience for many students, they can also provide a common link across year groups and subject areas for students as well as staff.

Since this is an element of our role, it is not unexpected if a principal does expect that teacher librarians should work collaboratively with their colleagues in this way. In fact, it was one of the selection criteria that I had to meet in order to gain permanency in my current role. Our role in collaborate planning and curriculum development allows us to increase our visibility and demonstrate our value to the school community while giving us the opportunity to demonstrate ongoing proficiency for accreditation purposes. However, if principals expect this of their staff then they should be allowed the resources and time to do the job effectively. Schools where this is not an expectation or not supported effectively will likely continue to assess students according to their separate faculty tribes. They will lack a holistic, cross-curricular approach to teaching and learning and have a narrow understanding of the different resources that can support student achievement. There will also likely be limited understanding and teaching of information literacy and fluency which disadvantages our students in the current economic and political environment. Students may also not feel as supported, experience higher levels of frustration and as a result disengage from the assessment and research process, and be less likely to attain the information fluency that is vital to their continuing capacity as lifelong learners. Teacher librarians, when properly supported, can function as the figurative glue which holds everything together; it stands to reason that schools which don’t utilise their skills effectively would therefore be disadvantaged.

ETL401 4.1 Inquiry Learning: Some Thoughts

Are the acquisition of 21st century skills and the focus on accountability mutually exclusive?

What issues might stand in the way of inquiry learning in the school?

What issues might stand in the way of collaboration between teachers and teacher librarians to carry out inquiry learning?

I don’t believe that accountability and the acquisition of 21st century skills are necessarily mutually exclusive. Accountability can help us to focus our practice and become more effective teachers through its emphasis on evidence and reflection. However, the increasing complexity of this task is not given any extra time but expected to be completed on top of everything else and thus seems to be an additional afterthought for teachers’ workloads. Accountability procedures such as the development of PDPs, observation and submission of accreditation often feel like tick-the-box activities that are not necessarily effectively aligned with our actual practice. Perhaps more meaningful integration and more time is needed.

Increasing workloads and minimal free time are massive issues that I can foresee hampering my efforts to implement inquiry learning at school. Even though I work with some teachers who would be interested in this type of collaboration, finding time in our already busy schedules would be a huge ask. The increased workload resulting from the demands of online learning (not to mention the logistics) make collaboration in this current climate almost impossible. Even when we return to face-to-face learning, there’s no guarantee that the time we set aside to work on a collaborative project like this would be uninterrupted, and considering the difficulty we were experiencing in finding casuals to cover absent colleagues there is a high chance that these planning sessions would be instead taken up by one or more involved staff members being required to supervise these extra classes. It would be very hard to implement something on this scale when it feels like most of our staff are in ‘survival’ mode.

ETL401 4.1a Constructivism and Outcomes Based Learning: A Research Article

Sorensen, A. (2019). Guided inquiry in Stage 4 history: Collaboration between teacher-librarians and classroom teachers. Journal of the History Teachers’ Association of NSW (Dec) p.30-32.

I found this article as part of this module’s activities. It fits nicely with my own experiences as a history teacher and is relevant to my early plans for the third ETL401 assessment task.

I found it interesting that this article opened by considering the etymology of history – ‘historia’ – in order to the emphasise the potential of inquiry based learning in this subject area. This article broke down the key aspects of Guided Inquiry in an easy to understand format:

  • Authentic task/audience
  • Student choice
  • Curiosity
  • Questioning
  • Reflection

It also referenced the 7 stages of a full Guided Inquiry unit – open, immerse, explore, identify, gather, share, create, evaluate – which helped me to get my head around the GI process.

The references to actual practice, with consideration of what worked and what didn’t, were particularly useful for me as I try to understand Guided Inquiry and plan my own unit for the assessment task. Strategies that worked included:

  • hosting curated online research resources (pathfinders) and worksheets on the school’s LMS so that students can access them easily
  • providing outlines of each lesson with directions for students
  • collaboration between a) TLs and classroom teachers; b) students in each group; and c) high school and primary school students

Open/Immerse

  • explicit teaching of the skills required to successfully complete each stage of the Guided Inquiry
  • use of visuals to pique student interest (e.g. laminated images, snippets of text)

Explore/Identify/Gather

  • students writing down a list of topics/ideas/people that the were interested in pursuing; staff collated these and used them to form groups based on student interest
  • use of the Cornell notetaking method to record relevant information
  • synthesis of notes using a Lotus Chart

Share/Create/Evaluate

  • creation of a final product that was meaningful for students and displayed to create a sense of pride, belonging e.g. a picture book to read to a feeder primary class (creates authentic audience), paintings, models, posters
  • evaluation of individual and group progress

Overall this article has given me an interesting account of how practitioners have implemented Guided Inquiry in their school context, and some of these strategies would no doubt work in my own school also. Interestingly, the notetaking worksheets would provide excellent evidence for accreditation, and these skills would be extremely useful to develop for a variety of student subject areas and serve our students well if they were confident in this area by the time they reached Stage 6.

ETL401 3.4 Advocacy, Accountability, and Research

Choose one of the AITSL standards and look at the ASLA Evidence Guide For Teacher Librarians in the Proficient Career Stage. Consider the evidence that ASLA provides for the achievement of that standard and how you can show that you are meeting this standard. 

Since I’m generally a methodical person, I’m going to make like Julie Andrews and start at the very beginning since it’s a very good place to start.

 

Standard 1: Know Students and How They Learn

1.1 Physical, social, and intellectual development and characteristics of students: proficient teachers use teaching strategies based o knowledge of students’ physical, social, and intellectual development and characteristics to improve student learning.

This standard really is the foundation for everything we do as teachers, and it is no different in our role as teacher librarians. In fact, TLs are possibly better placed than many classroom teachers to know the vast majority of students in our schools since we are a “constant in the learning environment over time.” (Bush and Jones as cited in Lamb, 2011, p.33). I think that the physical space of a library can provide excellent evidence that we are meeting this standard. Each area of the library links to Thornburg’s (2013) reimagining of traditional learning spaces as campfire, cave, and watering hole. Annotated pictures of these spaces would be useful forms of evidence.

The physical arrangement of our lower library space was dictated to the previous TL by higher powers in order to create an adaptable, open-plan learning environment which can function as a ‘campfire’ or a Makerspace. Flexible seating can be arranged in a multitude of ways to facilitate a variety of learning styles and teaching methods. Before the lockdown and online learning began I was in the process of putting together suggested seating charts so that staff could easily get students to rearrange these desks as required. These charts would be an easily submitted form of evidence.

So many students use our school library as a ‘safe space’ away from the bulk of the chaos in the playground. Many of these students are neurodivergent and so I’ve created a “quiet space” on our mezzanine level near the quieter non-fiction section where students can study or relax in peace and quiet with minimal disruptions. This roughly correlates to Thornburg’s concept of the ‘cave’ learning space and has been so popular that I am looking at options to expand (though not sure how given the limitations of space!). This also correlates to the Upper Library which is currently used as a Senior Study area.

Our manga section is currently the most popular, and so I have moved furniture to make a flexible seating area near these shelves that can function as a ‘watering hole’ space where students can chat in their breaks or move away from the bulk of the group during class time. I have adjusted the seating near our fiction section on the opposite site of the lower library to mimic this ‘watering hole’ and provide further opportunities for students to learn through social interactions.

To facilitate our students’ needs for printing services (one of our most popular services), I have established a dedicated printing zone with stand up desks for students to work on laptops while they wait in line for the printer. This is close to the circulation desk to ensure that troubleshooting can be accessed easily and quickly (this is a frequent need for our student population), and multiple copies of printed How To guides are displayed to assist student independence in this process. These guides could easily be submitted as evidence for accreditation if needed.

If I was submitting this as evidence for my accreditation, I could also provide evidence of my attempts to create a “virtual” library space using websites and social media. Recently, McCrindle Research (2019) identified that our incoming students – Generation Alpha – are going to be more visual, student-centred learners than the previous Generation Z and rely more on virtual learning spaces. Research from Australia and the UK also suggests that they are increasingly engaged with social media platforms as a way of getting their entertainment and information (Common Sense Media, 2019; Notley et al., 2020; Australian eSafety Commissioner, 2021). My ongoing efforts in these online spaces is currently focused on starting conversations about all sorts of different reading habits, with the hope that this will allow our students to recognise the validity in their own reading behaviours and thus begin to identify as readers.

ETL401 3.3 The Role of the Principal and the TL

Share your ideas about the ways in which Principals can enable the role of the TL, and how  TLs might enable the role of the Principal. 

I have seen what is possible when Principals and Senior Executive support a TL, and I have seen the detrimental impacts when this key relationship is damaged or toxic.

In so many ways Principals and Senior Executive staff determine the culture of the school. Fairness, trust, and respect are crucial in developing a positive school culture and ensuring teacher buy-in. However, this relationship is a two-way street.

I have witnessed the consequences of a lack of fairness, trust, and respect on the library. The previous TL had many initiatives rejected and perceived that this was because of personality clashes rather than sound policy decisions (as an outside observer I am not confident to make a judgment either way!). However, the damage caused by years of increasingly negative interactions affected not only the library staff but ultimately the entire school community, since the previous TL was often absent, meaning that library services and resources were largely inaccessible and in many ways neglected, and that her contributions were generally dismissed or went unnoticed.

I personally have been very fortunate to have the support of my Principal. She encouraged me to apply for the temporary position and again when it became permanent. She has always made me feel that she is approachable and open to new initiatives, and has been a key supporter in helping me increase the visibility of the TL position in the school community by starting/continuing conversations on Facebook promotion posts and going out of her way to send content for these initiatives. She has also helped me establish a Student Media Team. I have yet to have any initiatives rejected and genuinely appreciate her support. Having said that though, I’m careful to “play the game” and align all of my proposals to our school’s Strategic Directions, backed up with evidence and data.

It is a shame that the previous TL did not (for whatever reason) have the same experience, but our contrasting encounters emphasise how important it is to develop strong relationships with all staff, but particularly with the decision makers. To quote Hamilton: “When you got skin in the game, you stay in the game/But you don’t get a win unless you play in the game […] I’ve gotta be in the room where it happens!”

ETL401 2.5 The Teacher Librarian in the Information Landscape

Why it is important to have an understanding of the broader information landscape?

How you think the information landscape will affect your role as a TL in a school?

This week I fell down the rabbit hole. What started as a seemingly simple search for “most active social media platforms 2021” quickly spiralled into a flurry of pages on algorithms, business models, data use and abuse. Many of these things I’d heard about in passing but had never really had the time to delve into on a more meaningful level.

Technology has obviously had an immense impact on the information landscape. Some of this has been positive – for instance in bringing together marginalised individuals, or making information more accessible to people with disabilities. Yet there are a number of downsides to the digital information landscape that we cannot ignore. Therefore it is crucial that teacher librarians have not just an understanding of the broader information landscape, but that we have a deep knowledge and maintain currency about these evolving issues. If we do not, we cannot effectively fulfil our roles as information specialists. It also struck me with the reading from the modules and my own research this week that people will not be able to enjoy their rights of access to information if they lack the skills to navigate and evaluate these information platforms.

I found it interesting to consider our rights and responsibilities regarding information access. I think that a lot of people focus on their rights (for example, their right to an opinion) but often forget that there are associated responsibilities around our interaction with the information landscape. We have the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and the right to seek, receive and impart information. We have the right to privacy, as well as the right to access the infrastructure which will allow us access to information (though as I discussed in my previous post, this is not always guaranteed!). In this context libraries of all kinds play a crucial role in ensuring that peoples’ rights to access information are being upheld. However, it was interesting for me to consider that these rights could be restricted by law when necessary, if they were deemed to contravene the rights of others, or if they negatively impacted national security or order, or public health or morals. We live in a world which blurs the lines between facts and opinions, and the idea of who gets to determine if something is ‘necessary’ or harming ‘public morals’ was also interesting for me to consider. It is important to remember these responsibilities, especially in times of global pandemic such as ours. Yet the subjective element here leaves it open to potential abuse and censorship, and the fact that our national commitment to these rights and responsibilities is more of an implicit understanding than something enshrined in law is problematic. For instance, what if a family complains that Harry Potter is on the shelves, or content that they see as promoting Black Lives Matter or LGBTQI+ agendas? Or conversely, that there isn’t enough diverse content? The paradox of tolerance is something to consider here, and the response a teacher librarian would get in one school context might differ in another. 

Our right of access to information is further complicated by issues of technological redundancy and convergence. In particular I couldn’t help but think about my own school context and the fact that all too often outdated or damaged technology was not updated, repaired or replaced due to budget constraints. Are funding arrangements, budget allocations and BYOD policies creating what Floridi called “digital favelas” in some schools? I also couldn’t help but consider my own failings with certain technological tools. I normally consider myself pretty tech-savvy, but for the life of me I cannot figure out the 3D printer I inherited when I became the teacher librarian. We’ve recently had a new deputy push for Macs to be integrated into our programs. Heaven help me!

Finally, my research and the module readings this week prompted me to consider the ways that our students are accessing information as digital natives. Modern students are primarily engaging with information (whether for their own entertainment or not) in virtual spaces. In Purcell is correct in her assertion that promotion of our services and resources is vital to our role as teacher librarians, then should we adapt to the online world and utilise social media marketing strategies that will reach and engage them with our content more effectively? Our school community engages heavily with Facebook and we’ve recently created an Instagram page to encourage greater student engagement. However, what are our ethical responsibilities when it comes to using and encouraging the use of these platforms? Are we leaving people in our school community vulnerable to data miners who could potentially sell their information and content to advertisers, politicians or government agencies? Are we pushing them to use platforms which could expose them to algorithms and content which could potentially cause harm? Are we encouraging them to become “unpaid machine trainers” whose data could be used to teach the very machines that might replace them in the workforce? On the surface it appears that having a library Instagram account is a fun way to get students interested, but in reality it is a potential ethical minefield. As teacher librarians we must be mindful of our interactions with these platforms and their function in the information landscape, and as information specialists encourage our school community likewise to maintain awareness of their behaviours.

ETL401 2.3 The Information Landscape

Are your ideas developing about the information society?

What do you think this term means?

Why is it important for the TL to have an understanding of the information landscape?

For me it was interesting to consider the concept of the Information Society as one which contrasts to earlier agrarian or industrial societies. These earlier ‘revolutions’ had a drastic impact on the lives of people at the time, and I absolutely agree that for many of us changing and emerging IT is impacting our lives too. The fact that I can engage in this degree completely in the “virtual world” while at the same time teaching online would have been incomprehensible even as recently as my years in High School during the early 2000s. Add to the mix the fact that I am getting notifications on my smart watch about my online banking and I’m able to ask Google Home questions about my calendar, the weather, or what an “information society” is. That reminds me, I’ve got to add milk to my online Woolies order … We are well and truly on our way to becoming Floridi’s “inforgs”, if we’re not there already.

I would love to see what someone like Karl Marx would make of our relationship to the current means of production though. Perhaps it’s time for us to write another manifesto dealing with what Floridi called “the tragedy of the digital commons”? “A spectre is haunting the world – the spectre of information technologies!”

The concept of digital poverty absolutely stood out to me as a result of this module and its associated readings. The idea that some people have access to technology and its associated infrastructures and some don’t has really hit home for me during online learning. I teach at a school in the South West of Sydney and we have a very diverse student population, including some students who come from families who are quite affluent and others who are in social housing. We therefore have a number of families that we have had to provide laptops, wi-fi dongles etc. to in order to support their learning online. However, technological infrastructure also plays a part in the concept of the “information-rich” and the “information-poor.” Some of our more wealthy families live in areas that are black-holes for internet reception, which has severely impeded several of our students (especially in Year 12!) from accessing the same information and learning opportunities as their peers. Digital poverty in an information society therefore doesn’t necessarily always follow the same lines traditionally reserved for economic considerations of the term (don’t even get me started on “alliterate” individuals, or individuals who for whatever reasons choose not to engage with authenticated, reliable sources of information. That is a separate rant).

I think that it is absolutely crucial for teacher librarians to not just have an understanding of the information landscape, but to maintain currency in ways of ethically and effectively navigating this complex and ever-changing world. Purcell argued that our role as “information specialist” was one of five key elements to the teacher librarian’s function within a school community. Even though she separated it into its own category (and placed it third in her list) I would argue that our role as information specialists is inherent to our other roles as leaders, instructional partners, teachers and program administrators. If we don’t maintain a deep understanding of the changing infosphere, how can we lead others in designing and implementing curriculum that is relevant to the needs of our students? How can we effectively ensure that our students leave our care as engaged, critical thinkers who will be not only effective workers in this changing world, but also digital citizens that can help mitigate some of the issues caused by unethical tech company policies (Amazon, Facebook: I’m looking at you) and lagging Government action? Our role is also to provide equitable access to quality information to overcome the potential effects of digital poverty.

ETL401 3.2 The Role of the Teacher Librarian: LIBERating Our Perceptions

It has been an absolutely INSANE time over the last few weeks. Teaching online, HSC assessment marking and reporting, and my own preparation for the second ETL401 assessment have left me feeling a little brain-dead. I’m therefore going to start this post by channeling my inner high-school debater and turning to the good book – i.e. the Dictionary – for guidance:

English: library (derived from Latin liber meaning “book”)

German: bücherei (roughly translates to “bookery”)

Spanish and Italian: biblioteca (from Ancient Greek bibliothekē meaning library; derived from biblio “book” + theke “place, box, receptacle”)

French: bibliotheque (as above).

Mandarin: 图书馆 [Túshū guǎn] (meaning “picture or image” + “book” + “gallery”)

I could go on, but I feel that my point is becoming clear. In many languages around the world, libraries are etymologically associated with the idea of “books” and this public perception persists regarding the role of the Teacher Librarian in schools. However, when we examine the day to day functions of TLs, the complexity of the position becomes apparent and books, wonderful as they are, are often not at the centre of academic or practitioner descriptions of our role.

In his comprehensive (if older) review, Herring (2007) argues that libraries should be seen as “a centre of learning first and a centre of resources second” (p.27). Books, fundamentally useful resources for learning though they are, therefore should not necessarily be the priority of TLs in the current information landscape. He states that many school library mission statements give “unnecessary prominence” (p.27) to the idea of reading as central to the school library’s purpose. Although I would argue that libraries certainly do have the capacity to support the development of reading for pleasure (especially given that many classroom teachers are dealing with overcrowded curricula and often feel they lack the necessary skills, particularly in the secondary setting), Herring emphasises the importance of TLs primarily as specialist teachers of information literacy who lead the collaborative development of learning programs and resource collections to meet the needs of their students and staff, with the end goal of allowing them to become independent, life-long learners. In Figure 2.1 (p.30), Herring lists the following roles as integral: teacher; librarian; information services manager; information literacy leader; information specialist; curriculum leader; instructional partner; website developer; budget manager; staff manager; fiction and non-fiction advocate. Based on my experience, I feel that he leaves out: PR and marketing manager; ICT support; technology resource manager; casual cover supervision; counselling service; diplomats; inclusivity advocate; and interior designer. Nonetheless, his list is quite comprehensive and useful for understanding the vast array of roles we are expected to fill. Teacher librarians function as the glue that holds everything together; it seems we have to fit into all the nooks and crannies to do our jobs!

Within his analysis, Herring referenced a number of different professional documents from around the world. ASLA (2003) focused on three key roles of the TL: 1) curriculum leader; 2) information specialist; 3) information service manager. A 1998 publication from the United States listed our roles as: 1) teacher; 2) instructional partner; 3) information specialist; 4) program administrator. A Canadian document published in 2005 emphasised TLs leadership in: 1) information literacy and inquiry processes; 2) ICT; 3) teaching and curriculum planning; 4) collection management. A UK publication (2004) emphasised the proactive role TLs must play in innovations for education, which supports the positions held by Bonanno (2011) and Valenza (2010). Ultimately, TLs must be flexible and ready to adapt to the changing needs of the information landscape, and our function as information specialists is primarily an “educational as opposed to an administrative role” (Herring, 2007, p.32). Drawing from Herring’s analysis, I conclude that our role in collection management and as information service providers should be framed by our role as information specialists, and determined by the interests and needs of our school community – staff, students, and parents alike. Teacher Librarians are no longer limited to books but must expand into the digital world to ensure that we are relevant to our community, effectively promoting our skills, services, and resources, and engaging our students with meaningful opportunities to participate in their own learning.

Purcell (2010) boils our function down to five key roles: leader, instructional partner, information specialist, teacher, and program administrator. Information clearly plays a role in many of these areas, supporting Sheerman’s argument that “A TL’s primary role is that of an information specialist, trained in the teaching and integration of information literacy skills and inquiry skills across the curriculum, as well as being a library collection manager” (2013, p.4). Although books certainly do play a part as tools of teaching and learning, they are not explicitly mentioned in either Purcell’s or Sheerman’s analysis.

I thought Purcell’s idea to keep a diary of each day’s required tasks was a great way to understand how these roles function in my school context and to help me understand how better to serve the specific needs of my community. I’d actually read Purcell’s article as preparation for my first ETL401 assessment, so it was interesting to revisit her arguments now that wider reading has granted me a (hopefully) deeper understanding of the TLs position in schools. In particular, her emphasis on the need for TLs to effectively promote themselves and their library was instrumental in developing my line of inquiry for the second ETL401 assessment task, where I explored the way that social media platforms influence our relationship with information and each other, and the implications that this has for TLs.

In her 2011 deconstruction of the TL’s varied roles, Lamb used the acronym PALETTE to examine the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and dispositions we will need moving into the future. Her concept of the Media Specialist’s PALETTE included a focus on: People; Administration; Learning; Electronic information; Technology; Teaching; and Environments. Interestingly, Lamb also identified the importance of promotion and advocacy in this changing environment: “If the school media specialist is to survive … [they] must demonstrate their value” (p.35). While they don’t state it explicitly, both Purcell and Lamb emphasise that modern TLs play vital roles as Social Media Manager, Customer Engagement Analyst, and Chief Marketing and Promotions Director.

I thought that it was interesting that Valenza’s 2010 “Revised Manifesto” was published around the same time as Bonanno’s 2011 ASLA speech, since both emphasised that attitude is a key element to the TL’s success: “not moving forward is not an option” (Valenza, 2010, para. 3). There was clearly a significant amount of ennui and existential angst amongst TLs at the start of this decade! Valenza was one of the few authors who explored the idea of reading in the context of the TL’s role, yet interestingly the focus was still not on traditional books, but instead shifted to encompass new technologies and formats: “You expand your notion of collection” (para. 40). Valenza’s manifesto, similar to so many discussed previously, discussed how TLs must be flexible, innovative and relevant regarding the changing information landscape, our collection development, our commitment to providing equitable access for all students, the importance of collaborating with our audience at all levels, teaching and modelling ethical information behaviours, implementing new technologies in meaningful ways, providing opportunities to professionally develop our staff (this was in line with Sheerman’s 2013 Guided Inquiry approach), and to provide opportunites for our students to become lifelong learners. While I fundamentally disagreed with the premise that we should be actively available 24/7, there were nonetheless a variety of useful, practical suggestions in this manifesto which I can see myself testing or adapting in future.

As Herring so astutely noted, “it is clear that no teacher librarian could fulfill all of these roles at the same time” (2007, p.31). I wholeheartedly agree as I sit here fighting down the rising tide of panic at the thought of being everything, to everyone, at all times. Have I bitten off more than I can chew? Just between you and me, I found it interesting that (in addition to limited references to books) none of these examinations referenced one of the most common functions I personally have been called upon to perform in my new capacity as TL: armchair psychologist, ersatz counsellor, and life-coach. The centrality of the TL to the school community (coupled perhaps with the misconception of abundant time) has led many students (and staff!) to seek out my advice for all manner of issues. While I am grateful to be trusted in this way and to have the potential to positively impact my school community through these meaningful connections, it does highlight one of the issues consistently raised in the above readings: that TLs MUST promote their services, skills, and resources effectively to dispel misunderstandings and misconceptions about our role. This promotion, in my school context at least, seems to be the biggest area of need and one from which all other aspects of the role spring. After all, I could have amazing, collaborative programmes and resources which will ultimately fail to make an impact if no one knows about them or engages with them. In order to facilitate this priority, I am working very closely with the lovely support and administration staff, the Communications Committee, and a newly minted Student Media Team. It is difficult considering the misconceptions around our position, but I am also trying to follow Herring’s advice and focus on my educational, not administrative role for the time being.

I will leave you with one final thought: a word cloud of this blog post. Hopefully this will visually illustrate the complex, varied, multifaceted roles expected of a modern teacher librarian. We aren’t just about the books; let’s liber-ate ourselves!

ETL401 3.2 The Role of the Teacher Librarian: An Invisible Profession?

ASLA 2011. Karen Bonanno, Keynote speaker: A profession at the tipping point: Time to change the game plan from CSU-SIS Learning Centre on Vimeo.

In her speech, Bonanno raised several cogent points about the roles of Teacher Librarians and the risk we face of becoming an “invisible profession” if we fail to promote our skills, resources, and services effectively to our school community. By adapting the Five Finger Plan to Success to the TL’s context, Bonanno emphasised that we need to understand our strength of character, FOCUS (know the outcome and follow it until achieved), understand and develop our brand (with special consideration of the values we stand for), build relationships with the 10-30% of staff who are likely to work with us(particularly with key figures such as Principals), and consider the little things we can do each day to add value to our school community.

I found Bonanno’s perspective refreshing in many ways. The key message that we should reframe the difficulties we experience as opportunities to promote our continuing relevance was something that I personally found quite relevant given the overall (and largely understandable!) negativity among the wider teaching profession in our current climate. I loved the idea of “claim your space” and have been working over the last few weeks to build a social media presence for our school library in an attempt to promote our online library resources and recent reading initiatives, such as the staff and student Book Club. Bonanno’s message, along with Vanessa Trower’s Edutech presentation “The Learning Brand: What Marketing Has Taught Us Learning Professionals to Drive Engagement and a Learning Culture”, revealed a variety of strategies that I can utilise moving forward as I “claim” this virtual space on social media. This is especially important considering that while we are learning from home we cannot access our physical library spaces!

One final thought: it is interesting that in many discussions about the TLs role in academic and practitioner content that there is limited reference to the importance of marketing and promotions. So many people have identified that the key roles of TLs include our capacity as information specialists, instructional partners, ICT experts, and resource managers. Yet it seems that if we do not effectively promote these skills and services, we do in fact risk becoming an “invisible profession.” It up to us to ensure that this does not happen.

ETL401 Assessment 1: What is the role of the Teacher Librarian?

ETL401 Assessment 1: Online Reflective Journal

Part B: Blog Post

Reflecting on your experience as a teacher before you became interested in working in a school library, write a 500 word piece about your understandings of the role of the Teacher Librarian in schools.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Teacher Librarians are white, female, middle-aged, bespectacled, and obsessed with books. This is certainly the impression left after a brief Google Images search:

Indeed, even the title of this blog reinforces the long-held, pervasive stereotype that Teacher Librarians primarily work with books. How is it that, despite the increasingly diverse Teacher Librarian population and the ever-evolving complexity of their role, these widespread assumptions still propagate? Public perceptions of teachers’ roles are informed by personal experiences; the same is true for the role of the Teacher Librarian. 

My own experiences of Teacher Librarians run the gamut from kind and enthusiastic lovers of literature to unwelcoming and intimidating guardians of knowledge. My first introduction to the world of Teacher Librarians was during my Kindergarten year in 1993. Her friendly approach encouraged me to browse to my heart’s content, leading me to borrow a book every single day that year and starting a love of reading that would last a lifetime.

By the time I reached High School in the year 2000 technology had evolved and the information landscape alongside it. Yet my main impression of our Teacher Librarian was of an imposing and unfriendly woman who saw our presence as a nuisance. To us she was what Osler called “the fiery dragon interposed between the people and the books” (Osler, as cited in Purcell, 2010, p.31). Our library was stocked with minimal technological resources and it seemed there was no one willing or capable to help us navigate the new online world.

In 2020 when I decided to take up the mantle of temporary Teacher Librarian, I was largely unaware of the complexity of the role brought about by the evolution of the “infosphere” (Floridi, 2007, p.59). The general perception among staff at my school was that the Teacher Librarian’s role was something vaguely to do with books and could be fulfilled just as easily by one of our office ladies. It has been a challenge as I stepped into the role firstly to understand the varying aspects of the Teacher Librarian’s role and secondly to promote this understanding amongst the school community. 

A few months ago the position opened up to permanent applications, so I decided to apply. As a result of my experiences as a student and classroom teacher, in my job application I focused on the role of the Teacher Librarian as professionals who:

This understanding has been further expanded by my studies so far. The Australian School Library Association states that Teacher Librarians have three primary roles: first as curriculum leaders; second as information specialists; third as information services managers (ASLA, 2021). Purcell expands this list to five key roles: as leader, instructional partner, information specialist, teacher, and program administrator (Purcell, 2010, p.30). A word cloud of the Australian Library and Information Association ‘Standards of Professional Excellence’ (ALIA, 2004) emphasises concepts such as ‘information’ and ‘learning’ as crucial to our role:

It is interesting to note that in these professional publications there are limited references to books. Clearly there is a disparity between public perceptions of the role and professional descriptions which focus on a broader understanding of our role navigating the changing information landscape. Overcoming this discrepancy continues to pose a challenge for the modern Teacher Librarian. 

Word Count: 547

References:

Australian Library and Information Association (2004). Standards of professional excellence for teacher librarians. https://www.alia.org.au/about-alia/policies-standards-and-guidelines/standards-professional-excellence-teacher-librarians 

Australian School Library Association (2021). What Is A Teacher Librarian? https://asla.org.au/what-is-a-teacher-librarian

Floridi, L. (2007). A Look into the Future Impact of ICT on Our Lives. The Information Society 23(1), 59-64. https://doi.org/10.1080/019722406010599094

Google Images Search, accessed 24/7/2021

Purcell, M. (2010). All Librarians Do Is Check Out Books, Right? A Look at the Roles of a School Library Media Specialist. Library Media Connection 29(1), 30-33.

I’m going on an adventure!!!

Just like Bilbo Baggins was plucked from relative obscurity when he least expected it,  I’m embarking on an unexpected adventure – the Master of Education (Teacher Librarian) at Charles Sturt University. Let’s get started!

I’ve been an English and History teacher at my old high school since 2011. In that time I’ve been uniquely privileged to continuously teach both of these subjects, and love delivering fun and exciting lessons to our wonderful variety of students. I’m known for my love of semi-colons (the sexiest punctuation mark), for being married to Shakespeare (just don’t mention that he’s been dead for over 400 years and it won’t get weird), and trying to make everything into a game, like some borderline-delusional Mary Poppins impersonator. I particularly love extending Gifted and High Potential students, and I’ve been very fortunate to have taught both the History and English extension courses throughout my career. This job has literally taken me around the world, since I’ve been fortunate enough to organise two overseas excursions to Italy, Germany, Poland, Belgium, and France for our Stage 6 Ancient and Modern history students. We would have gone again this year but alas! Covid19 sucks.

Unfortunately, our school demographics are changing and in 2019 we experienced a significant increase in violent behaviour. As a result, in two separate fights I sustained several serious injuries which meant that at the end of last year I had to undergo shoulder reconstruction surgery. I was quite nervous about returning to the classroom where I’d be exposed to possible reinjury and where my decreased functionality in my right arm would impact my teaching. But every cloud has a silver lining, and things fell into place! The previous Teacher Librarian decided that it was time for a change of scenery, and I was lucky enough to be successful in my application to fill this role in a temporary capacity. But things moved a little faster than I anticipated and last term I had to make a tough decision – to apply for the TL position permantently, or return to the classroom. To be or not to be, indeed! Slings and arrows and all that jazz.

After significant to-ing and fro-ing (and many risk/benefit lists!) I decided to apply for the permanent TL position. Once again the stars aligned in my favour! At the end of last term I was successful in my application and am now the permanently appointed Teacher Librarian. Only problem is, I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I AM DOING!!! Light the beacons! Gondor calls for aid!

So here I am, enrolled in yet another Master degree. I know the next two years of study are going to be challenging, but I’m excited to learn how to better support my colleagues and the students we teach as they move through their own education journeys.

Thank you for coming to my TedTalk.

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