The modern day teaching and learning environment is busier than ever. Far from whittling down the curriculum content, the new Australian Curriculum appears to have retained most of the original syllabus content and skills present in the New South Wales syllabuses as well as adding more in the form of General Capabilities.

My experience from working as a History and Geography teacher is that, whilst my school has made an effort to try to integrate the general capabilities into the various subjects studied, these twenty-first century skills are still seen as mutually exclusive to what is being taught on a daily basis in the classroom. There is the perception among teachers that by working to develop these general capabilities, they are doing so at the expense of the subject content. I work in a private school and there is a strong focus on the outcome of learning rather than the process of learning. My school has relatively recently introduced a Deep Learning focus into all secondary subjects. Whilst the intention is good, it has deteriorated into a “tick a box” activity and many teachers feel that these units have been integrated into the existing syllabus to the detriment of other content and skills that need to also be covered.

I believe that the teacher librarian can play a significant role in the promotion of the general capabilities across subject curriculum. They are the only person who has direct contact with all classes and all subjects. Teachers largely avoid the focus on developing general capabilities in their students as they either feel that they do not have the time or that, they themselves, don’t possess the skills or expertise in teaching these important skills. Teacher librarians can help to develop these skills. By combining the subject expertise of the classroom teacher with the information and research expertise of the teacher librarian the teaching and acquisition of twenty-first century skills can be achieved more authentically. In the case of my own school I feel that the experience of the teacher librarian is under-appreciated and under-utilised. Our teacher librarian has extensive experience in developing many of the general capabilities but teachers do not draw on her expertise frequently enough. It is for this reason that I feel that the role of the teacher librarian can sometimes be limited to working in parallel to the classroom teacher rather than in collaboration with them.

In a perfect world the old saying “We measure what we treasure” will refer the measure of the extent that students will have acquired twenty-first century skills that transcend subjects and serve them well for future education and workplaces and not their final mark in standardised tests.