Teacher Librarian’s Role in Curriculum Development
Teacher Librarians can use their expertise as a teacher to join in with the curriculum planning process. They can listen to the plans being developed for programs and suggest points at which they can support and improve the learning process.
The teacher librarian can offer to support the program with physical resources, curated website collections, core text suggestion and research skills that they can teach. Their broad knowledge of learning across the school can contribute to curriculum mapping, connecting the work of individual subjects to facilitate interdisciplinary teaching opportunities. Kemp, J. (2017)
The benefits the school can obtain are the opportunities for teachers to work collaboratively with the teacher librarian. Librarians can work with staff to identify and locate appropriate resources to complement units of work within specific subject areas. They can also facilitate subject teachers in the development of resources for units of work.
As part of maintaining the library collection teacher librarian can identify and locate new resources to support the curriculum and provide recommendations to teachers.
The school principal should expect that teachers would work collaboratively to plan units of work with the teacher librarian. The principal should support the teacher librarian’s vision to improve student outcomes across the school and advocate for the role of the library in the school.
The most effective support for curriculum development comes through collaboration between teachers and teacher librarians. Students are disadvantaged in schools that exclude this process in curriculum development. Teacher librarians help integrate technology as information specialists and use this knowledge to differentiate the curriculum for students. Without using the experience and expertise of the teacher librarian students are disadvantaged in their access to technology, resources, core subject texts, curated website collections and research skills.