April 2023 – A Hundred Ways to Learn

In my recent reading around literacy and multiple literacies. Rather than viewing literacy as something that is mastered I feel that it is more in line with developing understandings from information acquired in various endeavours, then applying these understandings to perform specific tasks.

UNESCO describes literacy as:

Literacy is the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate and compute, using printed and written (and visual) materials associated with varying contexts. (UNESCO 2004).

You could substitute ‘printed and written’ with any other way of acquiring information which can include other experiential sources.

Letter sounds to words to reading.
Movements to locomotion to playing sports.
Quantities to money to finance.
Curiosity to inquiry to scientific process.

I feel that in thinking of literacy in this way, it becomes a very broad concept of acquiring, understanding and applying information.

UNESCO Education Sector. (2004). The plurality of literacy and its implications for policies and programmes. UNESCO. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000136246

This week I finished up in my classroom teaching role as I make my transition to the school library. It was a bitter/sweet day as after 16 years as a classroom teacher, my identity was suddenly changing into something that I do not fully understand yet. As I am not filling an existing position I do not have a mentor or role-model to learn from in the school library space. This is both unnerving and exciting. In the past I have been accustomed to collaborating with colleagues and being mentored by others in the same role as myself. I now find myself having to imagine and design the role purely from my studies and research in conjunction with my understandings of the space and the school community. I’m not used to making such big decisions on my own!

I have been finding that with every essay I write and reading I do, I am becoming more and more aware of the significance of the TL role within a school. I had never before considered the influence and impact that the TL could have on the culture of learning, the embedding of values and the strengthening of the community. This week I have been investigating Makerspaces and it has given me an insight into the way a TL and library environment can have on a more holistic style of information access.

I am beginning to understand that there are two distinct roles of the TL, but at the same time, these roles interact and intersect, guided by the same set of values. There is the organisational/resource management side and the teaching/collaborating/facilitating side. All of these are guided by the library, school and community values. Accessibility, access to all, community, diversity, curiosity and collaboration have all been reoccuring themes within my reading.

I am looking forward to being able to directly apply my new knowledge when I commence my new position after the term break.

Month: April 2023

Literacy

The New TL