In order to understand the principles of lifelong learning at the heart of the information profession, it is important for TLs as leaders to ensure they are well informed about information literacy theory and practice (ALIA, 2004). As such, it is critical that TLs position themselves as responsible and empowered elders in their relationships with digital technologies while acknowledging the powerful ways these relationships increasingly shape and define the ways younger learners may encounter and engage with their worlds.
Dr. Kay Oddone has stated her belief that “as our collections morph into a digital-physical hybrid, curation will become just as, if not more important than collection development … allowing us as teacher librarians to remix physical and digital resources to become accessible to our community in new ways.” (Oddone, 2020). While I share this enthusiasm at the potentials of the hybridized digital landscape to allow TLs to make resources more accessible to the communities they serve, I also believe that it is worth advancing with care.
In my studies of the intersection of digital technology and 21st Century educational philosophy, I have been greatly influenced by the writings of late educational theorist and philosopher Bernard Stiegler, who expressed his concern that “educational leadership needs to be much broader than simply what leaders do, or models of best practice… arguing that broader, more diverse tools are required with which to understand the context of educational leadership beyond the school gates.” ( Bradley, 2015)
In curating and collecting digital resources as educators we must not neglect as leaders, the great force of non-educational informational technologies that dominate the lives of students more and more, just as they dominate our own. Surely, a disposition of humility is integral when modelling digital citizenship in an era where the constant is change.
Stiegler (2010) was concerned with the way “these technologies employ mechanisms of psychic disindividuation result[ing] in a form of society that devalues critical thinking, deep thought and long-term theoretically informed approaches to knowledge development [which draw] upon the knowledge of those who use it to become co-producers of that knowledge”. It follows that “Teachers and educational leaders in schools then must be co-producers of that knowledge and not the recipient of products via consumerist models of education.” ( Stiegler, 2010)
As Trucano (2016) has acknowledged, prior assumptions regarding Prensky’s “digital natives hypothesis” have “for over a decade, […] come under consistent challenge and criticism from many academics, who contest various aspects of the ‘digital natives myth’, as well as the policy and design implications that often flow from them”. He also concedes that critics argue “the observable differences at the heart of the digital native narrative relate more to culture, or to geography, to socio-economic status or even just to personal preferences than they do to age”. By accepting with humility the effect the digital revolution has had on our own lives, we may then begin to re-examine the assumptions that have perhaps led to the ever widening of gap of information literacy in global society situated at the centre of contemporary education.
One way TLs as both teachers and leaders can achieve this is, as Bradley (2015) suggests, to resist apathy of “the consumer who is both rendered structurally irresponsible and dependent” (Stiegler, 2010). However he, as Steigler did, imagines that through care and attention, such tendencies may be transcended through the invention of a new industrial organization and society.
Imagining such a new societal organization presents many opportunities for the future. TLs as responsible leaders should focus on developing their own critical capacity as a foundation for the learning of others by reflecting on the consequences of the educational philosophy they impart to learners. Considering what sort of society we want, what is our place in it and what can we do to embrace a new industrial model that works for deeper thought instead of short-term focus and simplistic solutions if we are to empower not only ourselves, but others.
There is substantial professional dialogue need to counter the pressures of work intensification, managerialism, high-stakes accountabilities and performative measures of their work and schools’ performance that see them desperately search for answers to these serious and, in some cases, health- and life-threatening work conditions.
Primary to countering these corrosive trends is to conserve a space for professional conversations to critically examine ideas of leadership and citizenship in flux and to resist the interventions of the ‘leadership industry’.
References
Australian Library and Information Association [ALIA] & Australian School Library Association. (2004). Standards of professional excellence for teacher librarians. https://read.alia.org.au/file/647/download?token=6T4ajv0c
Bradley, J.P.N. (2015). Stiegler contra Robinson: On the hyper-solicitation of youth. Educational Philosophy and ‘New French Thought’, 47(10), 1023-1038.
Oddone, K. (2020, April 3)). Digital content curation: How to do it right! SCIS:Schools Catalogue Information Service. https://scis.edublogs.org/2020/04/03/digital-content-curation-how-to-do-it-right/
Stiegler, B. (2010). Taking care of youth and the generations. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Trucano, M. (2016, November 16). Revisiting the digital native hypothesis. World Bank Blogs. https://blogs.worldbank.org/edutech/revisiting-digital-native-hypothesis