May 15

INF506 – The Future of Teacher Librarians

“The library looks like a revolving door of classes,” Jennifer Sturge (2019, p. 26) writes at the beginning of her article on the readiness for school library collaboration. “Classroom teachers come and drop off their classes for a lesson,” she says before concluding, “the school librarian teaches… in isolation”.

What follows these opening statements amounts to a call-to-arms for teacher librarians [TLs]; an incessant urging that if anything is to change, TLs must actively seek out opportunities to demonstrate their value through the creation of authentic learning experiences that are designed to improve and further student outcomes. What needs to happen, Sturge argues, is for the culture of teaching to shift from isolation to one of collaboration, namely, collaboration between TLs and classroom teachers in the teaching and planning of units. For this to successfully happen, there needs to be sufficient buy-in and support from administrators and classroom teachers alike.

Although well articulated and full of practical insights from her own collaboration efforts, Sturge’s argument neither new nor unique. In 2005, Ross Todd and Carol Kuhlthau wrote that school librarians needed to work with classroom teachers to facilitate opportunities for students to learn, particularly when it comes to the development and instruction of information literacy. “This shared dimension of pedagogy,” they argued, “clearly plays a key role in maximising learning outcomes in terms of intellectual quality, the development of higher-order thinking, depth of knowledge, and depth of understanding” (p 86).

As the teacher librarian simultaneously straddles both the education and the information studies disciplines, their role in teaching information literacy is a given – it has, after all, been clearly outlined in the Australian curriculum (ACARA, n.d.), as well as several policies and statements published by Australian library bodies (ALIA & ASLA, 2018). In even these official documents – documents published by organisations that determine the education Australian children receive – the onerous for teaching information literacy seemingly falls solely on the shoulders of the TL. Publicly, this is not a collaborative venture between school administrators, teacher librarians and classroom teachers, as Sturge (2019) and Todd & Kuhlthau (2005) argue it should be.

The failure of the Department and other various bodies to recognise the value – and absence – of collaboration between library and teaching staff looms large for the future of information professionals working within schools. If TLs are to play a part in helping students successfully achieve learning outcomes and become lifelong learners, they themselves must find a way to combat this issue. Teacher librarians are more than just teachers, as the above image included from Alison Young (2014) suggests. Sturge (2019) has the right idea, and her voice joins the others that have gone before her.

 

Reference List

Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority [ACARA]. (n.d.). Literacy learning progression and Digital Technologies. Retrieved August 10, 2019, from https://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/media/3652/literacy-digital-technologies.pdf. 

Australian Library and Information Association, & Australian School Library Association. (2016). Policy on information literacy. Retrieved August 3, 2019, from https://www.alia.org.au/about-alia/policies-standards-and-guidelines/aliaasla-policy-information-literacy-australian-schools.

Australian Library and Information Association [ALIA] & the Australian School Library Association [ASLA]. (2018). Joint Statement on information literacy. Retrieved August 11, 2019 from https://asla.org.au/resources/Documents/Website%20Documents/Policies/policy_Information_Literacy.pdf.

Sturge, J. (2019). Assessing Readiness for School Library Collaboration. Knowledge Quest, 47(3), 24–31.

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April 26

INF506 – Digital Identities

A digital identity is information on and about an entity that computer systems use to represent an external entity (International Standards Organisation, 2011). This external entity may be an individual, organisation or even a device. Whenever you sign up for anything on a computer and/or the Internet – email, social media site, even a simple login – you are contributing to your digital identity. Very often, this online identity might be completely at odds with your actual identity (Cho and Jimerson, 2017).

With the popularity of social media sites and the use of Web 2.0 tools, individuals and organisations are generating more information about themselves more than ever before. Some of this information can be made deliberately public, or kept private from the general public through privacy settings. Regardless though, it can be argued that the hacking of Google+ (Sveen, 2018) and the data ‘sharing’ of social media giants such as Facebook (Confessore, LaForgia, Dance, 2018) illustrates that nothing is ever truly private online.

Cho and Jimerson (2017, p.895) discuss how educators’ online identities (‘me-the-professional’) can differ significantly from their real identities (‘me-the-person’) because of the limitations and nature of online environments. For instance, on Twitter, users create and connect ideas that construct their identity through 140 characters. Furthermore, educators often self-censor online in order to be ‘professional’, i.e. “putting out a positive image” and not being overly critical of the school or others (p. 893). They do this, in additional to not sharing personal or controversial information online, largely because of fear of reprisal and judgement, demonstrating that their online identities often come at the expense of enacting certain dimensions of their personal identity.

This is unlikely to change, particularly when even the NSW Department of Education (2018, p. 6) has said that “staff should be aware that they could be identified as an employee of the department from their online activities”, and for this reason “should not post about their work, colleagues, students or official information”. I have seen this in action myself recently. One of my colleagues has become very vocal online about the current COVID-19 situation and schools. When I asked whether they feared reprisal, they said, “I’m being very careful to not criticise the Department. That could get me fired. Instead, I’m criticising the Government”.

This demonstrates some of what can, and can’t be – without consequence – shared online. Personal information should, as a general rule, always be protected by privacy settings. The murky area, however, is around what employees can and cannot share online. It seems unlikely that there will ever be a reconciliation between our ‘me-the-person’ and ‘me-the-professional’ identities.

 

Reference List

Cho, V., & Jimerson, J. B. (2017). Managing digital identity on Twitter: The case of school administrators. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 45(5), 884–900. https://doi.org/10.1177/1741143216659295

Confessore, N., LaForgia, M., & Dance G. J. X. (2018). Facebook’s Data Sharing and Privacy Rules: 5 Takeways From Our Investigation. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/us/politics/facebook-data-sharing-deals.html

International Standards Organisation. (2011). Information technology—Security techniques—A framework for Identity Management—Part 1: Terminology and concepts. ISO. Retrieved from https://www.iso.org/cms/render/live/en/sites/isoorg/contents/data/standard/05/79/57914.html

NSW Department of Education. (2018). Social Media Policy. Retrieved April 11, 2020, from https://policies.education.nsw.gov.au/policy-library/associated-documents/social-media-procedures.pdf.

Sveen, B. (2018). Google+ social media service to shut down after private data of at least 500,000 users exposed. ABC News. Retrieved from https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-09/google-social-media-service-shut-down-after-privacy-issue/10354918?pfmredir=sm&sf199623527=1

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