Category Archives: ETL402

ETL402 Assessment 2 Part B

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Reflection

Upon beginning ETL402 – see my post ETL402: Literature Across the Curriculum (Hahn, 2020, November 7), I identified that a significant skill I wanted to develop is matching of user with literature. I suspected that it involved a thorough and up-to-date knowledge of the literature landscape, collection, students, and curriculum. I hoped to expand my knowledge of each element and their interactions. And so I have.

In my post, ETL402 Module 1.1 (Hahn, 2020, November 14), I discussed the instructive nature of children’s literature: the religious focus may have shifted, but students are still learning from literature. Teacher librarians must ensure the collection is developed continually, offering a broad selection of current, quality literature in various formats, supporting the curriculum and specific needs of the school community. Resource promotion at point-of-need is important. In my post ETL402 Module 2.1 Professional Knowledge of Children’s Literature (Hahn, 2020, November 21), I discussed strategies for connecting teachers with literature. The creation of reading lists tagged with syllabus links (Cherrstrom and Boden, 2020) has been positive in conjunction with a reference interviews. Annotated bibliographies have been developed, however staff are reluctant to read them. Book talking at planning meetings proved very successful. This leads me to suspect, and Merga (2019) and Bishop (2011) confirm, collaborative magic lies in the relationships teacher librarians form with teachers.

Diversity is a goal for my school library. My module 2.3a forum post (Hahn, 2020, December 5) identified an indigenous literature focus, but it applies equally to other types of diversity. It is important for all students to see themselves reflected in the literature available to them (Crisp et al., 2016) and yet our collection does not adequately depict the lived experiences of our students. Reflecting through a censorship lens, I do not believe this was a deliberate act of exclusion, rather, a failure to pay specific attention to inclusion. I am less certain that this is true of subculture representations such as LGBTQ. Careful and deliberate selection of literature with prominent, diverse characters will be imperative.

Despite Pietschmann’s (2014) contention that primary students cannot comprehend intertextual links sufficiently to access transmedia content, it is through interaction with such content that they will develop these skills (Sukovic, 2014). It will therefore be necessary to augment the digital collection, an area currently almost non-existent in our fiction collection, a not unusual situation, according to O’Connell et al. (2015) but one that must be addressed. As my discussion post for module 5.2 (Hahn, 2020, December 28) suggests, an important notion I will take away is that the digital nature of a resource must give the reader/viewer something that cannot be accessed from the print version.

The teacher librarian is a leader of pedagogy as well as of literature and literacy. Collaboration with class teachers, promotion of resources from a literary learning perspective and provision of professional literature and development required to implement such learning is a vital part of what we do and contributes greatly to the impact the school library can have. The promotion of free reading and literary engagement is vital. My post, Expanding free reading ETL402 (Hahn, 2021, January 2), described two strategies I would like to implement during browsing sessions and discussion in the module 3.1 forum provided many others.

Part B Reference List

Allen & Unwin. (2009, June 25). Anita Heiss — Aboriginal writing: Literature as a political tool [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/0x_34uJww_E

 

Bishop, K. (2011). Connecting libraries with classrooms : The curricular roles of the media specialist. ProQuest Ebook Central https://ebookcentral.proquest.com

 

Cherrstrom, C. A., & Boden, C. J. (2020). Expanding role and potential of curation in education: A systematic review of the literature, The Reference Librarian, 61(2), 113-132. https://doi.org/10.1080/02763877.2020.1776191

 

Crisp, T., Knezek, S. M., Quinn, M., Bingham, G. E., Girardeau, K., & Starks, F. (2016). What’s on Our Bookshelves? The Diversity of Children’s Literature in Early Childhood Classroom Libraries. Journal of Children’s Literature, 42(2), 29–42.

 

Merga, M. (2019). Collaborating with teacher librarians to support adolescents’ literacy and literature learning. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 63 (1), 65-72 https://doi.org/10.1002/jaal.958

 

O’Connell, J., Bales, J., & Mitchell, P. (2015). [R]Evolution in reading cultures: 2020 vision for school libraries. Australian Library Journal, 64(3), 194–208. https://doi-org.ezproxy.csu.edu.au/10.1080/00049670.2015.1048043

 

Pietschmann, D. Volkel, S. & Ohler.P. (2014). Limitations of transmedia storytelling for children: A cognitive development analysis. International Journal of Communication, 8, 2259-2281. https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/viewFile/2612/1205

 

Sukovic, S. (2014). iTell: Transliteracy and Digital Storytelling. Australian Academic & Research Libraries, 45(3), 205–229. https://doi-org.ezproxy.csu.edu.au/10.1080/00048623.2014.951114

Expanding free reading ETL402

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Today I read some really very interesting articles about recreational reading. Krashen (2011) lays out the results of a variety of studies that, taken together, indicate that regular sustained, silent reading (SSR) results in better vocabulary, spelling, comprehension, writing, test performance, general knowledge and increased reading outside of the classroom. Fisher & Frey (2018) point out the advantages that are to be had from increasing the volume of reading students engage in outside of school They suggest that access to books – which should ideally be on a 7 books/student ratio in the classroom and 20/student in the school library – is not sufficient on its own to increase reading volume and must be backed up with teaching choosing strategies and book recommendations from people close to the students – teachers, peers, parents etc. They discuss two strategies I had not been able to articulate previously:

  • Golden lines – students share the best line from what they are reading at the moment
  • Blessed books – teachers share a short recommendation multiple times per week, including title, plot summary, character descriptions and general thoughts on the book, then place the book front facing on a special shelf. Students are invited to contribute to the blessed books also. I think these strategies could translate to the school library program well. Students could write brief recommendations for books, placing them in pride of place.

Fisher and Frey (2018) also describe the use of mini book clubs for students reading the same text by choice. I think this could be used in library lessons by having pairs of students work together to select books for the other to read, ones that they themselves have read  (or we have multiple copies so they can read it together) in the hope of prompting discussion about what they are reading.

 

Fisher, D., & Frey, N. (2018). Raise reading volume through access, choice, discussion, and book talks. The Reading Teacher. 72 (1) 89–97

Krashen, Stephen D. (2011). Free voluntary reading. ABC-CLIO, LLC.

 

Transliteracy

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Kalogeras (2014) describes media convergence as the flow of content across multiple media platforms. Transliteracy is the ability to combine information from these multiple platforms into an integrated whole. My school library has done this well in the non-fiction domain, offering platforms such as the print collection, internet access, subscriptions to World Book Online and the creation of digital pathfinders for various units of work that incorporate primary sources, video and audio content, artwork etc for use by students and class teachers in their studies, mainly within HSIE.

The same, however, can not be said for the fiction collection. The only offering, aside from the print collection, is a subscription to Storybox Library. There are currently no audiobooks, ebooks, DVDs, games or websites included in the collection. This is an area which I would like to learn more about. I need to develop my knowledge of strategies to be leveraged, resources to be sought out and the best methods of making these available to the school community. Many of our students have ereaders – I have seen them use them for silent reading activities. I think we are missing an opportunity here. I hope that this module will provide some of the answers and suggest areas for further investigation in order to pitch to the TL and the school leadership.

 

Kalogeras, S. (2014)Transmedia storytelling and the new era of media convergence in higher education. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi-org.ezproxy.csu.edu.au/10.1057/9781137388377

Book Apps and Ebooks

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How much do these define the story? How does this impact on my practise?

Book apps are constantly changing, needing updating, require available technology to use them and are of mixed quality. But they are available 24/7, multiple copies can be sought relatively cheaply and they can be highly engaging for students. So, how much does the format dictate the story? I would say that it is very much dependent on the story and the app producers working together. There is no doubt that the potential exists for book apps to be very high quality and there are criteria available (eg. Yokota & William, 2014) that teacher librarians can use to ensure quality is maintained and the resource adds value to the collection. In order for these to be used regularly in classrooms in my school, they would have to offer something valuable that is not available from print books. The appeal I can see would be mainly in the younger years, a time at which actually accessing and logging into devices available is such a phaff that it would be a fairly painful exercise. As such, the pay-off would have to be LARGE. I can definitely see appeal in these apps for reading for pleasure and I would love to be able to offer them to families for use after school and at weekends, but I am fairly confident that this is not possible as far as apps go, and sharing of the individually purchased copies of books within those apps. In fact, thinking about how that would logistically work given the constraints of the ET4L environment, using Windows only (not iOS or Android) one would have to be very careful about what one signed up for.

Ebooks, on the other hand, hold much more realistic value. For students to be able to download these in a browser based way to be read on a tablet/desktop/ereader depending on what they have access to, is a much more do-able proposition. One would have to be very careful about whether the ebooks available were worth the cost, and added something to the text that traditional print does not. Access to books, be they fiction or non-fiction, 24 hours/day and from any device would certain be an advantage. I can’t see it ever overtaking the print collection, but it could certainly augment it. This is something I would really like to look into further for my library.

 

Yokota, J. & William, H. T. (2014). Picture books in the digital world. The Reading Teacher, 67(8), 577-585. http://www.readingteacher.com/

The Goldilocks Effect

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In considering how I read and process information, I find that I enjoy reading fiction on a backlit ereader. I don’t need to refer back to other sections, I progress through the text linearly. I do like to have some method of tracking how far through the book I am, perhaps a scroll bar on the side or similar, as this helps me with predictions about what is going to happen etc. I like having chapters that are easily accessible and allow me to have a sensible stopping point, otherwise I would never sleep. I like that I don’t need to have a lamp on, I can adjust my font size, background colour etc. However, when I am reading non-fiction or non-linear text, I much prefer to have a printed version. In this way, I can annotate what I am reading, take notes easily, refer back to other sections or other texts. I find that I take in the information much better if I read from paper rather than from a screen. I find it interesting that Kamenetz (2018) has identified that the brains of children do actually function differently when experiencing texts differently. She identifies that the brain and the comprehension is most active when children experience illustrated texts read to them. This has always been my preference too and I am pleased to see my own preference backed up by research. I think that there are benefits and disadvantages to all types of text and as teacher librarians, it falls to us to ensure that each student and faculty member has available to them the most appropriate tool for the job in hand. It therefore behooves us to understand the benefits and disadvantages of all formats and presentation modes

 

Kamenetz, A. (2018, May 24). What’s going on in your child’s brain when you read them a story? KQED: MindShift. https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/51281/whats-going-on-in-your-childs-brain-when-you-read-them-a-story

Cross Platform Publishing

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What is the impact on the role of the teacher librarian from cross platform publishing?

Sekeres & Watson (2011) discuss the publication of the 39 Clues series by Scholastic. They describe online communities, books, trading cards and a website that were combined in order to tell the story/play the game of the 39 Clues. It was not possible to fully participate in the narrative without participating in all of the publishing platforms offered in the series. This required readers to connect with others, collaborate, and, of course purchase, multiple elements. The readers, according the Sekeres & Watson (2011) were highly engaged with the series. They describe readers wanting to connect socially with other fans of the series through the website and online community. The multi-literacy that is required to do this assumes and at the same time teaches a high level of digital literacy and ability to integrate sources of information. This is a positive skill for students to learn and so, teacher librarians should encourage the learning of these skills. Cullen (2015) Discusses how children are seen as naturally competent and confident users of technology and find it very engaging. It is undoubtedly true that digital technology is engaging and motivating for students, however, whether they are developing the critical ability to think about what they are reading/viewing, to integrate various sources of information and come up with verified information, is less clear.  Cladis (2018) argues that, despite the proliferation of digital texts, students are not reading as attentively or thoroughly as in tiimes past, that while students may be exposed to many hundreds of thousands of words in digital environments, they are not engaging fully with them.

Teacher librarians are in a position in between. We know that students will gain more from reading in a more traditional way, but that they are more inclined to do so when there is a digital and social aspect to their reading. We, as advocates of reading, can harness the power of social and multi-media and use it to channel interest and motivation to reading in a more traditional sense. By using technological tools available, such as Biblionasium, Good Reads, Inside a Dog etc, which engage readers in a social discussion of the books they read, we can augment the traditional methods of reading, adding that engagement and motivating factor.

Reading digitally may be more engaging (Heick, 2020) and so may be a way through for reluctant readers. A “gateway drug” that allows students to gain more benefit than they otherwise would by engaging in digital texts where otherwise they may not be engaging with text at all.

References

Cladis, A. E. (2018) A shifting paradigm: An evaluation of the pervasive effects of digital technologies on language expression, creativity, critical thinking, political discourse, and interactive processes of human communications. E-learning and digital media, 2018-01-30, Vol.17 (5), p.204275301775258-364. SAGE Publications

Cullen, M. (2015, December 21). How is interactive media changing the way children learn. EducationTechnology.  https://educationtechnologysolutions.com.au/2015/12/how-is-interactive-media-changing-the-way-children-learn/

Heick, T. (2020, July 20). Exactly how technology can make reading better. TeachThought. https://www.teachthought.com/technology/technology-makes-reading-better/
Sekeres, D. C. & Watson, C. (2011). New literacies and multimediacy: The immersive universe of the 39 Clues. Children’s Literature in Education, 42, 256-273. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-011-9133-4
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Censorship in School Libraries

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How have your various roles based on your age, family background, societal position, religious beliefs and profession influenced your stance on censorship of children’s literature collections?

As teacher librarians, we often feel very strongly that we should not be participating in censorship, be it self-censorship or censorship that comes from above. We also know that it is our job to provide resources appropriate to the community in which we work. The fact that we need to select books based on their appropriateness indicates that it is also our job to not select books that are inappropriate. But where is the line? Who decides what is “selection” and what is “censorship”? Who decides what is appropriate and what is not? In some communities it is not acceptable to include books about certain religions, or books that celebrate cultural features that others may find offensive. I believe there is a line where some subjects become inappropriate for children, but there are many resources out there that skate very close to that line and may, under some circumstances, actually be appropriate for particular purposes, used under teacher guidance. I believe that having a robust challenge policy and a strong selection policy to go along with it is important. If community members can show that something is inappropriate, then we have an obligation to listen. However, I think it should be stressed that it should not be made easy to show that something is inappropriate. Some principals will require any challenged item to be removed simply in order to avoid arguments. I do not think this is a helpful attitude to take. The assumption should be that the material stays in the collection unless and until it is shown to be inappropriate. This should not be because it agrees or disagrees with a particular religion or political belief, or because it contains or does not contain certain language. It should not be because it perpetuates stereotypes (this should be countered by the addition of a collection of texts that balance the stereotype: some authors use stereotypes for particular effect and to make a point.

Books pertaining to controversial topics should be included in school library collections. For example, age appropriate books about periods, evolution, gender fluidity should all be included, offering a balanced collection. I strongly believe that parents have a right to control (up to a point) what is available to their child, but they do not have the right to control what is available to other children.

Multicultural literature

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The module reading, Cai (2002), presents three views on what constitutes multicultural literature. The first is that in order to be considered multicultural, a text must include and represent as many cultures as possible, encompassing all cultures of the world equally. That is, a traditional tale from the UK is just as multicultural as one from Africa. In this view, the power relationships, the oppressed and the oppressor, the marginalised and the mainstream, are not taken into account. A literature set could not be thought complete unless both dominant and minority cultures were represented. Another view is that multicultural literature should focus on racial differences. This does not acknowledge that gender, sexual orientation, age or any other element of a person or community might influence the culture. I do not believe that this is the case, however, I can see that decisions as to what constitutes “culture” and what does not is up for debate. The third view is that all books, collectively, represent multicultural literature. This is the view with which I most agree. While there may be some texts that do explore in depth many different cultures, or perhaps the intercession of at least two, it is the collection as a whole that must be “multicultural”. Texts which explore, describe and celebrate all cultures and walks of life should be represented with in a collection. This should incorporate texts that explore the clashing, melding, crossing, dividing and accepting of people from different cultures when they come together. I believe that it is not just ethnic, religious or national difference that contributes to culture, but that age, sexual orientation, gender, privilege (or lack thereof) etc combine to influence and create sub-cultures and all should be represented in the collection. Where the terms “multicultural” and “diverse” meet and crossover, I am not sure. And I am not sure it really matters.

 

 

 

Chapter 1: Defining multicultural literature (pp 3-18) in
Cai, M. (2002). Multicultural literature for children and young adults: Reflections on critical issues. ABC-CLIO, LLC.

Lived experiences in Indigenous literature

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My primary school library has, I believe, most of the texts listed in threads about this topic: Baby Business, Young Dark Emu, Jandamarra, Sorry Day, Wilam etc. But what we lack, and what I am finding quite hard to find, is literature exploring the everyday lived experiences of students like mine. We have only one Aboriginal student in our school at the moment and her experience is very different to what we see reflected in a lot of the indigenous literature available. It was very interesting to hear Anita Heiss talking about this in the modules this week.

I think our collection offers a good range for supporting the cross-curricular priority and for including Aboriginal perspectives in the curriculum more broadly, but I notice they tend only to come out during NAIDOC week and that’s about all. This week, as I was sharing Jandamarra with year 5, an very valuable discussion occured because many of the students could not connect “warrior” with the Aboriginal people. They asked, “What were they fighting for?” It was not meant in a derogatory way, many of these students are recent immigrants and have no real concept of Aboriginal history or culture, but it pointed out to all of us in the room that we need to do much better in terms of helping the students to really understand the issues at play.

In my role as TL, I need to promote more of these resources around planning time and help our teachers to include Aboriginal perspectives more effectively. I don’t think it is too much to do with not having the resources available, more that they don’t know what to do with them.

ETL402 Module 2.1 Professional Knowledge of Children’s Literature

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The introduction to module 2 cites Cremin, Mottram, Bearne, & Goodwin (2008) who argue that teachers in the UK (and presumably Australia, too) rely on a fairly narrow selection of children’s authors and creators due to a lack of time for keeping up with publishing. Certainly, I would agree. Before I started this course and working in the school library, I had relied heavily on those authors I was familiar with, most of whom I had enjoyed myself as a child. Having worked now for two years in the school library, my knowledge of children’s literature has expanded somewhat, but I still believe I am barely scratching the surface of what is available. Currently we rely heavily on the Australian Standing Orders for collection expansion, along with student and staff (rare though this is) requests. I do not think this is good enough.

Two things happened this term in the school library that cemented my view on this. Firstly, the teachers of the OC classes, two ladies for whom I have enormous respect and personal connection with, asked our fully qualified TL to purchase for them a collection of books for their new classroom libraries for next year. The TL and I spent a good deal of time and energy seeking out the texts we would recommend. This was both a positive learning experience and a wake up call. On the one hand, we employed a number of strategies, which I will detail below, to search for appropriate literature and I was able to learn about and practice these strategies. On the other hand, meanwhile, it quickly became obvious that neither one of us really had a good grip on the state of the children’s literature playing field. My knowledge is very poor and needs expanding desperately. This need led me to sign up for this elective in the hope that I could move some way towards addressing the problem. That I would become more familiar with and develop stronger strategies for exploring, the latest offerings.

The second happening was that our Principal allocated the library an additional and unexpected $8000 to expand our collection of class novel sets. Christmas had come early to the school library and the TL and I were overjoyed and excited as the present collection is very little-used, out dated and generally dodgy. Some sets are falling apart from over use, but most of it has never been looked at. What, then, should we do? Should we spend some serious dough replacing the Roald Dahl collection that is falling apart, and use the remaining funds for new texts? Or should it be the other way around. The fact that the Dahls are so overused seems to indicate that the teachers are relying on him (as suggested earlier by Cremin, Mottram, Bearne, & Goodwin), that they know him and are perhaps time (and inclination) poor and choose not to expand their repertoire. What then to select… and how to select it?

Together we looked through a variety of selection aids: Goodreads, SCIS, NESA Suggested Texts, The PRC reading lists, CBCA shortlisters, favourite reviewers such as Barbara Braxton’s The Bottom Shelf, and various websites such as kids-bookreview.com. What became clear is that, in order for teachers to choose and use a text, they needed to be familiar with it and like it themselves. Having a huge selection of curriculum relevant texts in a dusty storeroom only hits half of the issue. Once good texts are selected, we need to get the teachers interested enough to read them. It is my hope that part of this subject will teach me some effective ways of doing this.