Tag Archives: learning implications

ETL504 Assignment 2 Part B

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Part B – Reflection

Before beginning ETL504, my thoughts about educational leadership were limited. My view of leadership as a top-down, formal and hierarchical structure dictated by the organisational chart of the school was, I have come to see, overly simplistic. This is evidenced in Assignment 1 wherein I was just beginning to see the importance of less authoritarian leadership styles, and formed an appreciation for changing staff engagement in different leadership groups. I wrote about teacher librarians supporting teachers through collaboration, which itself represented a change in thinking. Not so much that I did not appreciate the need for collaboration previously, but that this constituted a form of leadership.

I was always aware that some teachers had the capacity to be more enlightening and guiding than others. The difference between the “experienced teachers” and the “dinosaurs” was quite obvious, but I had not attempted to describe or name the phenomena. One way in which my thinking has changed is by developing an ability to articulate thoughts on leadership. This has led me to develop the idea that if one learns to name and describe a phenomena in language, one develops a more detailed schema that then supports other thinking. The importance of nominalisation and articulation through language is well documented in the field of psychology, it turns out, and is a concept I would like to read more about.

Through this subject I have learned the importance of creating staff engagement in order for change management processes to be successful (Pennington, n.d.). Staff need not only to be enthused about the change, but also be involved in professional development around the implications, opportunities and considerations involved in change. In her 15th March post (Styles, 2021, March 15), Yvette discussed her experience with creating flexible and collaborative spaces. The result was less successful than it might be due to a number of factors, such as autocratic leadership style and lack. A mix of transformational and instructional leadership was needed. The transformational leader could engage all staff in the process, developing a shared vision and encouraging engagement. An instructional leader could facilitate staff learning around pedagogical changes made possible in the new environment. Targeting identified teacher leaders first could ensure their skills and influence are fully mobilised.

Throughout the subjects I have undertaken so far, advocacy has been an important concept, but I had not considered how other stakeholders might be mobilised in support of this goal. In my post “Leadership and Advocacy” (Hahn, 2021, May 5), I discussed a moment of discovery from module 6. I have decided that I need to focus more on activating the advocacy of others in support of the library program, as described by Kachel et al (2012) and to do that, I need to help them develop the language to recognise and articulate the ways in which the library program can support and add value to what they are already doing.

Digital technologies has been a focus area recently. I wrote about plans for development in my discussion posts on 25th April and 8th May. Using a combination of instructional leadership and teacher leadership, I plan to help my colleagues focus their attention on what they want their students to learn by using the technology, rather than focusing on how much fun they are having. To return to the syllabus to remember what it is that students need to learn and understanding why that learning is important is my goal for the professional development sessions I have now been given approval by the principal to run. ETL504 has helped me to consider the options available in terms of how this project should be approached. Giving a name to the various strategies available means I can learn more about how each works and be more deliberate in my choices. I have been influenced particularly by Farrell (2014), Weisburg & Walter (2010) and the practical advice offered by ASLA (2013) and AOSL (2013).

References

American Association of School Librarians (AASL). (2013). Empowering learners: Guidelines for school library programs. American Library Association. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/csuau/reader.action?docID=1342650&ppg=57

Australian School Library Association. (2013). Future learning in school libraries. ASLA. https://asla.org.au/future-Learning-paper

Kachel, D. e., DelGuidice, M. & Luna R. (2012). Building champions in the school community. In D. Levitov (Ed.), Activism and the school librarian: Tools for advocacy and survival. (pp. 85-98). ABC_CLIO, LLC.

Pennington, R. (n.d.). How to make change work [Vimeo]. https://vimeo.com/145795736

Styles, Y. (2021, March 15) RE: School direction [Online discussion comment]. Interact 2. https://interact2.csu.edu.au/webapps/discussionboard/do/message?action=list_messages&course_id=_55151_1&nav=discussion_board_entry&conf_id=_110083_1&forum_id=_227669_1&message_id=_3421739_1

Weisburg, H. K. & Walter, V.A. (2010). Being indispensable: A school librarian’s guide to becoming an invaluable leader. American Library Association.

Distribution of leadership

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What strategies to take you from TL, the keeper and stamper of the books and the quiet space (library) (how many of our colleagues perceive TLs), to become something different?

The role of the TL is so much more complex than many of our colleagues realise. We are the keeper of the books, though scanning has taken the place of stamping in most schools. We are the keepers of the (sometimes) quiet space, but we also are leaders in our learning communities. Among our colleagues, we form communities of practise and learning. Through collaboration we can both model and learn new teaching approaches, we can pose questions and encourage ways of thinking that previously lurked unrecognised in a TR cupboard. We can collaborate on curriculum development, integration of technology and information skills into the wider curriculum, attaching a genuine purpose to the skills students must learn in these areas.

The space we keep is not just quiet. It is a cone of silence. We listen to peoples’ troubles, concerns, frustrations and annoyances and provide a prodigious amount of chocolate and bickies to keep them coming back. By listening to our colleagues both individually and as a group, by keeping our ears to the ground we can start to recognise patterns and point them in the direction of assistance. We can recognise and celebrate the achievements of our colleagues and are in a position to communicate and promote various initiatives within the school and from the leadership that aim to address the frustrations. In an ideal world, the principal is in a position to provide visionary leadership – to develop transformational goals and map the pathways to success (Ingram, 2017). They motivate and inspire their staff to keep them on the paths set out. The DPs provide the transactional leadership – they keep the wheels in motion, putting out the spot fires and dealing with the day to day operations of the school, keeping the big picture in mind. The APs also provide transactional leadership, keeping the ball rolling and dealing with the everyday smooth running of their stage. The TL provides the servant leadership – focusing on trust, collaboration, empathy and ethics (Burkus, 2010). The TL works to promote the best interests of colleagues, students and the community.

Each leader has role to play in the success of the school. In this way, leadership in the school is often actually a type of distributed leadership – not because some leaders are responsible for different key learning areas, or certain initiatives, but because they are responsible for providing the very different types of leadership needed to keep the school both ticking over and reaching for the next milestone in their improvement journey.

References

Ingram, D. (2019, Fevruary 4). Transformational leadership vs transactional leadership definition. Hearst Newspapers: Small Business. http://smallbusiness.chron.com/transformational-leadership-vs-transactional-leadership-definition-13834.html

Burkus, D. (2010, April 1). Servant leadership theory. David Burkus. http://davidburkus.com/2010/04/servant-leadership-theory/

Australian Teaching Standards and the TL

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Evidence based practice. I have been hearing this term for many years now around schools and I thought I understood what it meant. I believed that it meant choosing elements and characteristics to add to your teaching practice from the available research and literature in the educational information landscape. That the reference to evidence referred to a study that had shown this technique or that resource type to be effective. This week, upon reading reading the work of Todd (2015), I have come to see that it is actually about collecting evidence about the effectiveness of one’s practice – ultimately evidence of impact on student learning. So many more things make sense now.

The Evidence Guides for Teacher Librarians (ASLA 2014, 2015) reveal themselves in this new light to be illustrations of how a teacher librarian might have an impact on student learning. This is, of course, the ultimate goal of all educators. They show the types of evidence the TL should be looking for in order to determine whether they are having the desired impact. They also serve as a guide to how a TL might modify their practice if they are not seeing the impact on student learning that they would like to have; they provide a description of quality practice that one might measure oneself against; a guide to evaluating ones practice and to demonstrate to oneself and also to the leadership of the school that the TL and the school library is a beneficial entity that should enjoy the support of management.

References

Australian School Library Association (ASLA)  (2014). Evidence guide for teacher librarians in the highly accomplished career stage.  Retrieved from: http://www.asla.org.au/site/DefaultSite/filesystem/documents/evidence-guide_ha.pdf

Australian School Library Association (2015). Evidence guide for teacher librarians in the proficient career stage. Retrieved from http://www.asla.org.au/site/DefaultSite/filesystem/documents/evidence_guide_prof.pdf

Todd, R. J. (2015). Evidence-Based Practice and School Libraries: Interconnections of Evidence, Advocacy, and Actions. Knowledge Quest, 43(3), 8-15.

ETL401 Module 2.1

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This module discusses the nature and definition of information. It describes the classic definition (a collection of ‘bits’ of information recorded in agreed symbols) and the semantic definition (the content of a message). The data-knowledge continuum positions the message between chaos, data, information, knowledge and wisdom, moving along the continuum as comprehension increases.

Increasingly, information is a trade-able commodity. Yet it is different to other trade-able goods in a number of ways.

  • information is inconsumable – that is, even when you use it, you still have it. Other goods, eg chocolate, disappear once they have been used. They are consumed by use.
  • information is untransferable – that is, even if you give it to someone else, you still have it. If you give chocolate to someone else, they have it and you don’t.
  • information is indivisible – that is, you can’t use only part of it without changing it. It is possible (however unlikely) that you might use only part of the chocolate. In that case, a smaller part remains, as delicious as ever. You have divided the chocolate into parts. If you divide information into parts, the meaning is changed and so the original information is lost or becomes new or misinformation.
  • information is accumulative – that is no matter how often you use it, it still remains with you, building up over time. If you get more information, it adds to the collection but can never be consumed by use (only by deleting and even then other versions often exist especially with digital information). Chocolate, on the other hand, can only be used once. Once eaten, it is gone. It does not remain to be accumulated once it is used.
    (Combes, Fitzgerald & O’Connell, 2019)

This has implications for the work of educators everywhere. We need to develop knowledge and understanding in students in a well-thought out order, such that each skill or piece of information builds upon the last and we need to make clear where the new information sits with the current schema. We need to make sure students are taught how to think about the information they are presented with and learn to critically evaluate it, adding it to the appropriate schema or rejecting it as misinformation. It also has implications for how librarians organise information. Related pieces of information should lead the learner from one to another. Currently all I can think of is positioning related topics close by each other and using catalogue software that might suggest to users the topics related to each other. I am convinced that there are a great many other strategies librarians use.  I am keen to learn more about them.

When we want to communicate information, we want the receivers to understand and be able to use that information as easily as possible. We therefore need to encode it into a format they can easily decode (choose the relevant language and format) transfer it as a whole package or in a series of sequenced, related packages and make clear to them where this new information sits within their current knowledge and understanding of the topic.

References

Combes, B., Fitzgerald, L. and O’Connell, J. (2019). The Information Environment. In ETL401: Introduction to Teacher Librarianship. Retrieved from  https://interact2.csu.edu.au/webapps/blackboard/content/listContent.jsp?course_id=_42381_1&content_id=_2899453_1