The ever evolving nature of digital technologies and the echoing impacts of COVID-19 on learning and the workforce both present challenges to, and impact the nature of, learning in a school setting. The  2023 EDUCAUSE Horizon Report: Teaching and Learning Edition explores these changes and their impact primarily on tertiary education. Examining these changes using the lens of a teacher librarian reveals the challenges school-based teachers subsequently face, and reveal opportunities for teacher librarians to support and lead teachers in addressing them in their classrooms.

Teacher librarians are in a unique position to be able to support teaching staff address the changing skill requirements of students. Highlighted in the report, rapid developments in technology and the increasing hybridity of learning and work beyond the secondary classroom brought about by COVID-19 have fundamentally altered the core skills students need to enter the workforce with. No longer is the ability to memorise facts and regurgitate them in formalised, controlled test settings of highest importance (despite what the hype about the HSC and ATAR might lead one to believe). To be successful in the workforce, students now need to be flexible, be aware of their learning capabilities and the need for continuous learning, and be equipped with the necessary tech skills to continuously manage and utilise changing technologies (EDUCAUSE, 2023, p.6). In short, they require versatile digital literacy and meta-cognition skills that will continue to serve them in dynamic work environments.

The need for the teacher librarian to support teachers in developing these capabilities in today’s students is reflected in the highly transformative nature of the digital space itself. Published only a year ago, the report suggests that AI has the potential to become a common part of everyday and workplace life (EDUCAUSE, 2023, p.6), leading to debates about its potential to proliferate academic cheating, impacting “academic integrity, accuracy, and fairness and equity” (EDUCAUSE, 2023, p.10). Now, just a year later, academic settings across the spectrum of education are indeed dealing with these unique issues. The place to address them is in the school and the school library, with the  librarian working to supporting teaching staff to guide their students not only to develop the increasingly complex digital literacy skills required to navigate such an online world, but also the skills to master and implement this “low code” and “no code” technology in ethical, productive ways (EDUCAUSE, 2023, p.11).

This mastery of technological advances, rather than an avoidance of use of it out of fear or misinformation, is crucial. Positioned as the digital literacy expert within the school, it is therefore the role of the teacher librarian to foster this education not only of the students, but the teaching staff as well to ensure that staff are well informed and equipped with the necessary resources, skills and knowledge to effectively teach these new digital skills.  AI can and should be a tool in one’s digital competencies tool belt, and students – and staff alike – are better off embracing and preparing for this change rather than avoiding it. In order to navigate our complex digital world, our students and our staff need to prepare to be prepared, and what better way to do that than with the host of digital literacies the teacher librarian can guide them towards developing as a leader of technological, pedagogical change?

Reference List

EDUCAUSE. (2023). 2023 EDUCAUSE Horizon Report – Teaching and Learning Edition. https://library.educause.edu/resources/2023/5/2023-educause-horizon-report-teaching-and-learning-edition