Category: ETL401 Reflections

Challenges in the TL’s Role

Monica CoddingtonLeave a comment

The Teacher Librarian could potentially face a number of challenges as they attempt to fulfil their role in the school. The push to implement and integrate GID to the curriculum across faculties and key learning areas in order to build the information literacy skills of students across grades, for example, could face a number of challenges to overcome.

For large schools with a high student population and a diverse and extensive staff, implementing one inquiry learning model would be difficult, to say the least. Each teacher has their own pedagogical approach to teaching and learning, and requesting changes on a school-wide scale would require support from executive staff, and a wide-spread understanding of the roles of teachers and teacher librarians in the inquiry learning process.

Garrison & FitzGerald reported on some challenges to collaboration in their 2019 research, which found, amongst other noteworthy results, that almost 41% of respondents only “sometimes” had collaboration between teachers and staff when planning and delivering inquiry learning units in their workplace (p. 6). Some of the biggest barriers identified were new colleagues (for both teacher librarians and teachers) or workplace environments, and concerns about time constraints and the perceived increases or changes in workload (p. 7). This wasn’t just reported by teachers. Teacher librarians reported that their library class time was more frequently being taken up by relief from face-to-face teaching for primary teachers – an organisation of time that does not facilitate collaboration between staff, and therefore does not facilitate the development and implementation of inquiry learning units.

Evidently, then, the support of executive staff, who are often those in charge of workloads and timetabling, and their understanding of the role of the teacher librarian is crucial to the successful implementation of inquiry learning to build information literacy skills in students.

It is not a process that could happen instantaneously, however, and TLs would be sure to face reluctance from other staff members. However, TL’s could support this process through informing staff, from SLSOs to those in executive positions, of the benefits, the most compelling of which is the transferrence of skills. The GID as a process teaches students to recognise how they learn, and teaches them a process for learning that is transferable across KLAs (other benefits can be found here). A TL should aim, therefore, to offer professional learning sessions where teachers are informed of the GID – how it works, how to implement it, and the support offered to them by the TL.

 

Reference List

Garrison, K., & FitzGerald, L. (2019). “One interested teacher at a time”: Australian Teacher Librarian Perspectives on Collaboration and Inquriy. International Association of School Librarianship. 1-10. https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.csu.edu.au/docview/2343152998?fbclid=IwAR01RLBXOmJJDjO7XLEM2fGguCT4_gnHeKDpo8DNPGIDaTpuYVk6nEZkwdE&rfr_id=info%3Axri%2Fsid%3Aprimo

Information Literacy and Inquiry Learning

Monica CoddingtonLeave a comment

Every year, with students from years 7 to 12, I find myself reteaching the same information literacy skills over and over again in my English and History classes – sometimes to the same students, sometimes to students who were demonstrating excellence in these skills in year prior, all of whom had “forgotten” what they had been taught. The ability to understand how to navigate the world through finding, identifying, accessing, evaluating, and creating, using a range of skills and processes to satisfy cognitive, physical and socio-cultural goals (Hepworth & Walton, 2009) is crucial for student success in learning – both in school and in the wider macro environments they will enter after their formal education. It’s embedded in the curriculum, and reflected in the emphasis on General Capabilities.

More and more frequently, however, students struggle, or even fail, to transfer these skills across learning contexts. Inquiry learning – and, more specifically, Guided Inquiry Process Design learning – offers a platform for teacher librarians to build transferable information literacy skills. By supporting student learning and movement through the information search process, it guides students to reflect not only on their learning, but also on how they have learned. Perhaps most prominently, however, is what Fitzgerald & Garrison’s research found (2017) – that the students became meta-cognitively aware as they learned how they learn, and that they transferred this knowledge into a range of learning contexts.

This has implications for the teacher librarian and their role as curriculum designer. If students are to successfully learn information literacy skills, implementing and integrating an information literacy model across the curriculum would only serve to benefit their skill development. Implementation across KLAs and faculties would, of course, be ideal, however there would be some challenges that the TL would need to take into consideration when seeking to implement an information literacy model in such a fashion.

 

 

Reference List

Fitzgerald, L. & Garrison, K. (2017) It Trains Your Brain: Student Reflections on Using the Guided Inquriy Design Process. Synergy, 15(2).

Hepworth, M., & Walton, G. (2009). Teaching information literacy for inquiry-based learning. Chandos Publishing.

Dissecting Literacy

Monica CoddingtonLeave a comment

“Literacy has been dissected and put on display in glass cabinets in the rooms of whichever discipline has taken a knife to it since its conception.”

Definitions for literacy abound in the multitudes in textbooks across disciplines and websites throughout the infosphere. The term, to put it bluntly, has been dissected and put on display in glass cabinets in the rooms of whichever discipline has taken a knife to it since its conception. The result is not a deeper understanding of the concept – instead, this dissection has only served to make it smaller, and smaller, and smaller, removing one definition from the next and establishing one “literacy” as separate from another. There is what is called the “traditional” literacies – the ability to read and write – and a whole host of niche literacies branching off it. There is visual, oral and aural literacy, critical, cultural and workplace literacy, and now with the development of the infosphere and the digital world, even sub-branches of ICT, media, digital and information literacies.

My English teaching background tends to shudder in horror at this dismantling of a concept that, really, can be summed up and applied so simply across a range of disciplines:

to understand.

Evidently, the concept of literacy is far more complicated that can be communicated in two words – I’ve no misconceptions about its complex nature, rest assured. But I feel no matter which direction you take when you look at it whether as a concept, process or skill – for all three is certainly is – the dissecting of literacy into smaller and smaller niche literacies is counterproductive, to say the least.

To be able to read is to comprehend – to understand. To be able to write is to understand how to communicate using the written word. To be visually literate is to understand how meaning is created and conveyed through images, and to communicate with them. To be orally literate is to understand how to communicate using the spoken word. To be aurally literature is to understand the spoken word. To be critically literate is to understand how to critique what we see, hear and read – and know why we must do so. To be culturally literate is to understand how cultures operate on macro and micro levels, to understand what cultures consist of – and therefore how to navigate them. To be workplace literate is to understand how to successfully enter the workforce, and navigate it (and learn how to do so with specific skills) once you get there. To be ICT, media and digitally literate is to understand how they work, to understand how to access them, to understand how to navigate them, and to understand how to use them.

And to be information literate is to understand information. To understand how to find it, and where to find it. To understand how to assess it, and why we need to do so. To understand what to do once we find it, and what to do with it once we’ve got it. To understand what to do if we can’t find it, and must rethink how to do so.

In this sense, then, literacy in all its complexity as a concept, a process and a skill can indeed be defined most succinctly in two words:

to understand.

Evidently what one tags on the end of this “to understand” will be discipline-specific, but to understand is an inherent feature of literacy as a concept, a process and a skill. Literacy cannot therefore be “new”, but is rather a concept, process and skill that has been developed over time. As the means of communication have changed, the requirements of our understandings have changed too. As a result, what students are required to know and be able to do – what skills they must understand how to use, what processes they must understand how to engage in – have changed over time.

This is what is central to the concept of information literacy, and the diverse perspectives presented in Module 5 reflect the changing demands on what it means “to understand”, and indeed what it entails. As an information specialist, then, these discussions and the multitude of definitions and dissected sub-definitions will guide me in my planning as information literacy and inquiry learning specialist. To know what students need to know, from processes to skills, I need to understand the requirements of what the English curriculum has so aptly termed this plethora of literacies: multi-literacies.

 

“A wholistic (or multi-literacies) approach to information literacy is imperative”

 

The technologies will continue to change, and so the ways of “understanding” will continue to morph with them, but to separate literacies into separate entities suggest a separate approach to each. This can lead only to confusion and a surface-level understanding of each. A wholistic (or a multi-literacies) approach to information literacy is imperative, just as an awareness of how these changes will impact how students will navigate the world is therefore crucial to teaching the processes and skills they will require to understand, and therefore access and navigate it. Staying on top of educational developments, research and pedagogy has never been (or seemed) so important.

ASLA Standards for Understanding and Practice

Monica CoddingtonLeave a comment

How could the Evidence Guide for Teacher Librarians in the Proficient Career Stage (ASLA, 2014) help beginning teachers understand the TL role and inform their practice? 

As a beginning teacher venturing into the realm of teacher librarianship, the AITSL/ASLA Evidence Guide for Teacher Librarians in the Proficient Career Stage (2014) is a document that will be crucial to informing my practice. It takes the standards that I know and have experience working with in the teaching world and informs me of what meeting these standards in the TL profession can, and should, look like. By providing examples of evidence for each standard, it will help to direct and focus my future movements in the role in order to ensure students can reach their maximum potential. 

In this sense, then, they also serve to inform me of what the TL role entails. For example, 1.1, consisting of four dot points, reveals insights into four separate roles of the TL – curriculum planner, manager of spaces to optimise learning in both physical and digital environments, and reader’s advisor (p. 3). These roles are reflected and expanded on throughout the entirety of the document – through 2.3 (p. 7), Standard 3 (p. 9), 4.5 focusing on developing information literacy in the digital sphere (p. 15), and Standard 5, which highlights the core role of the TL as teacher, rather than just librarian. The later reveals the necessity to assess students in the library space in our practice, and offer feedback in oral and written forms.

Of course, these examples are by no means reflective of the complexity of roles the TL fills. Having them on-hand, however, and engaging in deep reading of such documents not only deepens one’s understanding of the roles, but would assist in planning units of work across a range of stages – just as the teacher’s equivalent helps beginning teacher’s and informs their professional practice, both in the classroom and in the community.

 

Reference List

Australian School Library Association. (2014). Evidence Guide for Teacher Librarians in the Proficient Career Stage. Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership. https://asla.org.au/resources/Documents/Website%20Documents/evidence_guide_prof.pdf

Who comes first – the teacher or the librarian?

Monica CoddingtonLeave a comment

Purcell (2010) in her article “All Librarians Do Is Check Out Books, Right? A Look at the Roles of a School Library Media Specialist” discusses the varying roles of the teacher librarian. Included are the roles of program administrator, instructional partner, leader, information specialist, and nestled amongst them in last place is that of “teacher”. This distinction of “teacher” as a separate role entirely from the rest of the badges held by the TL is not something I would endorse. Nor would I endorse a prioritising of the role of “teacher” over the other roles Purcell identifies. To do so would offer a reductive view of the role of the TL as the myriad of positions and functions that they hold in the school means that teaching is an integral part of the role. The teacher role is not an aspect of it that can be identified as separate, and therefore as something needing classification via perceived value.

You cannot separate one from the other, and so you cannot put either “teacher” or “librarian” first.

This is first clear when we consider the official title of TLs in NSW schools: “Teacher Librarian” – not “Teacher who sometimes works in the library and loans out books”, or “Librarian who sometimes teaches students and staff Important Stuff“. The Teacher Librarian encompasses all.

If they are an instructional partner who engages in curriculum design and assessment, and works collaboratively with staff to do so – then are they not a teacher? If they select, order and process materials for circulation as program administrator, are they not also fulfilling the function of the English faculty, who do the same when they select, order and process novels for use in close study units of work? If they provide assistance in the use of ICT, are they not like the official technical support officer who solves all our Sentral and Google Forms problems? In this sense, are they not also like the students who leap to the occassion to help when the PowerPoint won’t load properly in class? Are not all teachers and teacher librarians similarly alike in that they are leaders who attend community and school events to promote the school and the profession?

Purcell’s work is helpful in identifying some of the core roles of the TL. As a checklist for all we must do, it might be a touch idealistic – can one person truly plan programs, AND collaborate to plan programs AND effectively manage a learning environment, AND lead committees, AND train the school staff, AND cater for the curriculum, AND teach classes (which often include regular classes like English and History in secondary schools) as a run of the mill teacher? Perhaps not. Perhaps some of these need to be prioritised. Perhaps library assistants – and even teachers – could share the roles of collection evaluation and management and planning for staff and curriculum needs.

But perhaps they can. Because Teacher Librarians are not all of one thing on one day and only another on the next. They don’t stop being teachers just because they’re evaluating the collection. Indeed, I would argue that every action made is done so in light of the following lenses: is it good for the students? How will it help them? Will it meet their needs?

Be the whole cupcake, not just the flour. Image from Thomas, M., Unsplash

At the end of the day, a separation or prioritising of the roles is counterproductive, and will only serve to cause confusion. It is not about placing the “teacher” before the “librarian”, or the “librarian” before the “teacher”, because they are one and the same. Attempting to do so is like trying to serve and eat a poorly deconstructed cupcake at a birthday party – it’s a dismal and desiccated experience. Having the complete package results in a much sweeter and richer outcome for all.

Reference list:

Purcell, M. (2010). All librarians do is check out books, right? A look at the roles of the school library media specialist. Library Media Collection, 29(3). p.30-34. http://web.a.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.csu.edu.au/ehost/detail/detail?vid=0&sid=5e6e4f39-5f69-4e14-9637-6ca4993253a3%40sdc-v-sessmgr01&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#AN=55822153&db=iih

Artificial Intelligence and Us – Who Directs Who?

Monica CoddingtonLeave a comment

“The tool is directing the user”

Chamaki, 2010. Unsplash.

In the 20th century a new wave of literature and pop culture emerged that simultaneously revealed civilisation’s development and society’s growing concerns – concerns that are still prevalent today and have continued to appear in media since. Dystopian and Sci-Fi fiction centered around the idea of Artificial Intelligence being first born from human ingenuity, and then becoming the force that suppressed and controlled it has been a popular concept of many films, novels and poems since. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Phillip K. Dick (1968) was a thrilling (yet cautionary) tale about the wonders and dangers of Artificial Intelligence (AI) if we let it – and push it to – achieve extraordinary heights; a novel which gave birth to the ever popular Blade Runner film, which has since be reproduced for modern audiences. iRobot (2004) alludes to Dick’s tale when it considers the implications of rogue AI’s and the (im)possibility of androids (AI) experiencing emotions. There exsists a plethora of texts in the dystopian/Sci-Fi cannon that explore these concepts and the issues that seem intrinsically tied to them. Humanity has, evidently, been intrigued by the possibilities of science and technology and what AI could do for us, whilst it has also been preoccupied by and fearful of the repercussions of such a reality coming to fruition.

What is interesting to note is that despite this longstanding fear of AI, most Australians – and perhaps even most of the people on this planet – are exposed to AI on a daily basis. And most of them aren’t aware of it.

AI may not necessarily take the form of a humanoid robot that was designed to help humans but ultimately destroys them, as is often portrayed as the case in popular culture and literature (for an exception to this rule, and for a wild ride in an incredibly unique world, put Scythe by Neil Shusterman in your TBR pile). It can – and does – take the form of an algorithm, and chances are you have it sitting beside you or in your pocket right now. Technology and digital resources that we use every day use algorithims to predict, and then offer, content that it thinks we will be most interested in. Finding a good film to watch on Netflix, Stan or Disney+ that is similar to other films you love has never been easier. Conducting research in a digital catalogue or library will lead you down a path of “related titles” that might – and theoretically should – have something to do with the first journal article you read. Love indi rock music? Spotify has got you covered. It will play new artists for you that you haven’t heard of – but will likely enjoy – because they’re similar to other artists in your playlist. Even YouTube has got your back with its tailored “up next” function.

So the idea that the tool – i.e. technology, or the AI and/or algorithm buried and operating within it – is directing the user – i.e. us – is not too far fetched as a concept. In fact, it is happening daily, for each of us that have access to a smart phone. So whilst we may not have humanoid androids running (or strolling, as I imagine they’d do with infinite patience and grace compared to their clumsy human counter-parts) about the place, and whilst they may not be ready to take over the world for the sake of the planet, AI intelligence is no longer a thing of the past. It is very much real. It exists now. And it (just might be) controlling how you access the online world.

Whilst it might be easier than ever to find amazing thriller films on Netflix that you’ve never seem before thanks to it’s algorithm, you might also never see that 1970s block buster Sci-Fi film either – because Netflix has decided, based on your previous choices, that you probably won’t like it. When you select something to watch on its platform, you are really choosing something that has been chosen for you by its algorithm (Blattmann, 2018). This is a very simple example of how the tool controls the user, but the concept remains true all the same.

So what’s the issue? The danger lies in the shallowing of a very specific, niche puddle that is floating in a very, very, very deep and ever expanding ocean (i.e. the internet). These sorts of algorithms may grant us access to more similar material, but it has the potential to limit the pool of information we, as consumers of information, can easily access. So whilst our current model of AI certainly falls short of the gun-toting rebel android image presented by Dick in 1968, one thing is clear: embedded AI affects how we use our technology in the digital environment by helpfully providing us with a convenient “recommended for you” list. How we respond – and how deep we choose to dive into that puddle, and then the depths beyond – determines how informed we become as we seek to navigate the digital realm and all its possibilities.

Reference List

Blattmann, J. (2018). Netflix: Binging on the ALgorithm. UX Planet. https://uxplanet.org/netflix-binging-on-the-algorithm-a3a74a6c1f59

Chamaki, F. (2010) Data Has A Better Idea. [Image]. Unsplash. https://unsplash.com/photos/1K6IQsQbizI