Tag: teacher librarian

e-Literature and e-Trends – How will technology impact the TL?

Monica CoddingtonLeave a comment

Libraries are changing – this is no secret for those of us who are patrons to and managers of libraries. They are adapting and growing and developing – changes that are being made in light of, most significantly, Web 2.0 technologies. The school library I work in, and the libraries I visit, look vastly different from the libraries I had access to as a teenager even 8 years ago. There is a growing movement towards eBooks, where students can access the library collection online from any device. What a world to live in…

On the rise is the newer trend, one that appeals to young students’ love not only of engaging with stories, but also with technology – a source of much contention and yet such potential as a learning device (Stasiak, 2011). Since iPads have risen in popularity, producers have worked to create interactive eBooks for younger audiences – some as young as 18 months old (Stasiak, 2011). In these apps, children can direct the story themselves. They see the effect of their actions as they make decisions to drive the story along a path of their own choosing, listening to and watching their “character” interact with the space they inhabit. Children and students can now be more immersed in a story than ever before.

However, consider this: in a world where library patrons can access the books they require and desire using a tablet whenever they please, and when young children can (and might prefer) interacting physically with a story that they guide themselves on a tablet device, working independently and at their own pace, what role does the TL now play in schools?

Haughton (2015) provides a comprehensive list of quality interactive eBooks for young children, highlighting the educational benefits of each. Some have explicit links to STEM, some inspire curiosity and wonder. Others re-create classic texts with more interactivity (seemingly for the sake of it). Here the TLs role shifts. Now, there is opportunities for TLs to introduce worlds to students through print-based books, and then guide deeper exploration in such worlds through interactive apps. The possibilities of integrating STEM into library lessons also becomes more possible and engaging with interactive digital books such as “TinyBop: The Human Body” for primary school aged children. The TL can move towards fostering curiosity and wonder-driven immersion in books where students can immediately explore cause and effect and learn in a more interactive manner than ever before. Still, then, in this sense is the TL a facilitator of student-driven learning.

However, Haughton also makes clear that there is an abundance of such texts in the digital world. It is important, now more than ever, that the TL acts as collection manager of a collection of quality, and conducts thorough research into these programs and books prior to adding them to the collection. If students are to explore digital story-telling in a meaningful fashion, with meaningful results, then they should be exposed to quality literature and literature programs.

Even with the changes heralded by this e-trend, the TL must still stand as the expert selector of quality educational resources for their students.

 

References

Haughton, C. (2015, January 4). Top 10 book and bookish apps for young children. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/2015/jan/04/top-10-book-and-bookish-apps-for-children-chris-haughton

Stasiak, K. (2011). iTots: True Digital Natives. https://www.slideshare.net/KatStasiak/itots-true-digital-natives

Diversity: The future of children’s literature

Monica CoddingtonLeave a comment

The collapse of Angus & Robertson bookstores in Australia in 2011 brought with it an onslaught of doomsayers: the ringing cries of “books are dead! Publishing and reading novels will be a thing of the past soon! It’s the era of the EReader!” brought a sense of trepidation and sadness in many booklovers across the country. And yet the printing and consumption of print books remains as steady as ever, particularly for teenagers (Harvey, 2015, para. 2; Short, 2018, 287).

Reflecting now on the literature that I had access to as a teenager compared to what is available now, it is clear that, out of all the trends discussed by Short, (Short, 2018), diversity in children’s literature stands as both one of the areas that has experienced the most growth, and yet still has so far to go. In my teenage years, protagonists of the young adult (YA) fiction that was being published in my genres of interest (fantasy, historical and contemporary) were typically young, straight and Caucasian. In my first year of acting TL (last year) this was perhaps the first thing I noticed of our school library’s collection: it was not diverse, and did not accurately reflect the diversity of our student cohort or the wider world. It was the first change I sought to make in the collection. Now, even two years in, I am finding it easier than ever to find diverse books for our collection.

Despite having only seen the changes in this trend in two years, this is one area I am happily awaiting a boom in: the increase in books published about more diverse characters (and not just supporting characters, but diverse characters in protagonist roles), by more diverse authors, about more diverse topics.

Mossholder, T. (2019). sourced from Unsplash https://unsplash.com/photos/zs-PAgqgenQ
Mossholder, T. (2019). Sourced from Unsplash https://unsplash.com/photos/zs-PAgqgenQ

On the other side of this coin is the potential for the rise in transmedia stories and storytelling. Resources such as Inanimate Alice were created years ago, and yet the potential for innovation in storytelling through multimodal forms has yet to be fully realised, I think, by both educators and public consumers alike. As an English-trained teacher I learned of this text in university. Would I have discovered it or others like it if I had chosen to pursue another career path? I think, unfortunately, the answer is ‘no’. As a TL I see some picture books come with a CD still, or instructions on how to view the song version of the book on YouTube (see The Wonky Donkey). Transmedia storytelling has such potential, and I expect it will continue to grow.

But who will be the drivers of this change?

I believe it has already started, and that it will continue to grow with us: the passionate readers, the educators, the authors from diverse backgrounds, the independent publishing companies, and also, to some extent, social media. Networking sites such as Instagram and Facebook have created a space for authors and aspiring authors from around the world to connect not only with each other and publishing companies, but also with new readership. Finally, reader voices are being heard (including the criticism toward publishers and even authors without diversity in their texts), and new authors are able to connect directly with their audiences and put their diverse stories out in the world – sometimes even without the aid of a publishing house.

The shelves – thankfully – finally present and represent a much broader world than they did when I was discovering reading. There is, however, still a long way to go to ensure that more books about diverse characters and by diverse authors are known (Cooperative Children’s Book Center [CCBC], 2020).

 

Reference List

Cooperative Children’s Book Center [CCBC] (2020). Books by and/or about black, Indigenous and people of colour (all years). https://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/literature-resources/ccbc-diversity-statistics/books-by-and-or-about-poc-2018/

Harvey, E. (2015). 5 Trends Affecting Children’s Literature. Book Business: Your Source for Publishing Intelligence. https://www.bookbusinessmag.com/article/what-we-learned-from-the-top-trends-in-childrens-literature-webinar/

Short, K. (2018). What’s Trending in Children’s Literature and Why it Matters. Language Arts, 95(5), 287-298.

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

ETL401 AT1 Part B – Experience-informed Reflections on the TL Role

Monica Coddington1 Comment

What is a Teacher Librarian (TL)?

As a beginning teacher, my experiences in school libraries and with Teacher Librarians (TLs) have been limited, but the first thing that has always come to mind when I have thought about the role of the TL has been as a facilitator of a love of literature and reading and of a manager of resources. This understanding I know now reveals only the surface of the TLs roles, and was informed by infrequent interactions with TLs and my role as an English teacher.

A facilitator of a love of literature and reading.  Original photograph. Coddington, 2020.

In my early teaching days I had to take each of my classes to the library once a fortnight, where they were required to “engage in wide reading of self-selected [. . .] texts for enjoyment” (NSW Education Standards Authority, 2019, p. 147). In one school, the librarian would lay a selection of books on the table for students before disappearing into her secluded office space. From this very brief experience I had understood that TLs were to provide the means and the space for independent reading to occur, but little more. At my next school this understanding grew when the TL eagerly recommended titles and showed students where to locate books they had found in the search engine. Here it was clear that the role included arming students with the knowledge and skills to navigate the library space and resources, rather than just staying up to date on popular Young Adult literature.

After recent experiences in my current school, however, where I have worked more closely with our TL, my understanding of what this role entails has grown further – and will continue to do so. It is also about engaging the school and the community to foster reading culture. In 2019, events like Book Week Reading Café’s, the Premier’s Reading Challenge and Book Club opened the doors of our library to “encourage a love of reading for leisure and pleasure” (NSW Department of Education, para. 1, 2018). I learned here that library spaces should be more than just a home for literature. But whilst TL’s do manage versatile library spaces and physical resources, it is clear that this is a very minor aspect of the TLs role.

Perhaps the most key component lies in the arming of students with knowledge to navigate their world – one that has increasingly blurred lines between being offline and being online (Floridi, 2007). I’m talking, of course, about the crucial role of the TL in teaching critical and digital literacies. In an age where students have easier access to more information than ever before, these literacies are more important than ever. And who better to teach them than the Teacher Librarian, who manages such resources? My current school library is a hub of online learning and research, with distance education and independent research occurring daily. The digital world is as much a part of students’ education as it is of their personal lives, and without the skills to critically navigate an ever-expanding infosphere, students run the risk of becoming overwhelmed and uninformed.

TLs will always be champions of literature, that much is evident. But their roles have changed as education – and the world – has. They stand as information specialists who teach students the literacies necessary to successfully navigate the infosphere and become active, informed and critical digital citizens.

 

Reference List 

Floridi, L. (2007). A Look into the future impact of ICT on our lives. The Information Society, 23, 59-64. DOI: 10.1080/01972240601059094

NSW Department of Education. (2018). NSW Premier’s Reading Challenge. https://online.det.nsw.edu.au/prc/home.html

NSW Education Standards Authority. (2019). NSW Syllabus for the Australian Curriculum: English K-10 Syllabus. https://educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/portal/nesa/k-10/learning-areas/english-year-10/english-k-10