Month: March 2025

The servant leadership style focuses on active listening, supporting and prioritising the needs of the team, and creating a positive teamwork environment. This approach in the library setting is highly effective in fostering care and empathy among the staff. This positive environment can reduce stress and foster high morale among staff. Hence, everyone will be willing to support the school’s goal and vision. Librarians can adopt a servant leadership style by proactively checking in with staff members on their well-being, asking about their challenges and how they are progressing with programs, and offering support.  The librarian can also host team-building events, providing an inclusive and fun environment to break down the barriers of staff.  Depending on the needs of the staff and students, librarians can create tailored training courses and programs that cater to the whole school community. This way, teachers will be upskilled, and students will be able to acquire new skills. Librarians can create a work culture that not only reduces stress but also fosters a harmonious environment that aligns with the school’s ethos. This will improve engagement and satisfaction within the staff team.

References

International Institute for Learning. (n.d.). Understanding The Basics and Benefits of Servant Leadership [Infographic]. https://blog.iil.com/understanding-the-basics-and-benefits-of-servant-leadership/

Mesagan, O. F. (2024). The role of leadership in shaping librarians’ job performance in academic settings. Journal of Education and Teaching (JET), 5(2), 228-247. https://doi.org/10.51454/jet.v5i2.406

The teacher-librarian (TL) utilises the servant leadership style approach to proactively facilitate and provide ongoing information and digital literacy training to support teachers in integrating the resources into their teaching practices. This could be collaboration on building online research lessons or providing workshops for teachers to learn how to integrate the digital tools (Coetzer et al., 2017).

Co-teaching is another opportunity for the teacher librarian to serve as a teaching partner and guide classroom teachers in real-life situations by modelling how to teach critical digital literacy skills so teachers could facilitate the lesson in future. TL can mentor teachers by providing them with knowledge and skills on using library databases, digital tools, and resources to improve their planning and strategies in teaching information literacy (Koh et al., 2022).

TL is a digitally literate educator who can guide teachers through the complexities of the 21st-century digital world. The school community will benefit from understanding and navigating the ever-changing digital platforms.

References

Coetzer, M. F., Bussin, M., & Geldenhuys, M. (2017). The functions of a servant leader. Administrative Sciences, 7(1), 5. https://doi.org/10.3390/admsci7010005

Koh, K., Ge, X., & Petrella, J. B. (2022). Librarian-Teacher Co-Teaching and the Role of School Librarians in Facilitating Inquiry and Maker Learning. School library research, 25. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1348949.pdf

PremiumVector. (n.d.). A group of children listening to a teacher giving a presentation on a chart [Stock image]. https://www.freepik.com/premium-vector/group-children-listening-teacher-giving-presentation-chart_328826978.htm#from_element=detail_alsolike