Month: August 2021

Part A – Statement of Personal Philosophy

I believe that effective teacher librarians are those who constantly challenge and inspire students to become lifelong independent learners and critical and creative thinkers. In doing so, they equip students with the 21st century skills required to become global and digital citizens in an ever-changing information landscape. They are curriculum leaders who collaborate with the wider school community to promote the values of 21st century education and embed them within teaching and learning across the school environment. The most effective teacher librarians also inspire within their students a love for reading and an appreciation of literature beyond the classroom, allowing students to make connections between literature and the real world.

 

Part B – Evidence of Growth Through Key Themes

Key Theme 1: Information Literacy

In completing the first mandatory unit for this course, ETL401, I quickly became familiar with the concept of information literacy and the responsibility of the teacher librarian in developing such literacy in students (Johnson, 2020a). While there are many definitions around the concept of information literacy and different approaches to how it should best be taught to students, I found the joint statement on information literacy from the Australian School Library Association and the Australian Library and Information Association captured these thoughts best (ASLA & ALIA, 2016). This statement not only defines the essential skills needed for a student to become ‘informationally literate’, but also emphasises the teacher librarian’s role in this process and the role of inquiry learning as a framework to guide such learning.

Further study in ETL501 continued to strengthen my knowledge of this concept and emphasise the links between information literacy, digital literacy and the teaching of 21st century skills as essential practice. As teachers of information literacy we are not just teaching students to use and create information effectively, but we also need to teach students to become digital citizens, critical and creative thinkers and problem solvers (Twitchett, 2015). In essence, we are the information experts within the school and as 21st century educators we have a responsibility to our students to provide meaningful learning experiences that shape lifelong learning to best prepare our students for life beyond school (Quezzaire, 2018; Wall & Bonanno, 2014), a fact that has resonated with me very strongly.

As a trained history teacher moving into the library space at the beginning of this course, I had little experience with pedagogy and strategies to teach such concepts to students. In one of my earlier blog posts, I identified some of the initial strategies I used to approach teaching information literacy to students through a Stage 4 program based around the Information Search Process model (Johnson, 2020b). At this point of my journey, I had little knowledge of what I was doing and was relying upon an older model provided by the DET and employed by a number of other public schools in NSW. While this model certainly had its merits and I was able to create a number of scaffolds for students’ information processes (Figure 1), I found the concepts overwhelming for students and struggled to back up what I was doing with evidence and research.

 

 

 

Continuing to work through the course I began to understand the value of Guided Inquiry Design, particularly with the students I was working with due to the collaborative affordances of the model and its consideration of the emotional states of students during the inquiry process (Garrison & Fitzgerald, 2016; Kuhlthau et al., 2012). I began to design an inquiry unit in collaboration with Year 7 science teachers based on the GID model and planned to implement the unit in 2021 with the Year 7 cohort in Science classes. However, due to unforeseen allocation issues and a lack of HSIE teachers, I was unfortunately tasked with teaching senior ancient history classes and no longer had enough time allocated to deliver the unit. Next year, with the school moving to a brand new site at the Meadowbank Education Precinct, an increase in the amount of teachers and with my role as the teacher librarian becoming more cemented in the school, I was able to negotiate greater time allocations for library lessons so that I can initiate the teaching of GID in the school. I hope that this will allow me to collaborate with teachers from other faculties to develop similar programs so that I can begin to develop a culture within the school around the teaching of information literacy and my role as the information expert.

Despite this initial setback however, I found other ways to develop students’ information literacy and work with other teachers to provide learning opportunities for students in this area. I was approached by a number of English and HSIE teachers to develop workshops for their senior classes to teach students about plagiarism, referencing, analysis sources online and effective note-taking. I took this opportunity with both hands and created a number of scaffolds and resources (Figure 2), as well as planning multiple lessons, and worked with these teachers to deliver learning experiences that developed these key literacies in senior students. This is something I continue in the library space, working with seniors and providing them with these resources to support their study and develop their information literacy.

 

 

These lessons were capped off with a poster campaign, in which I placed the following poster (Figure 3) in every classroom in the school and made a habit of reinforcing the message in weekly school assemblies, following the trend of ‘fake news’ and misinformation that began to spread at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

 

Key Theme 2: Collection Management

It is vital that teacher librarians have a core understanding of the values and principles of collection management, a fact made clear to me upon starting this course with ETL503. As mentioned in my final reflections for this subject, when I started in my current position I had little knowledge of any of these practices concerning the management of information and collection of resources (Johnson, 2020c), nor did my library at the time have any existing policies or procedures around these crucial aspects of library practice.

Even my initial readings for ETL503 covering the definition of the term ‘collection management’ helped put things into context. I found this term far more wide-ranging and relevant than that of ‘collection development’, as it contains within its scope not only the selection and acquisition of new resources for the collection but also a wide range of activities around managing access to the resources, accessibility and the assigning of responsibilities (Corrall, 2018; Johnson, 2009). It is also far more relevant in 21st education given the movement towards digital resourcing, particularly in the COVID-19 world of online learning and personal device use, as library collections have expanded beyond the walls of the physical library to incorporate digital materials, resources owned by other libraries and information agencies and electronic resource subscriptions (Gorman, 2003). To this end, I found comfort in Horava’s (2010, p.151) thoughts on collection management as context and need dependent, as these helped me to focus on the issue of managing both the physical and digital collections to address specific needs within my own school library environment:

“The challenge lies in how to balance libraries’ finite resources of money, time, and energy against these several directions of collection focus. No single approach will suffice because each will be important for addressing the library community’s diverse information needs and educational goals.”

Reflecting on this led me to identify two of the more important considerations for the context of my collection, those being the needs of my users – staff, students and the wider community – and budgetary restraints (Johnson, 2020d). Although this reflection was centered around reference resources specifically, I found that it translated to the rest of my collection rather well, and after conducting staff and student surveys around their use of the library I was better able to understand their needs and how to meet them. For instance, it became clear that students had a far greater need and use for technology than traditional print materials (Figure 4), and so I realised that I needed to focus on curating digital collections and resources for my students as these were almost non-existent. In doing so, I acquired a school-wide subscription for audiobooks and e-books from Wheelers, which has since seen use from around 20% of our student body. This has now become a core part of our collection, particularly given the current lockdown situation in Sydney and the inability for students to borrow physical books from the library.

 

 

Following this I sought to improve and promote other online resources provided by the school, including WorldBookOnline and Clickview. Although my promotion of WorldBookOnline still needs improvement in terms of targeting certain curriculums and collaborating with teachers for its use, it has seen an uptake since I began in my role in 2019. The same can certainly be said of Clickview (then EnhanceTV and barely used by any staff or students), which now has an average of 400 uses a week, and as I will touch on in my next theme, has provided me opportunities for technological leadership within the school.

With regards to policies and procedures around collection development and management within my library, this is still one area that I am really lacking in. The importance of a collection development policy was made blindingly obvious through the second assessment of ETL503, and although I noted my excitement to create and implement one in my current position, I have not had the chance to do so (Johnson, 2020c). This is something I am very much aiming to complete for next year, when my current school moves to a new location and a new library will afford me with more time to dedicate to the creation and implementation of such a policy, as well as other procedures and policies that guide the selection, deselection and challenging of materials within the collection. That being said, I did manage to complete my first stocktake of the collection during the online learning situation last year (Johnson, 2020e), something that I feel was necessary due to our outdated non-fiction section and I saw this as incredibly valuable for myself in terms of gaining an in depth understanding of my collection (Figure 5). I hope to complete another stocktake next term to give myself comparable data, support my creation of a collection development policy and to assist me to manage moving the collection to the new site.

 

Key Theme 3: Leadership

As an early career teacher with only four years experience I have not had an overwhelming amount of leadership experience, however, over the length of this course my understanding of the core principles of leadership have dramatically improved and I have since been provided with a number of opportunities to develop my capacity. Upon beginning ETL504 this year I noted my lack of experience on my blog (Johnson, 2021a), as well as the fact that my position as a leader when starting my current position was complicated by the supervisor I was assigned and the lack of value given to the library space by the wider school community.

Although I initially struggled with some of the concepts of leadership theory, I realised that I needed to improve my knowledge in this area in order to develop my own practice as a leader and start my journey. This started with gaining an understanding of my current place in the school and how that fit into the field of leadership, leading me to identify myself as principally a servant leader (Johnson, 2021b), as I tended not to focus on my own aspirations and goals but on meeting the current teaching and learning needs and interests of my students and colleagues.

Continuing my readings around transformational leadership and in particular the concept of leading from the middle, it became clear that the leadership responsibilities of an effective teacher librarian, while certainly maintaining an element of servant leadership, must be broader. In particular, I strongly identified with the notion that teacher librarians are cultural change agents (Oberg, 2011) and that we are best placed in the school to collaborate with existing school leaders and teaching staff around implementing changes to pedagogy, curriculum and technology integration, as well as leading by example and best practice in these areas (Cox & Korodaj, 2019). By leading from the middle, we can effectively bridge the gap between formal leaders and classroom teachers in these areas to best support teaching and learning across the school and begin to implement meaningful changes (Toop, 2013). This was crucial to my position within the school as I learned I could start to build perceptions of myself as a leader of curriculum and technology, as well as the culture around the library as a 21st century learning space that supports staff and students in teaching and learning.

The importance of leadership from the library was made even more prevalent during the online learning situation that resulted from COVID-19, as the effective use of technology to continue teaching and learning from home and support students and staff became a massive issue. This was an area in which I saw opportunities for strong leadership from the middle, reinforced to me via the Virtual Study Visits as part of this unit as a number of different information agencies were able to harness technology as an invaluable resource with which to continue to support their users. Following these study visits and incorporating my new knowledge from ETL504, I ran a number of professional development sessions for teachers on our staff development day around Clickview, an educational video streaming service, and how to integrate it effectively in the classroom and existing teaching and learning programs (Figure 6).  I have since been providing technical and curriculum support to staff via this service, particularly during the online learning phase of the current term. This has allowed me to begin to develop perceptions of myself as a technology leader within the school and someone who can lead professional development in this area, two vital leadership roles for teacher librarians as 21st century educators (Hover & Wise, 2020).

 

 

In addition to beginning my journey as a technology leader within the school, I have made significant headway into developing my ability to lead curriculum changes, another key area for leadership as a teacher librarian (Abbott, 2017). A number of literacy initiatives have been driven by my current principal within the last year or so, and I was approached to co-lead one of the literacy teams that aims at building writing capacity in our Stage 4 students. I jumped at the opportunity and have since collaborated closely with teachers from several faculties with varying expertise and an external organisation, Education Changemakers, to develop an action plan and trial a program based around the PEEL paragraph writing structure (Figure 7). Although this is still in the development and trial phase, co-leading this team has been an incredibly valuable experience and I believe it is the start of my journey to becoming a key curriculum leader within the school. Despite the fact that leadership is definitely the area in which I still have the most room to grow, I am excited about the opportunities that have started to present themselves and the ways in which I am beginning to shape my perception within the school as a leader from within the library.

 

 

 

Part C – Development of Skills & Attitudes

Although I am nearing the end of my Masters journey, I feel that I have made extensive progress in my own skills, attitudes and practice as a teacher librarian. I know there is still a long way to go, and plenty of room for personal growth for me to consider myself an ‘excellent’ teacher librarian; this is clear to me after evaluating my own progress against the standards of professional excellence for teacher librarians created by ALIA and ASLA (2004).

 

Standard 1: Professional Knowledge

Although still technically an early career teacher, as an accredited secondary history teacher I believe I already have a solid basis of knowledge of the principles of learning, key pedagogies and curriculums. However, the understandings I have acquired throughout this course have given me the knowledge to apply these principles more widely to the library and the place of the teacher librarian in the school. In particular, I have adapted key aspects of information literacy teaching into my practice, as well as developing a more in depth understanding of library and information management in line with national and professional standards. I still have some way to go to develop my professional knowledge, particularly when it comes to working with other staff to implement information literacy goals and programs, and I need to continue to work to develop a culture around promoting and fostering a love of reading in our wider school community.

 

Standard 2: Professional Practice

In terms of my professional practice, again I feel that I have developed immensely as a result of new learnings and understandings gained throughout this course. Through my delivery of lessons and resources around information literacy and my curation of the school’s online and digital resources, I believe I have begun to display some of the qualities attributed to the practice of ‘excellent’ teacher librarians as per the ALIA and ASLA (2004) standards. However, I am yet to implement key policies and procedures within the library that align not only with the school’s mission, but with national standards, such as a collection development policy as mentioned above. I have also started the process of building evidence to evaluate programs, services and the learning of students, although this is definitely a work in progress that will continue to build alongside my skills.

 

Standard 3: Professional Commitment

I believe my professional commitment has made leaps and bounds since starting in my role in 2019. I have openly sought out professional development opportunities within the sphere of teacher librarianship and libraries in general, and this is something I continue to do with enthusiasm. As stated in the previous section, I have begun to make key progress in areas of leadership and promotion of the library as a 21st century learning space that is driven by technology, although there is still plenty of room for growth. I have also become involved with a number of key professional communities and other teacher librarian networks in order to improve my own practice and to provide inspiration for my future goals, something I have seen as immensely valuable. In particular, the use of social media and promotion of libraries and their services by these excellent teacher librarians is something I hope to incorporate into my own practice in the near future.

 

I have many goals for my future career as a teacher librarian and lifelong learner. I feel that I have made a wealth of progress since beginning this course in 2019 at the start of my ‘long, arduous journey’ (Johnson, 2020a), and although I am certainly nearer the start than the end of this journey, I am excited to continue my development as a qualified and enthusiastic teacher librarian.

 

 

 

References

Abbott, R. (2017). Teacher-librarians, teachers and the 21st century library: Relationships matter. Synergy, 15(2). https://slav.vic.edu.au/index.php/Synergy/article/view/v15220175/40

Australian Library and Information Association. (2004). Standards of professional excellence for teacher librarians. Australian Library and Information Association. https://www.alia.org.au/about-alia/policies-standards-and-guidelines/standards-professional-excellence-teacher-librarians

Australian School Library Association & Australian Library and Information Association. (2016). Statement on information literacy. Australian School Library Association & Australian Library and Information Association. https://asla.org.au/resources/Documents/Website%20Documents/Policies/policy_Information_Literacy.pdf

Corrall, S. (2018). The concept of collection development in the digital world. In M. Fieldhouse & A. Marshall (Eds.), Collection development in the digital age (1st ed., pp. 3-24). https://doi.org/10.290/9781856048972.003

Garrison, K., & Fitzgerald, L. (2016). “It’s like stickers in your brain”: Using the guided inquiry process to support lifelong learning skills in an Australian school library. In Proceedings of the 45th International Association of School Librarians’ Annual Conference Incorporating the 20th International Forum on Research in School Librarianship, Tokyo, Japan. https://www.iasl-online.org/resources/Pictures/RP15_GarrisonFitzgerald_2016IASLTokyo.pdf

Horava, T. (2010). Challenges and possibilities for collection management in a digital age. Library Resources & Technical Services, 54(3), 142-152. https://doi.org/10.5860/lrts.54n3.142

Hover, A., & Wise, T. (2020). Exploring ways to create 21st century digital learning experiences. International Journal of Primary, Elementary and Early Years Education, 3(13). https://doi.org/10.1080/03004279.2020.1826993

IFLA. (2021). How to spot fake news – COVID-19 edition [Image]. IFLA. https://www.ifla.org/publications/node/93015

Johnson, P. (2009). Fundamentals of collection development and management [ALA Editions version]. (Vol. 2nd ed.). Chicago: ALA Editions.

Johnson, T. (2020a, March 9). The start of a long, arduous journey to become a teacher librarian. Musings of a Modern TL. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/tomthetl/2020/03/09/the-start-of-a-long-arduous-journey-to-become-a-teacher-librarian/

Johnson, T. (2020b, May 24). ETL401 assessment 3 part c: Reflective practice. Musings of a Modern TL. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/tomthetl/2020/05/24/etl401-assessment-3-part-c-reflective-practice/

Johnson, T. (2020c, May 17). ETL503 assessment 2 part b: Collection development policy reflection. Musing of a Modern TL. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/tomthetl/2020/05/17/assessment-2-collection-development-policy-reflection/

Johnson, T. (2020d, August 3). Reference materials – print or digital? Musing of a Modern TL. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/tomthetl/2020/08/03/reference-materials-print-or-digital/

Johnson, T. (2020e, April 29). The journey so far. Musings of a Modern TL. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/tomthetl/2020/04/29/the-journey-so-far/

Johnson, T. (2021a, March 3). Teacher librarians as leaders. Musings of a Modern TL. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/tomthetl/2021/03/03/teacher-librarians-as-leaders/

Johnson, T. (2021b, May 24). ETL504 – assessment 2 part b. Musings of a Modern TL. https://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/tomthetl/2021/05/24/etl504-assessment-2-part-b/

Kuhlthau, C. C., Maniotes, L. K., & Caspari, A. K. (2012). Guided inquiry design: A framework for inquiry in your school. CA: Libraries Unlimited.

Oberg, D. (2011). Teacher librarians as cultural change agents. SCIS Connections, (79), 1-3.

Quezzaire, P. (2018, February 23). Libraries in the 21st century: The struggle between perception and reality. The IB Community Blog. https://blogs.ibo.org/blog/2018/02/23/libraries-in-the-21st-century-the-struggle-between-perception-and-reality/

Toop, J. (2013, July 2). Making the most of middle leaders to drive change in schools. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2013/jul/02/middle-leaders-driving-change-school

Twitchett, L. (2015). Supporting digital literacy and 21st century learning through the school library. Synergy, 13(2).

Wall, J., & Bonanno, K. (2014). Learning and literacy for the future, Scan, 33(3), 20-28.