The first week of my new course, Teacher Librarianship!
Topic 1: School libraries in Australia
The readings for this week come from
Hazell, A. (1990). School library and information services in Australia. In M. Nimon & A. Hazell (Eds.), Promoting learning : challenges in teacher librarianship (pp. 17-22). Adelaide : Auslib Press.
As I was reading about the history of the school library I thought back to the days I was in primary school (80s) and high school (90s) and what I recalled about them. In primary school I remember sitting in the library and the librarian reading us a story, showing us the new books that were out. I remember learning about fiction and non-fiction. In high school all I remember was library staff that would supervise us borrowing books and giving this occoasional hand when we couldn't find a book on the shelf. These memories are what the article talks about as being "a place where books are kept" and not as she describes "a dynamic, integrated resource service offering library and information services to all members of the school community.
I also see the current library at the school where I have worked since graduating the last 8 years as this type of library.
From what Hazell has addressed as concerns I would still see some of them as relevant today. Things like staffing, budget, teacher and principal perceptions, teaching styles (resource based learning vs resource based teaching), and cooperation and collaboration with teaching staff. Hazell does address standards in the article but from brief readings from ALIA and other library websites its clear that there are clear standards of what a TL and a school library should be. Whether that is followed through in practice is another story.
Another reading was from
Haycock, K. (2003). The crisis in Canada’s school libraries: The case for reform and re-investment.
As I was reading about the current context in Canada I could see some things that are similar to Australia. Training courses for teacher librarians are very low. Schools are functioning without a teacher librarian or only with a part time one. A number of schools have limited resources and funding.
I would agree with their summation that while there may be brilliant policy documents and statements about the importance of a school library and teacher-librarians, they have not translated into practice Australia-wide.
As someone who was relatively newly trained in teaching I don't recall anything being spoken about or taught about the importance of a school library or teacher librarian. There was no instruction or suggestion on how to work collaboratively with them in planning the curriculum.
Where we differ it seems is that in Australia to be a "teacher librarian" you need to have a teaching degree plus a teacher librarianship degree added to it.
When I was in both public and high school, the library was very important in our schools. We would go on a regular basis, and our teachers made use of the librarians to show us how to do course specific research within the library. At the high school level we did have librarians who were also teachers. But I grew up in an upper middle class neighbourhood so I know that our schools had more money (through fundraising, etc.) to have good quality libraries.
ReplyDeleteOne of the problems we have now in our system in Canada is funding. Programs are being cut everywhere in our schools including ESL, arts, physical education, reading recovery, and I imagine the libraries are suffering from that as well. I think that if we were able to fund them better and have qualified librarians in there, our students would fare better. Even in my neighbourhood, if we wanted to do substantial research we had to travel downtown to the big public library. Many students in low income neighbourhoods don't have the access to this and that can hinder them.
You can do post-secondary studies in library sciences here, but I imagine that those who have invested their time and money in getting this education wouldn't be looking at then working in a public school or high school library if the funding isn't there or if they will only be asked to work part time. I think teacher-librarianship would be an excellent idea here.
Shannon I don't remember our libraries being like that really. In junior primary and primary it was mainly a place to borrow books, and learn about books. High school the library was the place you went to study, but we weren't given lessons on how to search successfully for the information that we needed, or gave us a passion to read books.
ReplyDeleteI guess you would have alot of untrained workers in your libraries like we do here. A study done in my state a few years ago showed that 60% of schools have untrained workers in them :(