Learning powered by the school library

By Sharon McGuinness

The important role school libraries and teacher-librarians play in the education of the world's children was celebrated on International School Library Day on October 22.

The job of a teacher-librarian is always challenging and constantly rewarding. Few others in a primary school are able to teach every student in the school. Teacher-librarians are often innovative and keen to extend the learning boundaries of their students.

A teacher-librarian is dually qualified in both librarianship and teaching. A teacher-librarian is an information specialist who evaluates and selects the best resources to support the learning and teaching needs of both students and staff.

A professionally qualified teacher-librarian: •is an information literacy specialist, helping students and staff to access the most relevant resources for their needs and to master the skills of locating, evaluating and using information as part of the critical thinking process.

• keeps abreast of fiction and non fiction resource needs of all key learning areas as well as a variety of genres and levels for student's reading for pleasure
• has skills in locating authoritative, relevant information on the internet and how to transform this information into authentic learning
• helps teachers plan units of work, find resources for a topic, locate lesson ideas and how to integrate thinking and information skills into collaboratively taught lessons
• can be one of your best resources. Have you talked to your teacher-librarian recently and asked for some resource recommendations? Does your teacher-librarian plan and teach collaboratively with classroom teachers?

The teacher-librarian in a well funded and supported library has the ability to make a difference.

Research conducted both in Australia and overseas clearly shows a correlation between student achievement, a well resourced school library and the employment of a professionally qualified teacher-librarian.

In NSW, school library funding is not equitable across all schools. Funding is determined at the school level and no mandatory standards exist. An informal national survey conducted recently by a Victorian teacher-librarian has found that library budgets varied within government primary schools from $5.56-$53 per child. The quality and quantity of resources, both in print and digital formats and therefore a student's and teacher's access to information is not guaranteed. Ultimately this reflects on student literacy levels and their ability to become information literate.

Within the next few years a significant number of teacher-librarians will retire. Already it is harder to replace a teacher-librarian on leave with someone who is appropriately qualified. A teacher-librarian does not equate to a teacher who can issue and return items via OASIS.

Sharon McGuinness teaches at Thirroul PS.

For further information

October 2007 contents