School library research
Advocacy – remarkable stories
Strategy 5: Find remarkable stories
Stories are a magic way to support a key message. Storytelling is traditionally the way to pass on important information from generation to generation. Stories can be told in words, images and sounds.
The combination of words, images and sounds through video is an extremely powerful way to convey a key message. Doron Isaacs, Equal Education Coordinator, is interviewed on the “One School, One Library, One Librarian” campaign.
There are quite a number of YouTube videos that support this South African campaign with many students and young people featuring in the stories.
Joe McHugh and Connie Williams, in cooperation with the California School Library Association, collected stories and published them in an audio journal – http://www.csla.net/audio/
Capturing the “student voice” is an absolute must. The findings from the Student Learning through Ohio School Libraries Research Project provide you with access to samples of qualitative responses and additional comments by the students.
The replication of the research in Australian schools, Student Learning through Australian School Libraries project, provides samples of comments by students on the following:
- The library as place
- Access to school library facilities
- Provision of extended hours
- The school library as central to resource-based and inquiry learning
- Students value help finding quality information
- Importance of the teacher-librarian’s instructional intervention
- The school library supporting knowledge construction
- The school library as production facility
- The school library’s contribution to student academic achievement
- The school library building student confidence
- The school library as learning laboratories
The remarkable stories usually take on the style of writing of “once I was lost…now I am found”.
Successful school library advocacy
For a period of time I was convinced that an advocacy campaign needed to be a planned, deliberate and ongoing event. In fact, I produced a short video to this effect.
I still believe this approach is important.
I’m also becoming quite convinced of other approaches. For example, a successful school library program, such as the Independent Learning Centre at Concordia Lutheran College, is an inspiring example of how the work of the teacher-librarian, Mrs Pat Carmichael, has not only made a difference to student learning, but also changed the perception of how the teacher-librarian and the school library are integral to the school curriculum.
Another approach is evidenced by the research findings of Dr Nancy Everhart. Dr Everhart set the research question – What are the most frequent forms of evidence used by principals to evaluate school librarians? Her findings reveal the most frequent type of evaluation is informal visits / informal observations. So, what sorts of things are observed — physical facilities, conversations, behaviour, student’s use and the commentary of others. The second type of evaluation was “word of mouth” with the last type being the “formal observations”. Makes one wonder if spending time preparing an annual report is really worth it?
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