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Online
Conference - 2004
Research - Evidence Based Practice
abstracts (last updated 9 December 2003)
Dr Ross Todd (Associate
Professor, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey,
USA)
Dr Ross Todd is Associate
Professor in the School of Communication, Information and
Library Studies at Rutgers University USA. His
research focuses on: information and critical literacies;
information technology and learning; using information to
build knowledge and understanding; how school libraries
and the role of teacher librarians may more effectively
empower student learning; and building schools as
effective information - knowledge sharing
communities. He has published over 120 papers and
book chapters on these areas, and has been an invited
speaker at many international conferences. He is
Director of Research (with Professor Carol Kuhlthau) of
Center for International Scholarship in School Libraries
at Rutgers University (CISSL) (http://cissl.scils.rutgers.edu)
which aims to provide the international community of
scholars and practitioners an arena to develop, exchange,
disseminate research enhancing information for learning in
school libraries worldwide.
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| From information to knowledge: The key
to constructing communities of learning and literacy
(keynote paper) |
| The dynamics of effective learning in an
information age school are complex and challenging.
These dynamics centre around several key dimensions:
understanding the nature of learning in diverse and
increasingly technological information environments;
understanding how knowledge is constructed through
engagement with information; understanding how learning
and literacy are effectively demonstrated. These
understandings do not happen by chance, nor simply through
the provision of well organised and accessible collections
of information. Research tells us that carefully
planned instructional intervention is the critical,
essential dynamic to effective learning through
information sources, and this involves the whole school
community working as Learning-Partner-Leaders. Hein
(1991) challenges us with this provocative statement:
"learners construct knowledge for themselves; each
learner individually (and socially) constructs meaning as
he or she learns. Constructing meaning is
learning. There is no other kind".
This paper will draw on several research projects
undertaken by Ross Todd and Carol Kuhlthau through the
Center of International Scholarship in School Libraries at
Rutgers University during 1993. The first,
"Information Utilization for learning through the
school library" involved 40 grade 9 students and 30
grade 11 students at Gill St Bernards School in New
Jersey. The collaborative construction, and
approaches to charting learning outcomes as evidence-based
practice will be presented. The second,
"Student learning through Ohio School Libraries"
involved 13,000 students and 880 teachers and school
administrators from a large sample of schools across
Ohio. This project illustrates the learning power of
effective school libraries - libraries that have an active
teaching-learning agenda focusing on the development of
information and critical literacies designed to improve
student achievement - bring about clear learning
outcomes. The learning outcomes as identified in
this project will be elaborated, and strategies for
building effective information-knowledge communities will
be presented, including some practical approaches to
gathering evidence of learning outcomes fostered by an
effective learning-centred school library. These
studies, when situated as part of the accumulating
international evidence of the relationship between school
libraries and learning, further contribute to the belief
that if teacher librarians do not engage in a strong,
focused and curriculum centred learning agenda, then
school students are left behind. |
Barbara Bugg (Education
Resources Co-ordinator, Bayside College, Victoria)
Barbara Bugg has over 30
years experience in school libraries. She has been a
University Lecturer in Librarianship, a consultant and,
predominately, a teacher librarian. Always looking
for new ideas and trying new things, Barbara has been
interested and involved in information literacy skills for
students.
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|
Evidence based practice: a toe in
the water |
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This paper is designed to demonstrate
that even a small step towards evidence based practice can
yield positive results for the school library. The
paper is a description of an actual program that was run
with great success. The program involved two year 7
classes and was not onerous. The program should be
regarded as a little acorn from which a big oak tree might
grow, given the resources and staffing of the
school. |
Julie Cass (Teacher
Librarian, Victoria Point State High School, Queensland)
Julie
has worked as a librarian in an international publishing
firm (London), at the University of Queensland libraries,
and in Queensland Technical and Further Education (TAFE)
libraries. As a teacher librarian, she has worked in
primary and secondary schools in Queensland and is
presently the teacher librarian at Victoria Point State
High School. Julie has had a paper published in Access
(Issue 1 2004) and will complete her Masters in Applied
Science (Teacher Librarianship) through Charles Sturt
University in 2004.
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| Evaluating the input
of the teacher librarian in student learning |
| This paper will focus on
action research initiatives that provide evidence of the
relationship between the school library and student
learning in a Queensland state high school. It will
draw on a project that commenced in response to Lonsdale's
(2003) report for the Australian School Library
Association that identifies a need for specific evidence
in the Australian context linking the role of teacher
librarians to students' acquisition of information
literacy skills. The background to the project, data
collection, and evaluation of associated learning outcomes
directly attributed to information literacy strategies
will be presented.
The project involved 29 Year 12
Business and Communication Technology students divided
into a trial class of 12, with ongoing support and
assistance from the teacher librarian and a control class
of 17, with no teacher librarian input. The
hypothesis was that the students in the trial group would
perform better on skills relating to information literacy
than those in the control. The learning outcomes as
identified in this project will be elaborated, the results
presented and the need for further research
identified. The paper will conclude with a
reflection on progress and an indication of future
directions for evidence-based practice at Victoria Point
State High School.
Lonsdale, M 2003, Impact
of school libraries on student achievement: a review of
the research, report for the Australian School Library
Association, Australian Council of Educational Research,
Camberwell, Vic. |
Dr L. Anne Clyde (Professor
and Chair, Library and Information Science Department,
Faculty of Social Science, The University of Iceland)
Dr. L. Anne Clyde is
Professor and Chair of the Library and Information Science
Department at the University of Iceland. An
Australian, she worked in state and independent school
libraries in New South Wales, before becoming a library
educator at universities and colleges in Queensland, New
South Wales and Western Australia. From the
University of British Columbia in Canada (where she was an
Associate Professor), she moved to Iceland. Her
books include School Libraries and the Electronic
Community: The Internet connection and Managing InfoTech
in school library media centers. She is Chair of
the IFLA Section of School Libraries and Resource Centres
and Webmaster for the International Association of School
Librarianship.
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| All evidence is good
evidence? Evaluating the evidence in evidence-based
practice |
| Evidence-based practice
in librarianship emerged in the late 1990s as a way of
improving practice and highlighting outcomes that matter
to the community served by the library; it focuses on
using evidence from professional practice and from
research to resolve day-to-day problems and to plan for
the future. Ross Todd (2001) has said that it
involves "conscientious, explicit and judicious use
of current best evidence in making decisions",
whether that is research evidence or "meaningful and
systematic evidence" gathered within the
school. This then raises the question of "What
is good evidence?", particularly in relation to the
research evidence. Will any evidence do? Is
some evidence better than other evidence? How can a
busy practitioner distinguish between quality research
evidence and evidence that might be unhelpful or even
false?
The presentation will provide an
overview of a recent research project in which I
investigated the strategies used by experts in research
evaluation, to evaluate research reports. This study
(the results of which will be published early in 2004)
showed that even people who have a great deal of
experience and expertise in the evaluation of research
reports, will disagree in their rankings of research
reports, to the point where what is ranked first by one
expert may be ranked lowest by another. Further, the
experts may claim to be using the same criteria or the
same strategies when coming to these very different
conclusions. If the experts evaluating the one
research report can come to such different conclusions
about it, then practitioners who are not experts in
research evaluation may find the evaluation of research a
confusing process. They will need proven strategies
or benchmarks or guidelines for evaluation if the evidence
provided by research is indeed to be a basis for
professional practice.
The research project further showed
that a reasonable basis or strategy for objective
evaluation of published research does not exist at present
in our field. Consequently, the second half of the
presentation will describe ongoing work that seeks to
establish guidelines for evaluation. A number of
models from the field of medicine and education will be
discussed; while they have their limitations as models for
evaluation of research in school librarianship, it is
possible that they might form a base for work on the
development of a model for school librarianship. The
presentation will conclude with an overview of this work
as of early 2004 and an indication of future directions.
Todd, Ross (2001), 'A
sustainable future for teacher-librarians: Inquiry
learning, actions and evidence', Orana, November,
pp. 10-20. |
Raylee Elliott-Burns (Lecturer,
Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Queensland,
Australia) Raylee
Elliott Burns has a background in primary teaching,
teacher librarianship, and school resource centre
consultancy, and currently lectures at Queensland
University of Technology in the Graduate Diploma in
Education (Teacher-Librarianship) and the Master of
Education. Collaborative research initiatives
undertaken with QUT colleagues include Performing
hybridity: impact of new technologies on the role of
teacher-librarians (1999-2000) and the School Online
Curriculum Content Initiative: SOCCI Market Research
project for the Curriculum Corporation and the Australian
Education Systems Officials Committee. Raylee's
doctoral research is concerned with the transformation of
school library design processes and principles. |
| Singing from the same
hymn sheet? A chorale for diverse voices designing spaces
for learning. |
| What does it take to
develop a 'wide awake' approach to the design of spaces
and places for learning? What kinds of learners do
we imagine in the design of learning spaces? How do
we balance our designing intentions among learning,
resourcing and access, and the social, cultural and
psychological forces at work in spaces? How might we
balance further the challenges of the geographical and the
virtual? How might designing partnerships work in
pursuit of innovative, responsive, energising
*"school libraries" as spaces and places?
These and other questions will be explored by the voices
of educators and designers/architects around matters
associated with the design of school libraries. Technology
permitting, the session plans to make available designing
words and images to stimulate participant reflection and a
discussion space for a 'chorale' of ideas.
* In changing times it can be argued
that the school library is a contested space and that the
nomenclature "school library" is a contested
terminology. School communities struggle to name,
powerfully or even adequately, the purpose, character,
role and place of this entity in their midst.
Diverse contexts and communities further complicate
individual circumstances. Part of the designing
journey is contained in the continuing conversation with
designing partners, sharing a language to sing/bring these
envisioned spaces and places to life. |
Professor Ruth Small
(Professor, Syracuse University, School of Information
Studies, New York, USA) Ruth
V. Small is Professor, Director of the School Media
program, School of Information Studies, Syracuse
University, and Director of the University's
interdisciplinary Center for Digital Literacy.
Ruth's research focuses on motivational aspects of
information use; she received the 1997 "Highsmith
Research Award" from AASL and 2001 Carroll Preston
Baber Research Award from ALA. She has served on the
Editorial Boards of School Library Media Research,
School Libraries Worldwide, and The Journal of
Global Information Management. |
| S.O.S. for
Information Literacy |
| S.O.S. Information
Literacy, funded by IMLS, is a Web-based, multimedia
database system, providing school librarians and teachers
with quality tools for enhancing and improving the
teaching of information literacy skills to children in
grades K-8. All resources contained in the database
will be created, submitted, and evaluated by practitioners
nationwide.
Based on results of an extensive
needs analysis and prototype development conducted over a
two-year period, S.O.S. will house a wealth of
"tried and true" teaching strategies, lesson
plans, support materials, videos, and resource links,
organized by subject area and grade level, and linked to
the broader national information literacy and subject area
educational standards. Both school librarian-teacher
collaboration and curriculum integration will be
encouraged as integral to every submission to the
database.
When fully implemented in 2005 as a
free service for educators, the S.O.S. database
will contain new and innovative ideas for teaching
information literacy skills and strategies for
implementing these ideas into the curriculum, based on the
best practices of professionals across the country.
What makes S.O.S. truly unique is the inclusion of
a variety of high quality video segments that provide
teaching demonstrations of recommended strategies and
lessons, created by the practitioners that submit them, as
well as students' reflections on learning via those
strategies.
This program will: describe
extensive front-end research and development conducted to
determine needs of users and how findings have been
incorporated into the current development effort; provide
participants with an opportunity to have a "sneak
peek" at S.O.S. before its national launch in
2004-2005; demonstrate a variety of S.O.S.
searching capabilities and results; provide an opportunity
for participants to join the S.O.S. Pioneers,
teachers and school librarians who have been invited to
build the initial database over the next two years; and
share plans for future extension of the S.O.S. system. |
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©
ASLA Inc., 2003 Prepared
by: ASLA Webmaster
Last
updated: 18 February 2004
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