Australian School Library Association > Publications > Commentary Volume 16 Issue 2

Commentary, Volume 16 Issue 2, 2002

A profession or a specialisation?

Pru Mitchell

Pru is currently Convenor of the ALIA-ASLA joint issues taskforce, a member of the ALIA-ASLA policy committee, and an ASLA Councillor for SASLA.  She chaired the reference group responsible for the revision of Learning for the future.  She can be contacted at pru.mitchell@bigpond.com

(Note: The views expressed in articles are those of the author concerned and do not necessarily represent the views of ASLA.)

This commentary is an attempt to organise and summarise an assortment of issues which have arisen over the past six months, and thus it owes many of its ideas to recent contributors to oztl_net, Access, and ASLA Council. Some of the relevant discussion has been in the form of documents with limited circulation, such as ASLA Council papers, conference proceedings and meetings with other associations. Thus it seemed useful at this stage to compile and analyse the debate on such essential questions within the pages of Access, our Association's 'print voice'.

The issues

Involvement in ALIA-ASLA joint policy and issues working groups has raised awareness of debate in the wider librarianship profession, particularly around issues of core knowledge and education for the profession. At the same time in my education reading I am bombarded with issues of teacher quality and the standards movement. While we could continue to sit back and wait for others to resolve these issues, I see advantages in taking up the invitations received from both sides for teacher librarians to get involved in the debates about professional education, accreditation and quality. I am somewhat hesitant about continuing the 'who am I' thread running through the last two issues of ACCESS, but until we have an understanding of who we are, and where we stand as a profession it is difficult to be full participants in this process.

Professional Identity

We have considered a blurring of professional borders with Alan Bundy's (2001:7) proposition that all librarians need to become educators in the goal of information literacy. Ross Harvey (2001:10) in the same issue of ACCESS suggested Teacher Librarians do not need to consider themselves unique compared to other LIS graduates. Jennie Bales (2002:15) pushed the 'teacher first' line fairly strongly in response, and Di Ballantyne (2002:13) challenged ASLA and the profession to define ourselves and become proactive. So why has the identity issue risen again? Why do we still have a problem with others understanding who we are? Do music teachers have this difficulty? Do they struggle to be recognised as musicians and teachers, or do they seek to establish a distinct profession as 'music teacher'?

There are various images used when attempting to conceptualise the identity of the teacher librarian. It is easy to see it as a continuum with teacher at one end, and librarian at the other, which one moves upon several times a day depending on the timetable of the day. Some potentially unhealthy images include portrayal as neither fish nor fowl, a hybrid; someone with two heads, two hearts, two degrees, two jobs (but one salary). The split personality image tends to be exhausting, debilitating and counterproductive. A more positive view is to appreciate the breadth of knowledge, range of skills, and increased choice of career paths and employment potential represented in teacher librarianship. The Venn diagram with its intersecting circles is very enlightening as you ask whether there is any part of being a teacher which is not you as teacher librarian, and is there any part of being a librarian which is not you as teacher librarian? The challenge seems to be in moving others' perception of teacher librarian as neither 'real' teacher nor 'real' librarian, to teacher librarian as full teacher plus full librarian.

This might be achieved by advocating teacher librarianship as its own profession, distinct and equal to both education and library and information science. We probably qualify as a profession as defined by the Australian Council of Professions (1997) but are we better off considering teacher librarianship as a specialisation of both teaching and librarianship? With this identity as specialists, teacher librarians can benefit from the research, philosophy and practice of both elements of their training, and both professions can benefit from the contribution of multi-talented, specialist practitioners. So how does this come to a head in the issues facing teacher librarianship at present?

Pre-service education

For some time ALIA has provided the accreditation for teacher librarianship courses in Australia. In fact our definition of a teacher librarian is

For a number of reasons ALIA is currently reviewing its course accreditation role as part of a project entitled Library and information science education for the knowledge age. A major issue noted is "that the impact of market forces on university and technical education providers had produced a significant impact on the capacity of schools of LIS to provide courses tailored to the needs of the sector." This impact is only too obvious comparing tertiary education now to just ten years ago. Most on-campus teacher librarianship students now (if there be any) are probably sitting in a lecture theatre with 100 computer science, education, business or arts students. The lack of a compulsory cataloguing in some library school courses is one commonly expressed concern. One can readily comprehend Ross Harvey's concern at differentiating teacher librarianship from the wider discipline given recent experience in tertiary institutions and the difficulties and dangers of fragmenting resources. Small departments, courses and their staff do not survive in Australian universities of this era. A warning which ASLA might heed if it decides to 'go it alone' as a profession.

ALIA has proposed three models for discussion, including (1) maintaining the status quo, (2) a Career Long Learning model requiring continuous refreshment of knowledge and skills, but no specific LIS course, or (3) a Practising Professional Program focusing on provision of advanced or specialised education for practitioners. Teacher Librarians are encouraged to familiarise themselves with the detail of this discussion via http://www.alia.org.au/education/liseka/. If we get to a point in a few years time where universities cannot or do not provide graduates who have the specific knowledge, skills and attitudes Australian school libraries require, and if ALIA moves away from a course accreditation model, we will need a clear definition of what makes a Teacher Librarian. June Wall in an ASLA Council paper on the future of ASLA (2001) suggests that ASLA itself take up responsibility for recognising and possibly registering teacher librarians in Australia, 'because being a good teacher librarian is not the same as being a good librarian or good teacher…it has both but more… a good teacher librarian is a synergistic relationship between the two."

Whatever model becomes the way forward, a clear statement of what makes a professional is required. ALIA has a draft policy document which addresses this entitled The library and information sector: core knowledge, skills and attitudes. (www.alia.org.au/policies/core.knowledge.html)

This document lists the generic knowledge, skills and attitudes which people who work in the LIS share with those in other sectors including such things as effective communication skills, relevant IT and information systems skills and management skills. These generics are followed by a set of statements of core knowledge, skills and attitudes for those who work in the Library and Information sector, including such areas as context of the information environment, information sources, and processing of information. It is vital that as individuals and as a profession, teacher librarians analyse this important document and decide whether or not we could accept this list as the criteria by which the Librarianship part of a Teacher Librarian is accredited. Should ASLA document its own set of core knowledge, skills and attitudes for teacher librarians? In Learning for the Future 2^nd edition (pp. 60-62) there is a comprehensive description of what teacher librarians do. How will this translate to what teacher librarians know, their skills and their attitudes?

Standards

As part of the debate on education for teacher librarians, we also need to keep a very close involvement with the Teacher Standards movement which is gaining momentum nationally and in various states. An national audit document from the Australian College of Education congress at www.austcolled.com.au/natmeeting/audit2002.pdf outlines the amount of work begun in this area. Lane (2001) believes that professional teaching standards will mean for teachers 'greater recognition, improved understanding, quality entrants to the profession, greater emphasis on quality, greater emphasis on reflection and evaluation, and an integrated approach to professional development.' If his dream was to be fully realised, we could see standards for teacher librarians as the answer to most the issues currently facing the profession! So what would these standards look like? The 2001 National Professional Summit concluded that professional teaching standards should be developed at four levels, namely: beginning teacher (pre-service), beginning (entry), effective, and advanced. Masters (2001:30) concludes that teachers require three categories of knowledge: general pedagogical knowledge, subject matter knowledge, and pedagogical content knowledge.

Several Professional Education Associations are already well down the path of developing and trialing standards with their members. The Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers document contains a total of ten standards, describing 'excellent teachers of mathematics' in the three domains of professional knowledge, professional attributes and professional practice. www.aamt.edu.au/standards/standxtm.pdf The Australian Science Teachers Association (ASTA) Professional standards for highly accomplished teachers of science is in production and they are now developing research on methods for assessing teacher performance against the standards. The English Teachers Association and Australian Literacy Educators Association have drafted a working model for Standards for teachers of English and Literacy in Australia (2001) which attempts to describe 'what good English/Literacy teachers believe, know and are able to do.'

A model for teacher librarianship

On the one hand we have ALIA drawing up a list of core knowledge, skills and attitudes for workers in the information services sector and models of education for developing these. On the other hand we have governments, education departments, the Australian College of Education, and professional associations drawing up lists of standards or competencies for teachers. Do we want our own unique list of knowledge, skills, attitudes, standards as teacher librarians, or do we want to be full members of both professions and take on board both lists at the same time? One possibility is to go it totally alone, and say that we know best what a teacher librarian should be. The danger of this is our disadvantage of size compared with both the wider librarianship field and the vast teaching profession. We will have to work much harder to be heard and recognised. Another strategy is to continue to work as part of both professions, and to add our specialised knowledge, skills and attitudes to those existing in the education and librarianship sectors.

Below is an attempt to show one possible role for ASLA in a blended model. Columns A, B & C equate to Masters (2001) model for the teaching profession, the first of which would be generic teaching knowledge and skills applicable to all teachers. Hopefully this would come eventually from the teaching profession, and be shared by all professional associations for teachers. ASLA would be responsible for documenting the knowledge required by teacher librarians in the areas of information literacy, literacy, ICTs in the same way as the AATE is responsible for documenting the subject matter for English and literacy teachers. Much of the background required for column B is contained in the first two chapters of Learning for the Future (2001) and in the role statement for teacher librarians (p.60-62). Explicit knowledge of best practice in how to teach information literacy (column C) is perhaps less well documented and more challenging. Within this model ASLA would also need to consider a statement of professional ethics, the induction of new entrants to the profession, and particularly a structure for continuing professional.

Continuing Professional Development

Ongoing professional development for practitioners is an acknowledged component of most professions. The sectoral nature of the Australian teaching profession is reflected in the provision of CPD for educators, with nationally recognised development basically limited to formal tertiary qualifications. Until recently the situation for librarians has been much the same. ALIA now has in place a Continuing Professional Development programme through which professionals register their PD plan and the activities undertaken to maintain their professional knowledge and skills. This provides not only a framework, but recognition of the practitioner. http://www.alia.org.au/education/cpd/guidelines.html

If teacher librarianship is a specific discipline with unique skills, knowledge and attitudes, then we as a profession have a responsibility to ensure that our practitioners maintain their knowledge. If pre-service education is becoming increasingly generalist as courses are amalgamated, and class sizes increased, there is increased urgency to ensure that teacher librarian specific knowledge and attitudes are developed in the field. There are models of Continuing Professional Development which would fit ASLA's structure, and which do not represent huge administrative loads. One example is the Australian Council for Computers in Education professional associate status www.acce.edu.au/profassoc/policy.asp. There is limited evidence currently of the nature of the linkage between teacher professional development and student learning outcomes. Research is required into what kind of professional development results in improvements to professional practice, and ASLA could encourage evidence based practice as part of its expectations for advanced practitioner status.

Conclusion

Unfortunately this discussion has not provided many answers to what is an old debate, but I believe it is worth revisiting some of the underlying principles at critical times in our profession's development, just as it is worth reminding ourselves of our Association's statement of principles.

The Australian School Library Association Inc. (ASLA) is a national authority, a peak forum in the field of teacher librarianship and school library resource services.
Its aim is to maximise opportunities for students to obtain independent lifelong learning and decision making skills through ASLA's commitment to

• High professional standards
• Awareness of advances and changes in technology and the competence and ability to teach and use it
• Effective, cooperative use of school resource services by the whole school community
• Qualified teacher librarians with an image of excellence
• Optimum use of the dual skills of teaching and librarianship

http://www.asla.org.au/about.htm

Ross Harvey asks the question "are teacher librarians in effect shutting themselves out of the wider discipline, becoming less and less powerful, eventually to wither and die?" My observation is that many teacher librarians are in fact pushing themselves ever closer to the decision-making cores of their joint disciplines, and in the process, enriching both the teaching and librarianship professions. ASLA is committed to qualified teacher librarians with an image of excellence, high professional standards, and optimum use of the dual skills of teaching and librarianship to maximise opportunities for our students. The challenge is to document what we mean by this, and then to 'publish it abroad' through policies, advocacy, research, statistics, publishing, representation on related bodies, and submissions to governments, employers and stakeholders.

References:

Australian Association for the Teaching of English (2001). STELLA: Standards for teachers of English and Literacy in Australia.