Report on the Impact of School Libraries on Student Achievement

5. Research

There is certainly no shortage of research that investigates the link between school libraries and student achievement. According to Lance (2001A), over the past sixty or so years there have been around seventy-five studies on the impact of school library media programs on academic achievement. From this large body of research he identifies some of the key trends as being:

  • better academic performance by students when the library professional is part of a planning and teaching team with the classroom teacher, teaches information literacy, and provides one-on-one tutoring for students in need;
  • quality resource collections to support the curriculum;
  • state-of-the-art technology integrated into the learning and teaching processes; and
  • cooperation between school and other types of libraries, especially public libraries.

Since 2000 alone at least ten major studies (in Alaska, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Texas, Oregon, Massachusetts, Scotland and, more recently, Iowa, Michigan and New Mexico) have investigated the positive impact school libraries can have on student achievement. Much of the research that has been done on the link between school libraries and student achievement has been conducted in the United States, particularly the large-scale studies that look at students' performance on standardised tests. Abell (1999) notes that the research tradition that exists in the United States, which 'centres on student achievement in reading, study skills and several aspects of the school library program' (p. 21), has no parallel in Australia. This is not to suggest that this lack of a similar research tradition represents a significant weakness in Australian research. As Nimon (1995) points out, the studies 'are based on a single concept of how children learn best and this concept is not one universally adopted' (p. 2). This is why Nimon proclaims an important role of the International Association of School Librarianship (IASL) to be that of fostering research in a wide range of countries so that a better understanding of how children learn, and how school libraries might facilitate this learning, can be achieved.

In their comprehensive review of the literature on educational achievement and school libraries in Scotland, Williams, Wavell and Coles (2001) make a useful distinction between the impact of school libraries on academic achievement (as represented by performance in tests), broader learning issues (that is, personal achievement in other areas of learning), service provision (the type of services provided and the degree of collaboration between school and other libraries), and professional expertise (the qualifications and experience and attitudes of library staff). Yoo (1998) looks at the educational impact of the school library in terms of academic achievement, reading skills, student attitudes towards reading and the school library, and second language acquisition in the case of students from immigrant backgrounds. In their extensive review of the literature, Lance et al. (2002) group the various studies according to topics-such as the positive effects of flexible scheduling, the school-public library relationship, and the role of technology in student achievement. Other reviews tend to group studies by author(s) or by chronology rather than by themes. The Australian tradition of research into school libraries and student achievement would seem to be focused more on learning in a broader sense than on the kind of learning encapsulated in the Lance studies. In this review student achievement has accordingly been broken down into:

  • academic achievement (as represented in standardised tests);
  • reading literacy (including reading for pleasure);
  • broader learning (such as information skills, improved self-concept); and
  • other (such as impact on particular subgroups).