Critical Reflections on the TL as Leader (ETL504)

“Teacher Librarians should lead instructional teams to develop, implement and assess authentic inquiry experiences that engage students meaningfully with the wealth of information resources both within and beyond the school (print and digital); help develop deep knowledge and understanding of curriculum topics; and foster independence in students’ abilities to successfully and thoughtfully engage in their information worlds.” (Todd , R. J., 2010, p7)

As a relatively new TL with only four months solid experience in the Library I have been on a very steep learning curve, both at school and throughout the “Teacher Librarian as Leader” course. Looking back I can track my increasing self-awareness, growing confidence and developing leadership capabilities with my growth in knowledge and understanding of the teaching role of the Teacher Librarian but most importantly, the vital Leadership role that this also requires.

Before this course I perceived TLs much the same as many other classroom teachers. I dropped my students off for my relief from face to face to then conduct individual assessments with Kindergarten, or withdraw students to take Running Records. My frame of reference was established by this process and the Library Program sometimes matched units of classwork or focused on specific authors or literature. The students seemed to enjoy their Library time and everything was ‘Good’. But as I delved deeper into truly understanding what ‘21st century skills” are, what the Global Societal Context is and why they should be a vital curriculum focus, I had new purpose. This is my opportunity to lead the school!

In my previous post, Leadership in a School Library, I referred to elements of Leadership as being ‘Good’, ‘Bad’ or ‘Ugly’. In hindsight, I think that I was perhaps a little harsh. Leadership is not easy and we do often get it wrong by focusing on, as Simon Sinek says, the ‘What’ and the ‘How’ rather than the ‘Why’. He argues that focusing on the why develops that core belief, that if you can get others to believe, will harness the collective power of your organisation (or school) on doing everything in their power to support that belief.

My ‘why?’ is a globalised interconnected world with Australia at the forefront. How we achieve that is by creating future-ready students, What we do is immerse our students in collaborative, inquiry learning practices that arm our students with the social skills to engage with other cultures across the world, to develop collaborative attitudes and metacognitive skills to facilitate knowledge sharing and understanding for a purpose. They develop  transferable technology skills so that they can transform knowledge and understandings into new products and information. Our students must be able to critically analyse our information-rich, always-on environment to be able to lead our country in the future.

The big picture ‘how’ is the easy part. Getting others to follow is far more difficult. Even with Principal support (the ‘Bad”), engaging the ‘cynical majority’ is not an easy task. Being one of ‘those who lead’, or harnessing the support of a teacher-leader (Belisle, 2005) as opposed to a Leader (Senik, 2009) is probably a good start and using tried and tested change management processes should smooth the way.

Harnessing School Community support from like-minded teachers (the already-believers) and parents is vital. This all starts with a clear Vision. It involves each of the stakeholder groups in taking ownership of the strategic plan for the school and the Library’s Strategic Plan, reflecting on Results, Research and Evaluation to understand our starting point before we can map out our path for improved student outcomes. It requires planning and resourcing and regular review, and it requires the TL (me!) to communicate consistently, to celebrate wins, to provide feedback and so on, to keep the momentum going.

When I look back at my earlier posts I can see the leaps in my understanding of leadership. Then I was focused on the day to day nitty gritty of curriculum mapping, collection management and in-servicing. Now I can see that these are essential elements as part of the change but they are not part of the process, of the ‘belief’ that will spread my passion to create future-ready students.

TLs have the opportunity to work with every student in the whole school and with every class teacher and support teacher. This is a position of privilege that no other teacher in the school has. We must harness this opportunity to create stronger connections between TLs and teachers, generate positive perceptions of the teaching and leading roles of the TL and demonstrate the benefits of collaborative work practices to create a true community of learning.

References:

• Belisle, C. (2005). The Teacher as Leader: Transformational Leadership and the Professional Teacher or Teacher-Librarian. School Libraries In Canada (17108535), 24(3), 73-79.
• Sinek, S. (2009). Start with why: How great leaders inspire action. TEDxPugetSound. Retrived on September 25, 2013 from Youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4ZoJKF_VuA
• Todd, R. J. (2010). Curriculum Integration. Camberwell, Vic. : ACER Press.

Is NAPLAN killing creativity? (ETL504)

Sir Ken Robinson is a renowned expert on creativity. He believes that creativity is a vital element of 21st Century learning. In his Teaching for the 21st Century journal interview, also at ASCD’s Educational Leadership blog, he discusses the vital connection between creativity and critical thinking, two essential 21st century skills.

The linkages between the two are quite apparent when we consider that critical thinking is an integral part of the inquiry learning process and that creativity is required to transform the elements achieved through critical thought and new knowledge gain and application into new information, new media or new technology. Of course the two are linked!

Given that creativity and critical thinking go hand in hand, why, in Australia, do we still use standardised tests and League Table websites to measure student performance and teacher effectiveness? I found myself yelling at the television last Sunday night as Ray Martin, from 60 Minutes, traipsed over to New York to discuss Australia’s standardised testing of all students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9, with the ‘founder’ of this approach, previous New York education chief, Joel Klein. Still committed to his system, Klein clearly asserted that poor student performance in literacy and numeracy are the direct result of poor teachers. During his time he closed the lowest ranking schools and sacked many teachers but, when asked about his proudest achievement through this program, he cited an increase in high school graduation rates! I would suggest that most students in developed countries throughout the world are staying in school longer (therefore ‘graduating’) naturally, as part of cultural norms and global economic conditions.

As a profession, teaching is not an easy job. Sure, outsiders look at the holidays (What! Am I on holidays? I’m still undertaking professional development, planning next Term’s Programs, completing my performance review documents for meeting with my Supervisor, developing a presentation on “Engaging with Texts” as part of the new Australian Curriculum and exploring a variety of new technology tools to assess these for inclusion in my program and provide practical examples for other teachers to use in theirs. Oh, yeah, planning my 6 year old’s birthday party is my down time!). All jokes aside, I can say from experience working in a number of corporations as a Manager prior to retraining as a teacher and now, as a Teacher Librarian, nothing is as difficult as teaching. Nothing that I’ve done has been more rewarding, either.

So why the bad wrap? I don’t doubt that there are some teachers who probably shouldn’t be teachers anymore. They’ve lost the passion or the motivation and, from my experience, many of these teachers have been worn down by NAPLAN. So where does the actual problem lie? Should we be helping these teachers be the best they can be, recover their passion and enjoy teaching once more, through better teacher training, like in Korea, Finland and Singapore, or should we continue to flog the dead horse that is NAPLAN?

Anna Patty’s 2011 article in The Sydney Morning Herald made just this point. She said, “The big question is why Australia would want to emulate a country like the US where academic performance standards are, on average, much lower.” As part of this article, Patty interviewed Professor Linda Darling-Hammond of Stanford University, who advised that Klein’s model has failed America, resulting in a narrowing of the school curriculum and teaching to the test. Again, why are we flogging this dead horse?

I remember my school days fondly. I had mostly great teachers, who were inspiring and funny and, we didn’t always follow the ‘plan’ (that was obvious to even us back then!). I performed well academically and I thank those teachers who were organised and structured (despite the turmoil of the educational system in the 70’s) but I also thank those teachers who were creative and funny and flexible and a bit disorganised, because they also taught me to be flexible, help others, be responsible for my own learning and live life to the fullest (21st Century skills?).

I think that the new Australian Curriculum attempts to embed creativity, collaboration, critical thinking, deep knowledge and understanding but with the shadow of NAPLAN ever-looming it’s efforts are limited. I commend those teachers who are able balance the two effectively and welcome them to share their wisdom with all. Teacher Librarians can take a significant leadership role in fostering creativity. We already do so as part of our inquiry learning processes and we need to share these with our classroom colleagues to gain transfer across the curriculum.

Getting others to join the adventure (ETL504)

As I start to get my head around planning my Programs for Term 4, and how I can lead my colleagues in embedding information literacy throughout the curriculum, I’ve been reflecting on what I’ve learnt so far in “Teacher Librarian as Leader”. Particularly Bill Ferriter’s article, “What does leadership on a professional learning team look like?” (Center for Teaching equality).  I believe that being a leader doesn’t mean that you have to hold a particular position in an organisation or school, but you have to have the skills to be able to identify the problem and harness the talents of those around you, those who you can influence and guide, to create significant change. In his blog post, Ferriter discusses the three essential elements of “moving teams forward”. He says that they are: 1) strong relationships, 2) clear vision and 3) translating vision into action.

From my own perspective I have developed strong relationships with some key teachers across the stages but I have more work to do here. Borrowing from Matt Church (“Sell the Problem not the Solution” at Library Lost and Found“), unless I can help my colleagues see that there is a problem with viewing information literacy as the exclusive realm of the Library Program, then I am going to have an uphill battle in my attempts to push information literacy into their classrooms. No one wants to be forced to change. We all like things to go on the way they are. It’s comfortable and easy and change is confronting and difficult, but, as Church argues, unless people can see the problem, they will be very unlikely to want to listen to a solution. They need to take ownership, they need to recognise that something isn’t right and they need to be able to entertain the idea that things could be done differently and it would make life easier.

Given the imperative of implementing the new Australian Curriculum, I can see an opportunity to bundle information literacy into some of the new elements and focus of the English curriculum (and further down the track, the Mathematics, History and Geography Curricular).  I am well-placed, as a member of the English Committee, to be able to influence the development of new practices in English Curriculum development so that information literacy can be embedded in our Quality Teaching and Learning Framework.

But relationship building/collaboration is only part of the planning for my new, great adventure. Elements 2 and 3, suggested by Ferriter, are significant elements. The Vision and it’s associated Strategic Plan for action are vital. If I can’t clearly articulate where I want the Library to go and how to do it, then I cannot expect my colleagues to pack their backpacks and come with me.

So off to develop that clearly articulated Vision and Strategic Plan to inspire my colleagues and provide a pathway for us to follow on our adventure further into the ever-changing digital environment.

Information literacy is more than a set of skills (ETL401: Blog Task 3)

In my last post I discussed the various definitions and models of information literacy (IL) that are applied in today’s educational environment (Bundy, 2004; Langford, 1999). I concluded that IL is part of the broadening of the term ‘literate’, which evolves with society. For instance, historically, being literate may have meant being able to make a mark to represent one’s name. Now, being literate encompasses much more than reading and writing. Since the 1990’s, the concept of ‘new literacies’ has proliferated educational literature (Honan, 2013, p. v) and a vital element of the changing concept of a literate person today, is the inclusion of IL, among the other ‘new literacies’.

Why is IL more than a skill? That depends on how you define skills. I am drawn to the archaic definition of skill that states it is “…to make a difference” (Merriam Webster Dictionary, n.d.) because IL requires learners to make a difference to their knowledge and their approaches to information seeking. However, the Merriam Webster Dictionary provides three additional definitions including “…the ability to use one’s knowledge effectively and readily in execution or performance; …dexterity or coordination especially in the execution of learned physical tasks; and …a learned power of doing something competently :  a developed aptitude or ability …”. Whilst these latter definitions incorporate “making a difference” to students’ competency levels, I believe that they do not include the metacognitive elements of effective IL.

This debate is illuminated by perceptions and assumptions of teachers and students, who have varying degrees of understanding about the imperative of IL practices to transfer skills and knowledge from one environment to another. Herring’s (2011) research into assumptions about IL revealed that the majority of teachers view IL as isolated from the higher order thinking skills required to practice IL effectively, and that many saw IL as the ability to successfully use a search engine (Findings in relation to the Assumptions Section: Assumption 2). Earlier, Herring’s 2009 research indicated that IL was in fact a way of thinking, or a practice rather than a process to be followed (p. 3). In this evidence based research study of Year 8 students, various IL ‘skills’ were used (mind maps, concept maps, brainstorming, question formulation, and so on), but it was the re-frame of these skills as specific techniques to be used to make links between content, between fields and to predict potential future use that confirmed their status as ‘techniques’. These techniques were also used to progressively develop student confidence in their abilities and reflect on their performance as the beginning of a metacognitive understanding of the process of information seeking. He concluded that TLs and teachers should perhaps “…focus less on information literacy skills and more on information literacy techniques and more on the desired attributes of students rather than the skills they demonstrate (p. 11).

IL takes skill acquisition further than competency in defining, locating, selecting, organising, presenting and assessing. It is an extension of a set of attributes that enable learners to use IL techniques, with a knowledge of how they, as an individual uses these best, and apply them to new situations and different environments to successfully meet their needs now and in the future.

References:

• Bundy, A. (ed.) (2004). Australian and New Zealand Information Literacy Framework: principles, standards and practice. 2nd ed. Adelaide: Australian and New Zealand Institute for Information Literacy (ANZIIL) and Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL).
• Herring, J. (2009). A Grounded Analysis of Year 8 Students’ Reflections on Information Literacy Skills and Techniques. School Libraries Worldwide Volume 15, (1), January 2009, pages 1-13.
• Herring, J. (2011). Assumptions, Information Literacy and Transfer in High Schools. Teacher Librarian, 38(3), 32-36. Retrieved from: http://ezproxy.csu.edu.au/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lih&AN=59242986&site=ehost-live
• Honan, E. (Ed.). (2013). Thinking through new literacies for primary and early years. Moorabin: Hawker Brownlow Education.
• Langford, L. (1999). Information literacy? Seeking clarification. . In J. Henri & K. Bonanno (Eds.), The information literate school community : best practice (pp. 43-54). Wagga Wagga, NSW : Centre for Information Studies, Charles Sturt University.
• Skill. (n.d). In Merriam-Webster Dictionary Online. Retrieved from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/skill

 

Opportunities for Teacher and TL collaboration (ETL504)

There are numerous opportunities for teacher/ TL collaboration in our current school communities but even more in the aspirational learning communities suggested in Organisational Learning literature.

I believe Guided Inquiry approaches are probably the most important collaboration opportunities that would have the greatest effect on student outcomes and support the development of learning communities because GI requires a team of teachers to be involved in the inquiry process and sees their role move from the sage on the stage to facilitator. GI supports a reframe of the teacher as a learner and students and teachers learning together as an integral part of the process.

Other opportunities for teacher and TL collaboration are: Collaboratively programming classroom-based units to incorporate visual literacy, digital literacy and support ICT skills development; Group Guided Reading support in resource based areas; digital citizenship integration in all student learning; resource reviews and presentations; class blog co-development and mentoring; comprehension and vocabulary extension support programs integrated in inquiry learning projects; jointly created, cross-curriculum webquests, book trailers, book reviews and digital stories; action research and evidence based learning; and so on.

Collaboration and developing the learning community is dependent on support from the administration of the school. Most teachers are motivated, energetic and excited about collaborating with other teachers to create engaging opportunities for their students. However, as Cibulka, Coursey, Nakayama, Price and Stewart (2003) found in their extensive review of schools as learning organisations, “Strong leadership is required to build and sustain a learning organisation, including the creation of positive conditions and opportunities at the school level.” Successful collaboration requires a culture change. Teachers and TLs need flexible timetabling and time-out from face to face teaching to be able to collaborative effectively.

ETL401: Assessing Information Literacy and Inquiry Learning

Current literature indicates that the opportunities for Teacher Librarians (TLs) to assess Information Literacy (ILit) and Inquiry Learning (IL) are wide and varied (Kuhlthau, Maniotes, & Caspari, 2007; Stripling, 2007; Brown 2008), irrespective of the process of ILit undertaken. Kuhlthau, Maniotes, & Caspari (2007) advocate Guided Inquiry, Stripling (2007) has developed her own Stripling Inquiry Model consisting of 6 phases – Connect, Wonder, Investigate, Construct, Express and Reflect; and Brown generalises across models of ILit and IL.

Kuhlthau, Maniotes, & Caspari (2007), when discussing Guided Inquiry, draw the distinction between assessment and evaluation – assessment advises what students have already learnt and what they need further assistance with during the unit, whereas evaluation advises what they have learnt and achieved throughout the whole unit (page 111). The Guided Inquiry process requires formative assessment to be undertaken throughout the unit and it is the results of formative assessment that indicate students’ zone of proximal development and therefore intervention required. They also assert that “..assessment should be part of the student’s own learning process”. Becoming self-aware and knowledgable, developing metacognition about how they learn and how to improve their ability to learn is often identified as part of the evaluation process of Guided Inquiry.

Similarly, Stripling (2007) suggests that assessment should be naturally included in the Inquiry process. She sees assessment as an examination of students’ information fluency, a term that she says replaces information literacy. Information fluency recognises that students are no longer required to just know the skills of IL but they must also be able to apply them fluently, in learning situations, whether at school or at home. (page 25).

Stripling’s (2007) Inquiry Model consists of 6 phases – Connect, Wonder, Investigate, Construct, Express and Reflect. She matches three types of assessment to these phases. Diagnostic assessment, such as the K part of Know, Wonder, Learn charts, or other pre-tests, lend themselves to the Connect phase, as students are required to make connections between the topic and their personal, past experiences. Formative assessment suits the Wonder, Investigate and Construct phases, where students’ actual research results, predictions, evaluations of evidence and conclusions can be assessed through forms, templates, conferences and portfolios. Summative assessments clearly match the Express and Reflect phases, where students’ construction of new knowledge and creation or use of it in a new way (information fluency) can be measured against their previous knowledge and reflected in their metacognition of the learning process. Stripling’s incorporation of assessment into the various phases of her model also incorporates the zone of proximal development approach. She says, “Formative assessment is the measurement of knowledge and skills during the process of learning (the Wonder, Investigate and Construct phases of inquiry) in order to inform the next steps” (page 27).

Brown’s (2008) approach to assessment is a little different. She suggests a rubric approach that can be used from early years learning all the way up to college. Brown says that the benefit in developing rubrics lies in their inherent value as an authentic method for assessment that allows us to clearly identify whether or not a research project has used information appropriately and if conclusions drawn are accurate and useful. Produced as part of the programming process, in collaboration with the classroom teacher, rubrics seem to be most effective as an evaluation, but they can also be used throughout the inquiry process.

Some important considerations must be made: Does the rubric limit us? Are we only looking at those elements pre-determined by the rubric, and if we provide them to students so that they can do ongoing self-assessment, are we limiting their expectations of what’s required? Would we get richer results if it was open-ended, both in our minds and on paper?

On the other hand, rubrics do create an opportunity for TLs to collaborate with teachers on a shared vision of what should be achieved and therefore create a physical and cognitive connection between evaluation and the school library program. They are also a significant element of student feedback – indicating a “0” for achievement level on a specific dimension makes it quite clear for the student that what they have produced is unacceptable. When conducted as a formative assessment, this provides the student with concrete information about where they can improve and therefore allows them the opportunity to reach the final intended outcome successfully.

Whatever approach is used in assessment and evaluation in Inquiry Learning, one thing is true – Librarians are in an excellent position to provide longitudinal assessment of learning over time as they typically see each student in a school throughout their school years. This makes our evidence powerful and creates a sense of urgency in ensuring that assessment and evaluation become embedded in our practice.

References

Kuhlthau, C. C., Maniotes, L. K., & Caspari, A. K. (2007). Assessment in guided inquiry. In Guided inquiry: Learning in the 21st century (pp. 111-131). Westport, Conn: Libraries Unlimited.

Stripling, B. (2007). Assessing informative fluency: Gathering evidence of student learning. School Library Media Activities Monthly, 23(8), 25-29.

Brown, C.A. (2008). Building rubrics: A step-by-step process, Library Media Connection, January, 16-18. Available  http://www.linworth.com/pdf/lmc/reviews_and_articles/featured_articles/Brown_January2008.pdf

ETL401: Transferring Information Literacy across the school

Transference of skills across the curriculum needs to be explicit in most cases. Herring’s (2011; 2011b) research indicates that those students who most likely do not need explicit teaching to transfer skills would do so anyway. These are the high achievers and highly motivated students.

For the others, Teacher Librarians (TLs) need to develop strategies to ensure that information literacy skills developed as part of inquiry learning are transferred to other curriculum areas. It should also be noted that the knowledge gained through inquiry learning and the skills and abilities developed can be used in personal situations as well. It is this element that highlights the importance of developing student’s ability to transfer their knowledge and skills across situations as it contributes to their development as a life-long learner.

Whilst Herring’s  (2011; 2011b) research was conducted in high schools, it still applies to the primary school environment. Ironically, this week my Year 1 and 2 students were explicitly taught how to use mind maps to organise their ideas. I would hope that they would use their experiences from this week in future Library projects and within the classroom but the evidence tells me that my assumptions are likely to be incorrect (Herring, 2011). So how do I ensure that this does in fact happen?

Herring (2011b) suggest a few approaches that I believe would work within my current environment. Firstly, living the TL as leader motto, I could present concept mapping and mind mapping approaches to our weekly professional development meeting. I would also include a screencast of the exact process so that teachers could refer back to it and use it in their own classes to introduce a new topic, or as a review.

This would also achieve Herring’s (2011b) other suggestion that TLs should create a culture of transference. I believe that this active sharing and easy access to screencasts and other tools that can be revisited at a later date is an effective way of achieving this. Adding the technology tools and project outlines, along with some samples of student work to the library blog and promoting these to the school community would also help.

Another approach that I believe would work in my current school would be to identify those students who are experiencing difficulties with a specific IL task and create lunch-time work groups around these skills so that they can develop them further, and hopefully see their benefit outside of the class project realm. Applying them to high interest areas for these students, that typically may not be addressed in the curriculum, may produce better results for these students.

Reviewing, making connections to past projects and experiences and providing opportunities to use the newly gained skills and concepts in future projects is achievable in the primary school and this remains a significant way to encourage students to transfer their information literacy skills.

 

References:

• Herring, J. (2011). Assumptions, Information Literacy and Transfer in High Schools. Teacher Librarian, 38(3), 32-36.
• Herring, J. E. (2011b). Year seven students, concept mapping and the issues of transfer. School Libraries Worldwide, 17(1), 11-23.

 

ETL401 – Revisiting Guided Inquiry

Wow! My first blog entry on Guided Inquiry (GI) was so, so wrong! After reading through the references and some additional literature on Guided Inquiry it is now quite clear that there are specific contextual elements within the school that are essential for GI to be successful. Kuhlthau recommends a team of at least three teachers to run GI and more as the process requires or becomes more complex. For me, this is a definite disadvantage. Within the context of my current primary school, with Library taught as Relief from Face to Face it would be very difficult to implement GI. Not impossible though. To be able to implement GI it would need whole of school support, from the Principal down. Assuming that is in place, flexible programming would then need to be incorporated to ensure administrative responsibilities are still met. Pair this with a supportive, open classroom teacher who is also committed to GI, or at least passionate about what it can achieve with their students, I can only imagine what we could achieve.

An advantage for me would certainly be the extra level of collaboration. As a very social person who has team-taught on different grades and collaboratively programmed at the Stage level and whole of school level, I would welcome this aspect of the GI process.

A key advantage to GI is also the evidence of student impact that can be attributable to inquiry learning. I have only just started collecting evidence throughout our resource-based, inquiry units and this is opening up conversations with other teachers who are seeing the skills transfer into other areas of student learning.

Metacognition, thinking about thinking and reflecting on our learning styles and processes, is very powerful for students. This approach to learning, by becoming more self-aware of the process and understanding how knowledge is gained and assimilated best into our existing knowledge, produces deep understandings and knowledge. GI clearly complements Quality Teaching and the Australian Curriculum.

Overall, GI is an effective process for students to become engaged in research by formulating their own theses and constructing new knowledge. There are disadvantages to the process though. Besides the contextual barriers to the implementation of GI that I have already mentioned, the teachers involved in the GI need to be able to accurately identify students’ zone of proximal development to ensure that their is enough intellectual reach and manage the variation of this within the class. This is not really that different to instruction differentiation in the usual classroom but the lack of familiarity with the GI process for students and teachers alike requires a steep learning curve and is likely to take a few projects to be able to demonstrate major gains.

I also question how to apply this with students with specific behaviour or learning needs. I am thinking specifically about a small group of Year 2 students who I worked with just two days ago. We were working through a step by step inquiry project requiring them to formulate their own questions to interview a worker in the school community. They were using bubbl.us to mind map all of the possible areas that their questions could cover. Despite also having a Student Learning and Support Officer (SLSO) working specifically with this group, the social/collaborative aspect of this task requiring them to discuss options, decide on which ones to include and then add them to their map, proved too frustrating for them. These students had moved beyond the level of “uncertainty”. I provided additional scaffolding to the group, as well as individual counselling on coping strategies to enable this group to gain success in this step of the process. In this situation I was fortunate to have a SLSO but this is the only class that I have an SLSO with me. Having the class teacher in the GI team would reduce this disadvantage but when considering that there would be between 10-15 groups of students to facilitate, lack of additional, specific support may be problematic.

Much of the research and case studies in the field of GI also relate to the high school environment. I believe that many of my students would find the GI process very difficult, especially the formulation of a research focus. In the primary setting, I believe that this should probably have more instruction until students are familiar with developing their own ideas.

GI is clearly an ideal situation for the teacher librarian to lead a school’s information literacy strategy but there are considerations and modifications that need to be made for it to work within your own school.

ETL401 – Exploring Information Process Models

After reviewing the plethora of information process models I am finding myself going through the same process as our students! The uncertainty that Kuhlthau asserts is necessary for the construction of personal knowledge is being evidenced first hand. Unfortunately I do not have a kindly teacher to be my soundboard, to make things clearer and guide my approach as I refine my practice.

Nevertheless, I have found that all of these models have merit and some make more sense than others in particular contexts. The Research Cycle, Focus on Reading, Guided Inquiry, Big6 and all the other variations have many similarities. The old cliche is true – the devil is in the detail. I think that there is great merit in the emphasis of metacognition in the information seeking process. This reflects the new Australian Curriculum’s focus on thinking about thinking and thinking about learning. It also marries well with my current Primary School’s Focus on Reading strategies; Comprehension, Reading and Vocabulary Enrichment (CRAVE) strategies and Mathematical Problem Solving Strategies.

For me, in my current context as a Teacher Librarian, attempting to implement collaborative programming where possible, where teachers are willing to collaborate on shared programs, the simplicity of the Big6 and the revised, Super3 appeals. Like most models, it has a sound metacognitive development framework and can easily incorporate more affective dimensions, similar to Guided Inquiry. Big6 and Super3 require the TL to explicitly instruct students at their zone of proximal development. It is also non-linear which means that specific steps in the process can become a focus if there is an identified need. This approach is also consistent with the New South Wales Department of Education and Training’s, Information Process Model.

The simplicity of Big6 and Super3 means that I may be able to extend collaborative programming beyond those few teachers who are willing to collaborate on research-based projects. I think that the principles are easy to promote to the Principal and other teachers and tracking transference of skills can be achieved. By showing teachers (through action research), the contributions that Big6 and Super3 can make in student writing, planning and organising throughout school learning, enough evidence should be gained to implement it inside AND outside of the library.