How can school librarians (or school library media specialists) and teachers collaborate to promote media literacy among K-12 learners?
Media literacy is a major concern when audiovisual information sources proliferate online through Google, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Spotify—among numerous search engines and social media sites and platforms. Due to audiovisual information overkill, and fake news virality, today’s generation of younger users can benefit from access to school library media collections, and accompanying guides. Thus, strategic collaboration between school librarians and teachers would build and promote such collections for teaching and learning.
While best practices for such collaboration have been outlined, and its outcomes specified, as recently as 2020 in Collaborate by Mary Catherine Coleman, the third volume in the Shared Foundation Series issued by the American Association of School Librarians (AASL), discussions about the subject have been ongoing throughout the past three decades.
For example, Ruth V. Small suggested in 2001 that one of the most important responsibilities of the twenty-first-century school library media specialist is “collaborative instructional and curriculum planning” (1). According to Small, the positive outcomes of collaboration have been proven to be numerous. Such outcomes can include greater student success, as quantified by higher test scores (2).
Yet, there is evidence that partnerships between school librarians and teachers can be infrequent. Such infrequency has been attributed to schedule inflexibility, or lack of knowledge of teachers’ instructional content on the part of the librarian, or media specialist. These factors, in turn, discourage the school librarian from proactively reaching out to teachers.
Ten years since the publication of the Small article, O. P. Cooper and Marty Bray (2011) specified how more work was needed to build collaborative opportunities between the school library media specialist and the school teacher. Such opportunities are possible only if the work of school library media specialists and school teachers are equally valued.
Due to the comparative invisibility of library media specialists, however, and their “stereotypically clerical” role within school administration, they are further discouraged from reaching out to teachers to form instructional partnerships (48–50).
A changing definition of information literacy
In today’s climate of fake news and disinformation, school library media specialist work is even more crucial than it had been when Cooper and Bray invoked the AASL “Standards for the 21st Century Learner” (2007) to emphasize the urgency of information literacy for student success. The greater complexity of the term, “information literacy,” as defined by AASL standards, is due to sweeping changes in resources and technologies. Cooper and Bray wrote:
"Information literacy has progressed from the simple definition of using reference resources to find information. Multiple literacies, including digital, visual, textual, and technological, have now joined information literacy as crucial skills for this century." (51)
While these literacies, and their corresponding technologies, have proliferated during the ten years since this statement, the role of the school library media specialist has become more clearly defined. For example, the library media specialist needs to be available onsite to help teachers use digital media effectively for instructional support within classrooms. Such media include blogs, wikis, digital videos, and hyperlinked audiovisual material on web pages.
What are the best practices for enabling collaboration between school library media specialists and teachers?
While higher-ranking school administrators, like the principal, or the assistant principal, need to recognize the importance of library media specialist work, these specialists could proactively select one or two teachers for collaboration. In fact, “just find one!” has become the buzz phrase for initiating collaborative success (Coleman, 19).
After one collaborative partnership has been established, shared objectives between collaborators can be identified, especially through special projects or new programs (J. Kammer, et al., 2021). Specific instances of instructional collaboration have involved using a school library’s makerspace resources for a seventh-grade English maker project; using shared websites and virtual-reality materials for a fourth-grade study of the National Park System; and developing a digital resource guide for a fifth-grade research project on ancient Rome (Coleman, 15).
A school librarian reveals how they help teachers
Despite cited best practices for instructional collaboration and their successful outcomes, it remains a vexed issue in today’s public schools, as specified by a school librarian (SL) whom I interviewed for Video Librarian, and who prefers to remain anonymous. Here is the transcript of the interview (Hiromi Yoshida, personal communication, May 10, 2022).
HY: Can you share with Video Librarian readers some of the ways you have collaborated with school teachers?
SL: In the past, we collaborated on research projects, genre-related reading assignments, online safety and search strategies, digital literacy in general, and special events related to various occasions, such as Veteran’s Day, 6th Grade Graduation, and Honor Day, and musicals.
HY: That’s a good range of collaborative projects. So, what for you has been the most rewarding aspect of collaboration?
SL: Working with the teachers and students to be an authentic part of the teaching and learning processes.
HY: Great! And what aspect of collaboration has been most challenging for you, and how did you resolve that challenge?
SL: The building administrator. We have had a new administrator every 2.5 years on average for the last 23 years. Each time a new administrator begins, they change my responsibilities, teaching assignments, duties, and role within the staff. They have the most power over my position. The past few administrators have only seen my position as one to “cover classroom teacher prep time,” and not as an authentic collaborator in the teaching/learning process. I resolved to educate each person in order to change their thinking. With the many changes from COVID, this has become an impossibility. In addition, we are slated for another new administrator, and I am defeated and dispirited, knowing I will retire next year and will not have the opportunity to bring this position back to what it should be in our building.
HY: I’m so sorry to hear that. Can you talk more about those pandemic-related changes? For example, how has the pandemic affected your collaboration with teachers?
SL: COVID completely wiped it out. In addition, the adoption of the DuFour PLC model and our schedule changed my position from that of collaboration, to a “person who covers classroom teacher prep time.” Classroom teachers do not have time, or will not make time, in their schedule to meet so that I may be included in any projects, and our schedule does not allow for continuity. In addition, the newer teachers have never known anything other than the current model, and it would take a schedule change and a new administrator to implement.
HY: That’s really too bad. Based upon such experiences, do you have any personal recommendations for best practices for collaboration between school librarians and school teachers?
SL: Yes, first of all, open the schedule to include a flexible time that allows collaboration between school librarians and teachers, and opportunities for students to access the school library. Sadly, many schools only have clerks in their school libraries and so this is not a priority. Also, do not use a certified librarian/teacher to just cover classroom teacher prep time, and allow the librarian to be included in teachers’ planning meetings. If forced to follow the DuFour PLC model, make adaptations that will allow the inclusion of a certified teacher/librarian in the curriculum.
What educators and administrators can do in the future for librarians
School library media specialists are frequently undervalued, including those who are certified school librarians with faculty status. Moreover, unforeseen circumstances like the COVID pandemic can complicate the development of instructional partnerships between school library media specialists and teachers. “Just find one!” is an inadequate solution within complex administrative networks, whether school library media specialists are asked to select just one educator with whom to partner, identify just one shared objective, or initiate just one collaborative teaching project. Successful collaboration is possible only if school librarians, or library media specialists, are valued in this age of disinformation, advanced technologies, new media formats, and the urgency to develop new literacies.
Works Cited
Coleman, M. C. (2020). Collaborate. ALA Editions.
Cooper, O. P., & Bray, M. (2011). School Library media specialist-teacher collaboration: characteristics, challenges, opportunities. TechTrends, 55(4), 48–54. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-011-0511-y
Kammer, J., King, M., Donahay, A., & Koeberl, H. (2021). Strategies for successful school librarian and teacher collaboration. School Library Research, 24, 1–24. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1292862.pdf
Small, R. V. (2001). Developing a collaborative culture. School Library Media Research, 4, 1–5.
https://alair.ala.org/bitstream/handle/11213/15758/SLMR_Vol4_CollaborativeCulture.pdf?sequence=2