American Association Of School Librarians Research Articles

Preservice Librarians and Principals' Hiring Practice

Every year, principals face the challenge of hiring staff to fill the open positions on their campus and may only hire one or two school librarians during their tenure. School principals can build a cohesive team to help ensure student success by hiring staff with strong leadership skills. School librarian preparation standards suggest that school librarians be educated to serve as leaders (American Library Association, American Association of School Libraries, & Council for the Accreditation of Educators Preparation, 2019). Moreover, the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) advocates for the leadership role of school librarians in its mission statement (2018). Research indicates that transformational leadership behaviors apply to school librarians because they interact with the entire school community and may serve as change agents to positively transform their school’s culture (Smith, 2011). This study posits that principals often hire preservice school librarians instead of experienced school librarians. Therefore, there is a need to understand the relationship between the hiring criteria identified by principals and the leadership role specified in the school librarian standards. This mixed-methods study examines the criterion principals use to hire librarians and their alignment with the transformational leadership behaviors of preservice librarians.

Current and Future Directions for School Media Specialists

School media specialists have served as technological experts for their schools and have been pioneers with digital natives, helping create good digital citizens and addressing digital gaps for learners and advocate for access no matter what barriers students face. School of Library and Information Science programs have focused on creating a curriculum that will help create a school technology expert for every school library. This served schools well during the COVID-19 shutdowns, where the school had to find new ways for students to learn remotely.School media specialists have now become the target of hate in their schools. This has become increasingly complicated with states legislating what can be put in school libraries and how teachers can address historical events. School media specialists are required to make decisions on access or potentially losing their jobs. While these are important areas, they are just a small part of the job for school media specialists. The American Association of School Librarians has increased the expected role for school media specialists, having them often serve as teacher, instructional partner, information specialist, and program administrator, all in addition to serving as the expert technologist at their school. However, not all school media programs take this approach to pedagogy for school media.School media specialists create technological opportunities for schools and are a key source for teachers seeking to reach students with diverse learning styles while informing and building relationships with families on internet safety and other important topics. Teachers depend on school media specialists to provide resources and support for the classroom while school media specialists also support students’ intellectual freedom. Ultimately, the focus for school media specialists has been to try to create a school library that represents everyone’s values. While this sounds ideal, it has been a difficult road for the profession.The position of school media specialist has changed dramatically over the last four years. This panel seeks to address research contributions to scholarship on school media specialists and how Schools of Library and Information Science are changing their programs to prepare school media specialists for the workforce. There will be a moderator and a panel comprised of four faculty members who are educators, practitioners, and researchers specializing in school media. Their perspectives and expertise will be present in this discussion, along with the following discussion topics:What are your current research findings telling you?What are practitioners experiencing?What is working with educational pedagogy in school media?What is not working with educational pedagogy in school media?What new technologies have you incorporated into the curriculum?What changes are being made at Schools of Information Science programs to help ready students for the current environment?The panel will explore questions of education, research, and practitioner-based experiences to address concerns impacting school media specialists. The information will inform the future discussion and curriculum pedagogy for school media specialists. The panel discussion will be formatted around the expertise of the faculty with school media. These discussions will inform pedagogical teaching practices in school media programs and hopefully provide a framework for improvement.

Insights on first-generation students’ development of social capital for the rigours of college-level research

As a part of a larger study titled, First Years Meet the Frames, this work explores the perceptions of first-generation students (FGS) on their readiness for college-level research as well as their first-year college experience with libraries and librarians. Although, by definition, these students lack the cultural capital normally derived from parents who went to college in order to readily assimilate into higher education institutions, depending on their high school experiences, they may be able to build social capital. Accordingly, this article investigates such opportunities which lie in high schools with strong library programs that have a full-time certified librarian working in alignment with the national school library standards of the American Association of School Librarians (AASL). It addresses what aspects of this preparation facilitate the development of social capital and follows FGS into the first year of college to see how they continue to build it. It also compares FGS to their continuing generation student (CGS) counterparts from the same high schools. Findings show that FGS can build social capital via these high school library programs and continue to leverage their high school experiences and skill sets in order to create new networks and to tackle college-level research during the first year of college. FGS demonstrate similar preparedness and similar confidence in research abilities as their CGS counterparts.

American Public School Librarianship: A History

American Public School Librarianship: A History

Remembering LHRT

Remembering LHRT

Building the Capacity of School Librarians to Facilitate the Success of English Language Learners

Outcomes from the recent United States (U.S.) census indicate that the country continues to grow in diverse populations. At least 4 million English Language Learner (ELL) students are enrolled in the U.S. public school system. Frequently, ELL students are faced with complete immersion into classes with teachers who may not have specialized training to assist them. According to the American Association of School Librarians’ National School Library Standards, school librarians actively engage the entire school population and its stakeholders to facilitate academic achievement. As such, they can provide educational experiences to supplement the classroom curriculum.
 Given these circumstances, a pilot study was conducted with pre-service and recently certified school librarians regarding their ELL training. Results showed that most participants were interested in learning more about how to assist ELLs. A majority of them responded that they experienced some level of difficulty with using technology to enhance learning for ELLs and understanding how to develop a multicultural lesson plan for ELLs. These results suggest that librarians need more training in this area.
 In response, this poster reports preliminary results from an IMLS funded project developed to build the capacity of school librarians to provide services for ELLs. During the project, a multidisciplinary group of experts, including the school library community and ELL stakeholders such as linguists, ELL community members, public librarians, educational technologists, teachers, and school administrators, are collaborating to identify research-based strategies for providing learning opportunities. Best practices and resources for educating school librarians will be shared.

Race and School Librarianship in the Jim Crow South, 1954–1970: The Untold Story of Carrie Coleman Robinson as a Case Study

On December 23, 1969, the National Education Association and the Alabama State Teachers Association (a black organization) filed a class action suit in federal court against the Alabama Department of Education on behalf of Carrie Coleman Robinson, Negro School Library Supervisor in Alabama’s Department of Education. The suit argued that Robinson had suffered racial discrimination in hiring and stated that her First, Fifth, Thirteenth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights had been violated. The American Association of School Librarians and its parent American Library Association (Robinson had been a member of both for decades) chose not to participate in the suit. The decision reflected the library profession’s unwillingness to openly discuss public school segregation, one of the nation’s major social issues in the last half of the twentieth century that was sparked by the Supreme Court’s landmark decision Brown v. Board of Education (1954). This article recounts the heretofore untold story of Carrie Coleman Robinson’s experiences with racial discrimination within the professions of education and librarianship.

The Researchers' Perspective: For and By the Community

In this study, we describe the innovative and rigorous phased process used to compose the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) National School Library Standards (AASL, 2018). We begin by recounting previous standards iterations and compared their development processes to the most recent process used during the development of the AASL Standards. After we detail the development timeline and process phases, we conclude with implications for best practices in standards development for school librarians, professional leaders, and practitioners.

They Should Be Called Guiders": Teachers and Teacher Librarians Developing Inquiry Learners

Today’s educators maintain a difficult balance covering growing amounts of curriculum content, managing accountability standards, and developing independent, creative learners with 21st Century skills and dispositions. Inquiry pedagogies like Guided Inquiry (GI) offer a framework to support teachers and teacher librarians working together to support these goals. This research uses the American Association of School Librarians’ National School Library Standards for Learners (2018c) to investigate students’ research process in a collaborative GI unit with teachers and teacher librarians. Findings indicate students want more teacher guidance, but also recognize the importance of developing their own information literacy and research skills independently.

Mind the Gaps: School Librarians' Job Descriptions and the Professional Standards for School Librarians in the United States

While previous studies have analyzed the contents of different librarians’ job descriptions (Brewerton, 2011; Park, Lu, & Marion, 2009), school librarians’ job descriptions have not received similar attention. The purpose of this study was to compare how well the performance responsibilities from Florida school librarians’ job descriptions agreed with the performance responsibilities from the American Association of School Librarians’ (AASL) professional standards outlined in their publication Empowering Learners: Guidelines for School Library Programs (AASL, 2009). Rates of agreement were calculated by using thematic qualitative content analysis to compare the subjects and actions of the respective performance responsibilities. Analysis showed the ages and origins of the job descriptions did not have a consistent influence on rates of agreement, though job descriptions within the range of 11-20 performance responsibilities tended to have higher average rates of agreement. The various aspects of school librarians’ roles as described in Empowering Learners were present in their job descriptions to different extents, with some aspects more frequently represented than others. The differences between the performance responsibilities in school librarians’ job descriptions and Empowering Learners may be a source of role ambiguity, conflict, erosion, and overload for school librarians.

A Platform for Voice and Identity: School Library Standards in Support of YA Urban Literature's Transformative Impacts on Youth

In this qualitative study of collaboration between an eighth grade English teacher and school librarian, 14 urban youth from a suburban city in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States were interviewed on the impact they experienced from a yearlong study with young adult literature reflective of their lived experiences. Steeped in the language of social justice and inclusive of the American Association of School Librarians’ Standards for the 21st Century Learner (2009) and International Federation of LibraryAssociations’ School Library Guidelines (2015), an analysis of findings bring attention to the impact highly effective partnerships have on implementing literature discussion circles and Socratic Seminars to provide a platform of expression for young adult voices seldom heard.

Connecting Marketing and Implementation Research and Library Program Development: A Case Study of the Implementation of National [U.S.] Guidelines and Standards

The American Association of School Librarians developed a detailed plan, with more than 30 specific objectives and more than 75 target audiences, for the implementation of Information Power, the 1998 national guidelines for effective programs. Clear delineation of responsibilities at the national, state, district and school levels was a key part of the plan. Marketing research allowed the Association to increase sources of information for planning and to report that information more clearly and consistently, to reduce error and to manage the Association's marketing program more aggressively. Research from the implementation of change and effective staff development was incorporated in the training for state coordinators. Implementation is now underway with documented achievement of the early objectives.

Using Portfolio Items to Assess Information Literacy

In 1998, the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) developed nine standards for information literacy skills. Students with these skills are equipped to recognize their learning objectives, identify their information needs, acquire information, evaluate information, and share the results of their effort. These skills are keys to lifelong learning. Standard assessment tools, such as select response, closed-constructed response, and even open-ended-constructed response questions are sufficiently dynamic to align with the real-world experiences of learners exercising information literacy skills. In this study, an information structure was designed for students to use to describe learning activities. These written, student-generated items become part of a student’s portfolio. It is proposed that this information structure can serve as an alternative, authentic tool to assess students’ information literacy skills. Two student portfolio items are presented in this report along with a description of the process used to create assessments.

Developing Students’ “mini-c” Creativity through Inquiry

In 2007, the American Association of School Librarians (AASL), a division of the American Library Association, unveiled the Standards for the 21st-Century Learner to foster high expectations for today‘s learners. The purposes of this paper are to explore as well as operationalize the constructs of creativity to develop students‘ creative potential through inquiry. This paper introduces the potential of the AASL Standards to foster student creativity. Starko‘s contributions to developing the creative potential of childrenwithin a constraining educational milieu are presented.

The Pivotal Significance of Attentiveness to Standards and Assessment in South Carolinian School Libraries

The Pivotal Significance of Attentiveness to Standards and Assessment in South Carolinian School Libraries provides an overview of the history of the initial development of librarian standards and an in-depth look at the South Carolina Standards of Learning, the American Association of School Librarians’ Standards for Learners, and the International Society for Technology in Education Standards for Students. Information on the organizations’ covered standards is supplied, along with a brief examination of their potential application within school libraries. Additionally, a synopsis of South Carolina’s ADEPT Performance Standards for Classroom-Based Teachers, TE21 CASE Benchmarks, and South Carolina’s CTE Standards is provided. To conclude the research, three methods of assessment of standards application within a school library are summarized, including their potential impact on personnel growth.

Renaissance’s Accelerated Reader: Does It Really Work?

The school library is an open place for students to learn, imagine, and be free to research information of their choosing. Renaissance’s Accelerated Reader is a reading level-based program that assigns point values to books when students pass the quiz assigned to each book. Accelerated Reader unfortunately promotes censorship and invasion of privacy due to how the program is structured. This paper examines the flaws with Accelerated Reader to help examine if the program is beneficial to students. The American Association of School Librarians’ position statement will be used to help emphasize the point of the paper being that Accelerated Reader is inefficient. Collaboration between school librarians and teachers would be more beneficial instead of computerized reading level programs. Accelerated Reader’s structure unfortunately causes censorship of materials and invasion of privacy for children’s reading choices.

Review: HHMI BioInteractive, by Howard Hughes Medical Institute

HHMI BioInteractive (https://www.biointeractive.org; Howard Hughes Medical Institute, 2019) In 2018, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Biointeractive (HHMI Biointeractive) website was honored by the American Association of School Librarians as one of the best sites for librarians and their collaborators, because this creative, innovative, free, and user-friendly website encourages the development of a community of learners. This review discusses some recent improvements to the website. The recent updates to HHMI Biointeractive's more than 650 pages, which took about one year to complete, include a more condensed, uniform format with the same tone and elements presented on each page. The newly reconfigured and streamlined site is a virtual wonderland for biology teachers, containing videos old and new, lesson time suggestions, interviews with scientists, case studies, blogs, virtual labs, interactive quizzes, links to the literature, learning outcomes, NGSS links, professional development, and a plethora of other educational opportunities, …

On the Field, Not in the Stands: Shared Foundation VI: Engage in the National School Library Standards for Learners, School Librarians, and School Libraries

The American Association of School Librarians (AASL) has offered a multi-layered approach to serving our schools with the National School Library Standards for Learners, School Librarians, and School Libraries. This column explores Shared Foundation VI: Engage, and considers the importance of learner engagement.

Lifting the Curtain: Examining the importance of the Shared Foundation IV: Curate in the National School Library Standards for Learners, School Librarians, and School Libraries

The American Association of School Librarians (AASL) has offered a multi-layered approach to serving our schools with the National School Library Standards for Learners, School Librarians, and School Libraries. This column explores Shared Foundation IV: Curate, and considers the importance and impact of school librarians modeling and sharing processes of curation with students.

A Resource That Inspires: Exploring the “Include” Foundation of the National School Library Standards for Learners, School Librarians, and School Libraries

:The American Association of School Librarians (AASL) has offered a multi-layered approach to serving our schools with the National School Library Standards for Learners, School Librarians, and School Libraries. The AASL Standards provide a valuable resource for professional development and a touchstone to inspire us to consider anew the basic elements of our profession. In this first column, one of the six Shared Foundations, “Include”, provides a way to consider several issues important to school libraries.