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SCHOOL LIBRARIES WORLDWIDE

Volume 11, Number 1, January 2005

Editorial
Dianne Oberg

A Place to Learn or a Place for Leisure: Pupils' Use of the School Library in Norway
Elisabeth Tallaksen Rafste
The aim of this article is to present findings about how students in Norway use and value the school library as part of their daily practice at school, and who those users are. Data was collected through observations, interviews and questionnaires in two case study schools (16-18 year old pupils) during half a year. The findings indicate that the students use and value the school library more as a social meeting-place and a place for pleasure than as a place for educationally related studies. The data are discussed within a theoretical frame of sociology and domain specific socialization theories, and describe the library as a porous space in the school.

Teaching Information Literacy in the Information Age: An Examination of Trends in the Middle Grades
Marlene Asselin
This study examined the extent of information literacy instruction in grades 6 and 7 and the degree to which a variety of supportive factors are in place in classrooms and school library programs in one western Canadian province. Based on responses to questionnaires from teachers and teacher-librarians, four trends emerged: (a) the existence of broad level support within schools including a constructivist teaching and learning environment, principal support of information literacy, and teacher knowledge of information literacy; (b) the need for school and district level frameworks of information literacy; (c) the need for increased attention to teaching ethical and critical thinking aspects of information literacy, and (d) challenges to increasing the potential role of the school library program. Implications for teacher-librarians as school leaders of the "new literacies" required to participate in the Information Age are presented.

Information Literacy and the School Librarians' Education
Bernadete Campello and Vera Lúcia Furst Gonçalves Abreu
The aim of this article is to attain a greater understanding of information literacy as it is put into practice by library science students in Brazil. It shows how library science students accomplish tasks assigned by their professors. It is based on Kuhlthau’s studies on the process of information seeking. An attempt was made to identify skills, attitudes and knowledge related to the development of the various stages of the process. In addition, aspects that did not fit into these patterns were observed. Responses were analyzed to identify patterns of feelings, attitudes and actions related by the respondents and results were compared with Kuhlthau's model.

Theme Section: Student Learning through Ohio School Libraries

Student Learning through Ohio School Libraries, Introduction: Partner-Leaders in Action
Ann E. Tepe and Gayle A. Geitgey

Student Learning through Ohio School Libraries, Part 1: How Effective School Libraries Help Students
Ross J. Todd and Carol C. Kuhlthau
This paper provides an overview of the Student Learning through Ohio School Libraries research study, undertaken from October 2002 through December 2003. The study involved 39 effective school libraries across Ohio; the participants included 13,123 students in Grades 3 to 12 and 879 faculty. The focus question of the study was "How do school libraries help students with their learning in and away from school?" The findings, both quantitative and qualitative, showed that effective school libraries help students with their learning in many different ways across the different grade levels. Effective school libraries play an active rather than passive role in students’ learning. The concept of "help" was understood in two ways: helps-as-inputs, or help that engages students in the process of effective learning through the school library, and helps-as outcomes/impacts, or demonstrated outcomes of meaningful learning - academic achievement and personal agency. The study shows that an effective school library is not just informational, but transformational and formational, leading to knowledge creation, knowledge production, knowledge dissemination and knowledge use, as well as the development of information values.

Student Learning through Ohio School Libraries, Part 2: Faculty Perceptions of Effective School Libraries
Ross J. Todd and Carol C. Kuhlthau
This paper focuses on the perceptions of school principals and teaching faculty in relation to the school library and the helps it provides to students. Set against a brief review of current literature, it examines data provided by 879 faculty in 39 elementary, middle and high schools of Ohio as part of the Student Learning through Ohio School Library research study. In a parallel survey to the Impacts on Learning Survey for students participating in this research, the Perceptions of Learning survey for sought to gather faculty perceptions of the helps provided by the school library to their students. This paper presents a summary of the findings, provides a brief comparison with the student data, and addresses the concept of evidence of school library helps as observed by the teaching faculty.

Last Updated 30 March 2005 (LAC)