Action Research as a Pathway to Discovery in the School Library
by David V. Loertscher and Michelle Young
In this paper Dr. Loertscher and his colleagues call for more school library professionals to engage in action research. The paper presents a model for action research as a personal discovery focused on how the school library might move into the centre of teaching and learning in the school. The writers ask you to consider, “what is the best thing that I can do to create the biggest impact on teaching and learning in my special/individual community of teachers and learners.”
Over the years, Professor Loertscher has taught and held professorial roles at four universities and spent a decade leading the editorial department at Libraries Unlimited. His leadership as the President of the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) during the "Count on Reading" initiative saw an impressive 68 million books read nationwide. For access to his extensive body of work, including numerous books and articles written over the past 50 years, visit davidloertscherlibrary.org.
David and Michelle, Your paper speaks to the zeitgeist of school libraries in 2024! So many of us are doing great work, but in isolation, unless a forum or network is created and maintained for sharing professional excellence. The action research approach is something that is accessible, but suits all education stakeholders from teacher-librarians, to students, to parent groups and beyond. Action research invites synergy through conversation and brings new meaning to work that might feel like its in its Trough of Disillusionment. I wonder how we can identify opportunities to others for action research, including creative funding for work that would allow for that objective view sometimes. Action research also allows for mentoring models to bubble up on so many levels of expertise. I'm reminded of times when students have taught me something through their lived experience that has shifted my approach. Thank you for your inspirational project.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your thoughtful response. Learning from your students made me recall a story years ago about an elementary school librarian at the close of the day a student came to her and ask if she had any books about how to commit suicide. She sat the boy down and said I will be happy to help you but just let me run into my office for just a second and I'll be right back out and I'll help. She rushed into her office, dialed the counselor and said get over here immediately together they say that little boys life. In my own experience, I recall as a high school Librarian one of the students that was on the basketball team. Ask me if he could talk to me in my office and told me that he found out that his girlfriend was pregnant and wonder if I could give him some advice. Experiences like Fiiese if we think about them carefully and make observations, we can start asking ourselves questions like what causes a student to trust us enough to ask us a major life question. That is the purpose of the action research model that we presented in this paper that if we spend time observing and thinking about experiences that we have and the patterns of those experiences bring to mine and then we check out the major research about that we end up, not only improving our own practice, but many times it is something that others of our professionals could use in their own schools. I hope both you and others at treasure Mountain share action research that you do on the new open access journal titled learning hub.website. Thank you again, alana for your comments.
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DeleteMichelle and David,
ReplyDeleteIt feels a bit as if you are "preaching to the choir" with this article in TMC8, a place where you'll find many examples of action research by practicing school library professionals. However, what I love about your work is how simple it sounds. It's so ... natural, and do-able. I squirm a bit at the "world-class" adjective (but then again, I also balk at the "rock star" designation for some in the field - it's fraught with peril to put some on pillars, because they sometimes fall or feel "set apart").
You mention on page 5 "First, we have a sense that not very many current school librarians are doing any action research. If so, we have not seen many action study reports in the professional literature". In two of the institutions where I teach TLs-in-training, the learners do conduct action research but the big thing is that their reports don't make it past the files of the instructors, partly because they often feel they aren't worthy and partly because of the path and time it takes to get it shared in official channels. This is why TMC is so important; it gets this kind of work out in the public (and not behind paywalls either). Your new journal will also help alleviate this vacuum.
Diana Maliszewski