Research Finding:
Teacher-librarians have a positive effect on
student achievement.
Comment
Academic achievement is higher where teacher-librarians
engage in collaborative program planning and teaching
with classroom teachers, to integrate information literacy,
in flexible scheduled programs.
Teacher-librarians in these schools offer assertive
leadership, participate on school/district committees,
meet regularly with the principal and offer in-service
programs for teachers.
This is more likely to occur where there is a full-time
TL and aide, principal support of the program, technology
that extends the reach of the library into classrooms
and labs and a well-organized and formally requested
budget.
Better results are also achieved where there is a
quality collection of resources used by both students
and teachers to support the schools curriculum, where
there is a collection development policy to deal with
questions and challenges, where state-of-the-art technology
that is integrated with information-seeking processes
and where there is cooperation between the school and
public library.
These results could not be explained by teacher-pupil
ratios, per pupil expenditures, teacher/student characteristics,
socio-economic differences or adult educational attainment.
Sources
Lance, Keith Curry, Christine Hamilton-Pennell, Marcia
J. Rodney with Lois Petersen and Clara Sitter. (1999). Information
empowered: The school librarian as an agent of academic
achievement in Alaska. Juneau: Alaska State Library.
Lance, Keith Curry, Marcia J. Rodney & Christine
Hamilton-Pennell. (2000). How school librarians
help kids achieve standards: The second Colorado study. Denver:
Colorado Department of Education. See http://www.lrs.org/.
Lance, Keith Curry, Marcia J. Rodney & Christine
Hamilton-Pennell. (2000). Measuring up to standards:
The impact of school library programs & information
literacy in Pennsylvania Schools. Greensburg, PA:
Pennsylvania Citizens for Better Libraries. [Funded
by the Pennsylvania Department of Education]
