Medidas de ámbito general

In order to ascertain teacher perceptions of working with librarians and how they see the role of the librarian in raising information literacy levels, questions were asked about their experiences of working collaboratively with others. The aim was to examine factors that affect collaborative work between colleagues in a school environment. Where the librarian is not mentioned in responses, teachers were then asked for their views of collaboration with a librarian. In contrast to the views of Teachers A, E and L first discussed in this chapter, Teacher C’s views of collaboration began by focussing on work with the librarian and how this transferred between teachers and therefore, classrooms in her subject department:

‘we [students and staff] feed back to the board and between us [staff] we help the students to see what the question’s about, see where they need to go to answer it, to understand where the gaps are in their information so they can then go and fill them, to make connections between the ideas.’

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‘all the A level teachers [in R.E.] are aware of the language that we use and the structures that we use in the library and they all re-enforce it so it’s not just a one person job and it’s not just once.’

Teacher C is describing her experience of team teaching where the focus is shared equally between topic content and skill development. It is evidence of both terminology and practices being shared by teachers, to re-enforce the information literacy learning previously done in the library, supporting its transfer by students between their department’s classrooms. This example of practice with A level students described by Teacher C has most of the features attributed to inquiry learning, excepting the choice of research question, which, in this instance is an imposed past exam paper question:

‘I don’t need a survey to tell me… I know those kids took up that technique and ran with it and they’re applying it to other subjects. I know they have study groups based on our method for other subjects as well… and I think the reason it’s had a bigger impact this year is because we’ve transferred it into the classroom for them as well. And it’s not just me, it’s everybody all four rooms, they do the same thing.’ (Teacher C)

The students in Teacher C’s example could see the pragmatic advantages gained by using a ‘real’ exam question. Perhaps it is possible to take a flexible approach to selecting the features of inquiry learning and that some characteristics may be more influential than others. This could also be affected by the context and age of the students, as in this case, A Level students have very different perceptions and needs compared to Year 7 children.

Teacher C, like Teacher A in the first section, feels that skills teaching should be dependent upon the context and carefully shared with the subject. This is based on her experience as an Advanced Skills Teacher working in an advisory capacity and it certainly lends weight to Teacher A’s fears that skills teaching can be detrimental to the understanding of a subject:

‘… it can have its downsides… the bottom line is you lose your subject… So I’m working with both those baccalaureate coordinators because they have totally lost RE.’ (Teacher C)

This teacher felt the skills process had completely overshadowed the subject content and the balance had to be retrieved.

Teacher G referred to the cross-curricular collaboration, critiqued by Teacher A earlier in this chapter, as poorly planned and lacking a clear outcome, by observing:

‘I’ve been doing that collaboration with Year 9 around the holocaust and you know with RE and Drama… it enables a child to drill down and understand something in depth as opposed to superficially.’ (Teacher G)

‘Often I say this to the children. “If you learn how to, for example, when we talk about planning an essay, I will say you have to use this skill in every single class,

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in History or Geography… because sometimes its form [different writing conventions]’

Teacher G has observed students achieving a deeper understanding of the topic because of the cross-curricular experience and it shows that she makes explicit references to skill transfer and how differently it might look when practised in other subjects. This highlights the potential benefit that team teaching could give to staff, compared to solo working in cross-curricular work. If Teacher A and G had some shared classroom experience they could be able to capitalise on those skill transfer opportunities for students and their understanding of how differently the skill would be employed in each other’s context could be greatly enhanced. It could also give them a deeper understanding of each other’s viewpoint for an evaluation of this unit of work.

Shared classroom experience is one of several factors that affect the nature of collaborative work between teachers. Time for planning and curriculum mapping was mentioned by Teachers A, E and L. Other issues that have emerged, concern:

‘I think historically perhaps not everyone has been keen [department culture]’ (Teacher F)

‘One of the big issues about staff not really relaxing into creative partnerships and collaboration because we’re always worried about, we have to produce evidence’ (Teacher M)

Both of these refer to cultural issues that affect the quality of In-service Training. Teachers can feel both isolated and reluctant to engage when they feel threatened by monitoring and

evaluation processes.

The librarian’s role, for supporting staff professional development through In-service Training and its contribution to skills teaching was mentioned by both Teachers A and L in broad terms, as an agent for change. In the data from the other nine teachers in this research there is a greater level of detail in some of the descriptions which enables one to identify how the role contributes to raising information literacy levels. In this example from Teacher C she comments:

‘I do actually consciously try and build the bridges and consciously try and work on relationships, as well as on teaching, because it wasn’t until I read the feedback you’d got from students, that I realised how important that was but also how they learn and how they make connections and transfer it to skills.’

This reflects evaluation of joint work researched by the librarian and fed back to staff for their consideration. The role of resourcing work in the classroom was identified:

‘We’ve done more and you’ve prepared more book boxes for us. So the technique they learn with you in the library has literally been transferred into the classroom.’ (Teacher C).

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This identified how resourcing can support the continuance of information literacy work begun as a team teaching experience between the teacher and librarian.

Where information literacy work is done within one subject it has been identified by a different subject teacher as beneficial in her classroom too:

‘they can look for information, look for relevant information, with the skills they learn in the library you can tap into’ (Teacher F)

Teacher F realises the importance of communication and planning:

‘on producing materials and trialling them… you would have to be involved from the beginning because I think you were away when I brought down that stuff. You were cold with it really’

This resonates with Teacher L’s bigger picture view of the need to include the librarian at leadership levels in curriculum reviews and training in order to make more staff aware of information literacy and its employment more systematic.

When the librarian’s role is felt by the teacher to contribute an expertise it can be said to raise information literacy levels:

‘collaborate with you in the library on plagiarism as well as how to reference and cite properly and stuff that has been really useful, particularly for the kids who you know are going to go on to uni and to college and it sort of really raised their game and made their coursework stand out.’ (Teacher H)

Issues that have emerged in relation to collaboration concern the need for a culture within a department to be conducive to sharing expertise; the need for opportunities for In-Service Training; and the need for good quality planning processes underpinning cross-curricular collaborations; and the need for evaluation methods which are about professional learning rather than formal performance review. In relation to the role of the librarian, team teaching was perceived as valuable, particularly where it is supported into the classroom and then shared by teachers in a department. In this way information literacy teaching is enhanced and student transfer of learning is more likely to take place.

In document Diagnóstico y propuesta de solución a los problemas de inundación en un tramo del río Guadalete a su paso por Jerez de la Frontera (Cádiz) (página 93-99)