Designing Spaces for Learning and Living in Schools: perspectives of a 'flaneuse'

The design elements of school learning spaces - classrooms, laboratories, libraries, studios - have the potential to position learners and teachers and to prohibit, authorise, situate and regulate the ways in which learning takes place. Approaches to the designing of learning spaces can fail to take into account the changing social, cultural, pedagogical and technological factors impacting on learners and teachers. How can such taken-for-granted spaces accommodate the needs of learners and teachers and respond to the demands of 'rich task' curriculum and 'real world' learning experiences? Acknowledging Donald Schon's (1983) perspective that 'all occupations engaged in converting actual to preferred situations are concerned with design', this paper is linked to a site visit and workshop conducted in the Ken Thamm Information Resource Centre at Immanuel Lutheran College, Buderim as part of the 2005 Australian Curriculum Studies Conference Blurring the Boundaries – Sharpening the Focus

Issues and challenges facing school libraries in selected primary schools in Gauteng Province, South Africa

There is no national policy for school libraries which compels school governing bodies and principals to have a library in their schools. It is thus not surprising that in 2011, only 21% of state schools had libraries, only 7% had stocked libraries and 79% of schools had no library at all (Department of Basic Education (DBE) Republic of South Africa, 2011a:23). This article forms part of a broader qualitative study which investigated 10 primary schools in Gauteng Province, South Africa that had libraries, or were in the process of setting up a library, with the intention of providing a rich description of the issues and challenges facing these schools. The 10 schools used in this study were chosen on the basis of their location and fee structures. They represented the full continuum of fees within the state structure. In this article, we discuss three core categories of predicaments faced by primary school libraries. These were resourcing the library, operating the library and the role of the library. Our main contention is that school libraries are not playing an effective role in supporting and enabling quality education for all South African children. This needs to be addressed by government as a matter of urgency.Keywords: academic achievement; books; information and communication technologies; information literacy; literacy; national school library policy; quality education; reading; school librarians; school librarie

PUSTAKAWAN GURU SEBAGAI AGEN LITERASI INFORMASI DI SEKOLAH DASAR MADANIA PARUNG BOGOR

This paper aims to analyze the role of teacher librarians as agents of information literacy at Madania Parung Elementary School, Bogor. Librarians are information literacy agents in libraries. As the "agents", librarians have duties and responsibilities to users in information literacy. The teacher librarian as an information literacy agent has duties and responsibilities to its users, especially students to be information literate through the activities carried out. The Madania school library has a teacher librarian who can create information literate users from an early age. Therefore, this study examines the role of teacher librarians in information literacy. The research method used is qualitative with phenomenological methods. The results of the study can be seen as the teacher librarian is an information literacy agent at the Madania Parung Elementary School, Bogor. This can be seen from the three main roles of teacher librarians, namely teacher librarians as curriculum leaders; teacher librarians as information specialists; and teacher librarians as managers of information services. These three roles can be realized in activities carried out by teacher librarians, namely library classes, best readers, storytelling, and library tours by collaborating with various parties, both internal to the school and externally through collaboration with schools in the Bogor environment

El profesional de la información en los contextos educativos de la sociedad del aprendizaje : espacios y competencias

Reflections are made on the role of the information professional as an active protagonist in the training of informational competences and in the support to the educative change in the learning society. The antecedents of the educative fuction of the information professional in the last centuries and the points of contact with contemporary approaches connected with the support to the learning-teaching process and the development of informational competences are analyzed. The centers of learning resources, the learning communities and the e-learning systems are studied as spaces of action of the information professional in this new educative context. It is stressed that this professional needs knowledge of learning theory and pedagogical methods, as well as skills and teaching experience to design effective user training programs and informational literacy programs

School librarians as literacy educators within a complex role

Librarians in schools are expected to play an important role as literacy educators, and have a positive impact on young people’s literacy learning. However in the context of their diverse workload, relatively little is known about how this aspect of their role sits within its competing demands, and the exact scope of the literacy educator requirements. Using a hybrid approach to content analysis, this article analyses 40 recent job description documents to identify the nature and prevalence of different aspects of the role, and to explore the literacy educator aspect of this profession. Findings suggest that while the literacy educator aspect is one of the most common role requirements, it sits within a complex workload, and the literacy educator aspect is itself multi-faceted and demanding

Improving Reading Comprehension Achievements of Pupils in Public Primary Schools: Implications for Teacher Librarians

Teacher librarians are individuals with recognized teaching qualification as well as qualification in library science. Teacher librarians are often concerned about how much learners are able to grasp and retain meaning from the materials they read as well as their reading comprehension achievements. The term reading comprehension describes a complex process in which learners are involved in some mental processes like creating meanings and organizing texts. This study aimed to improve the reading comprehension achievements of pupils in public primary schools through the use of reflective instructional technique. Two teacher librarians served as research assistants in the study. The study employed the quasi-experimental pretest-posttest control group design. Thirty-three pupils each were assigned to the experimental and control groups respectively. The sample comprised pupils in primary four and five classes. The instrument used for data collection was the reading comprehension achievement test. The data generated were subjected to analysis of covariance. Results of the analyses showed that the reflective instructional technique led to improvement in the reading comprehension achievements of pupils in public primary schools in that the experimental group had a significant increase in reading comprehension achievement scores at the posttest. There was no significant influence of pupils\u27 gender on their reading comprehension achievement scores after benefitting from the intervention, F (1, 65)=.259, p=.613. Results further show that there was no significant interaction effect of the instructional technique and gender on the pupils’ reading comprehension achievement scores, F (1, 65)=.228, p=.634. One of the study implications is that teacher librarians can collaboratively work with other teachers to improve pupils’ reading comprehension achievement in primary schools. The teacher librarians can also influence pupils’ learning outcomes by working directly with pupils and promoting reading

Educators and public librarians: Unwitting partners in the information literacy education of South African youth?

The article details a study which examined the capacity of public libraries to offer information literacy education in South Africa. It investigates the perceptions of public library staff on their role in information literacy education. It provides a background on public libraries and literacy programs in the country. Findings of the research are discussed.Department of HE and Training approved lis