By Dianne Oberg
Building a Learning Community: Challenges in Implementing School Library Guidelines
Abstract
The difficulties of implementation of a policy, guideline or practice such as Leading Learning: Standards of Practice for School Library Commons in Canada are examined in this paper by using examples from Alberta’s1990 Focus on Research: A Guide to Developing Students’ Research Skills guide to inquiry learning and the international 2015 IFLA School Library Guidelines (2nd ed.). Beginning with the value of school library guidelines and discussing lessons learned from examples, Oberg outlines what is new in the international school library guidelines focusing on concepts important to contemporary school library practice. Oberg includes the IFLA School Library Guidelines: Executive Summary and Recommendations in the appendix with a new definition of a school library that emphasizes the role of the teacher-librarian and focus on impacting student learning through evidence-based practice. Oberg asks us to think about which themes from Leading Learning will present the most challenges in your local school community and encourages the use of the IFLA recommendations when using a development system such as Leading Learning’s phases.
Dianne Oberg is Professor Emerita in teacher-librarianship in the Faculty of Education at the University of Alberta in Canada. Her research focuses on teacher-librarianship education and on the implementation and evaluation of school library programs. Dianne co-authored with J. Branch the award-winning professional document, Focus on Inquiry: A Teacher’s Guide to Implementing Inquiry-based Learning (2004). Dianne co-edited, with Barbara Schultz-Jones, a new IFLA publication, Global Action on School Library Guidelines (2015). She was the founding editor of the peer-reviewed international journal, School Libraries Worldwide, which she edited for 15 years.