Book Review:
Librarians as Learning Specialists:
Meeting the Learning Imperative for the 21st Century
By Allison Zmuda and Violet H. Harada
London: Libraries Unlimited. (2009)
If you want to hone your "21st Century" understandings about schools and begin to transform the teaching and learning capacity of your school library into a Learning Commons, you must go immediately to Amazon and order Librarians as Learning Specialists: Meeting the Learning Imperative for the 21st Century. Regularly $40 USD, Amazon offers a discounted price and also a less expensive Kindle version. Maybe now is the time to buy an e-reader device to enter the e-reading environment as a direction for library improvement or as a shareable professional development tool for working collaboratively with teachers and administrators, especially in advancing the important place in 21st century learning of the new Learning Commons model for school libraries.
THIS BOOK IS NOT JUST FOR TEACHER-LIBRARIANS
With no clear blueprint for schools and teacher-librarians to design and construct Learning Commons for new and existing schools, it is important to consider the plans, gather the building blocks, build on evidence of the value, and enhance the structural design with any "blue sky" thinking to add compelling depth and the appeal of colour. Thus, I begin to compile the definitive website.
It is in this on-going context of creating a framework for change that I have been reading Zmuda and Harada, supported with a Foreword from Wiggins. I believe in the importance of libraries with windows. Writes Wiggins in his Foreword,
The [school library resource centre, or LRC] is more than just a space or resource .... It is a window into how well the entire staff understands learning and honors best practice. If the staff understands how people learn, then the [LRC] is a hub of core activity. If the school is committed to long-term mission-related goals, teachers and learning specialists constantly work together. (xi)
Zmuda and Harada make the powerful case that the advent of 21st century learning is also the time for learning specialists to move from the margins to the centre of learning, to leadership roles that move schools forward. They believe that
... what happens in the library is at the heart of the work of the school because it brings the world to the local community, inspires the curiosity and imagination of students, and brings people together to explore and communicate ideas. (xiii)
The words of Dr Ross Todd invite TLs, administrators, and teachers to re-vision the role of the school library in the educational community and in the learning opportunities we all create to engage our students in learning:
The hallmark of a school library in the 21st century is not its collections, its system, its technology, its staffing, its buildings, but its actions and evidences that show that it makes a real difference to student learning, that it contributes in tangible and significant ways to the development of meaning making and constructing knowledge. (xii)
In creating the case for whole-school commitment to a common purpose and to instructional adjustment to achieve the common goal, the authors review Todd's 10 Learning Principles for School Libraries (2007), "Working for Knowledge Construction: Transformational Leadership," and reference their views to such leading educators as John Dewey, Michael Fullan, and Mel Levine. Sample school library mission statements are drawn from Canada, the US, and Australia and include one that reads, "Gladstone School Library Resource Centre is dedicated to creating a safe atmosphere that fosters self-esteem, creativity, and enthusiasm for reading and lifelong learning."
[Whoo-hoo! I remember the call to give permission for its use but I hadn't thought about this since. This Gladstone statement, by the way, derived from the exercise of creating the school's Mission Statement that the principal had undertaken with the staff. A search of the school's website shows a nuts-and-bolts approach has overtaken its messages now. I remember how galvanizing it was for us to all be on the same page in relation to our students, kind of like the thesis statement in an essay that keeps your writing on track.]
Chapters 2-4 explore ways to build the leadership capacity and new understandings in the school community about the changing role of the TL; instructional design for student engagement and achievement; and robust assessment, with the key idea that a mission-based approach that works requires a school's staff, including its TL, to:
... know how students learn and how different students learn differently, how children acquire language and how to support language development, how to organize a curriculum that builds on students' prior knowledge and experiences, how to assess what students know and how they are learning, how to diagnose and meet the needs of struggling students, how to use a range of teaching strategies, how to motivate students and how to work collaboratively with parents and peers to reinforce learning at home and school. (16)
