Dr Ross J Todd Rutgers, the State University of NJ rtodd@scils.rutgers

1. Dr Ross J ToddRutgers, the State University of NJrtodd@scils.rutgers.edu School Libraries, Productive Pedagogy and the Leading of Learning

2. Student Learning School libraries as powerful and engaging places in the lives of studentsdo not happen by chance or force.

3. Student Learning Learning outcomes are achieved through deliberate actions and instructional interventions of Teacher-Librarians and Teachers working as Partner-Leaders INFORMATIONAL – TRANSFORMATONAL – FORMATIONAL

5. A TIME OF BOLD ACTION Lauren Becall "Standing still is the fastest way of moving backwards in a rapidly changing world. Imagination is the highest kite one can fly"

6. The Victorian Landscape Increasing acknowledgement of: • the complexity and diversity of student learning; • intellectual quality as key learning outcome; • engagement with, and ownership of learning; • integratedness of disciplinary knowledges and skills; • inclusiveness: educational leaders, learners, knowledge, community, cultural diversity; • teacher as the most important influence on student learning.

7. REVOLTING LIBRARIANS A Time for Bold Action

8. Revolting Librarians • “Sex, drugs, and will you please be quiet: - Our revolting jobs” • “An archivist’s classification of problem patrons” • “In the stacks and in the sack: An undercover look at librarians and erotica” • “Check out those buns: or, What do you say to a male librarian?” • “Library service to the insane” • “Being a cataloguer is better than gutting fish for a living because…” • “Astrology and library job correlation”

9. Risky Business: The Leading Of Learning From authority- or role- or person-centered leadership to cultural- and learning-centered leadership explicitly focuses on leading of learning.

10. Taking Risks • "I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face and not Gary Cooper." --Gary Cooper on his decision not to take the leading role in "Gone With the Wind.“ • "We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out." --Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962. • "Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible."--Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895. • "Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction".--Pierre Pachet, Prof. of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872

11. Revolting Librarians Taking Risks • Stop talking about collaboration • Stop talking about information literacy • Stop talking about research projects • Stop talking about roles of teacher-librarians • Start talking about guided inquiry through information resources • Start talking knowledge outcomes, not information literacy outcomes • Start talking about intellectual quality of learning • Start talking about libraries as quality learning environments, not resource environments • Start talking the leading of learning through the library You are the information-learning specialist, working with partner-leaders to lead learning through complex and diverse resources, enabling your students to develop deep understanding of their curriculum topics

12. The Key Question What constitutes effective shared teacher & librarian-teacher pedagogy and leading of learning through partnerships?

13. The Principles of Learning and Teaching • The learning environment is supportive and productive • The learning environment promotes independence, interdependence and self motivation • Students’ needs, backgrounds, perspectives and interests are reflected in the learning program • Students are challenged and supported to develop deep levels of thinking and application • Assessment practices are an integral part of teaching and learning 6. Learning connects strongly with communities and practice beyond the classroom

14. Outcomes of the PoLT • Intellectual Agency • Personal Agency • Social and Cultural Agency • These learning outcomes are how we talk about the school library

15. PERSONAL AGENCY • Self Confidence • Willingness to take risks • Trying new ideas and practices • Independence • Autonomy

16. INTELLECTUAL AGENCY • Have depth and breadth of knowledge and understanding • Able to engage in intellectual exploration • Can think deeply about ideas and practice • Can deal with conflicting data and information: problematic knowledge • Engage in higher oigher order, flexible thinking: analysis, synthesis, evaluation, problem solving; able to think creatively and laterally • Able to reason with with evidence, particular to the discipline area: Relevant, connected knowledge • Able to use the complex language of a discipline: Meta-language • Substantive discussion of ideas

17. SOCIAL AND CULTURAL AGENCY • Respect for different values, cultural knowledges and viewpoints • Team building, collaboration, negotiation and decision making • Knowledge integration: from bits and bytes to conceptual coherence and integration • Inclusivity • Connect with current and future lives • Social and ethical values

18. The Principles of Learning and Teaching • As a key learning environment, how is the school library supportive and productive? • How does the school library promote independence, interdependence and self motivation? • How does the school library’s learning program reflect students’ needs, backgrounds, perspectives and interests? • How does the school library challenge and support the development of deep levels of thinking and application? • How does the school library provide meaningful feedback on learning that nurtures and nourishes learning? • How does the school library connect learners with communities and practice beyond the classroom? EVIDENCE EVIDENCE EVIDENCE EVIDENCE

19. PoLT: ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT LEARNING • Process of personal and social construction • Cumulative and developmental process • Involves the whole person thinking, acting, reflecting, discovering and linking ideas, making connections • Transformative: developing and transforming prior knowledge, skills, attitudes, values: conceptual change • Encompasses feelings and motivations • Closely resemble the ways that students will be expected to use their knowledge and skills in the real world Dewey-Kelly-Brunner-Piaget-Vygotsky

20. PoLT: What do we want students to do? • actively search for meaning and understanding • construct deep knowledge and deep understanding rather than passively receiving it • directly involved and engaged in the discovery of new knowledge rather than collecting facts and data • encounter alternative perspectives and conflicting ideas so that they are able to transform prior knowledge and experience into deep understandings • transfer new knowledge and skills to new circumstances • use a range of complex knowledge construction competencies to transform raw data, prior knowledge and information into deep understanding • take ownership and responsibility for their ongoing learning and mastery of curriculum content and skills • contribute to societal well being, the growth of democracy, and the development of a knowledgeable society.

21. Teacher-Librarians And TheLeading Of Learning Learning to Read Reading to Learn

22. School Librarians And TheLeading Of Learning Learning to Read Principles of Learning and Teaching (PoLT) Reading to Learn

23. The Unfortunate Reality • Many types of research /project assignments using library or web-based sources contribute little or nothing to learning • Very little evidence of construction of deep knowledge and deep understanding • Rarely guided and sustained throughout the project • Rarely equip students with the range of critical thinking and problem solving competencies necessary to demonstrate deep knowledge and deep understanding

24. “Dinosaur” units are generally a disaster • Cutting and clipping of information: TRANSPORTATION rather than TRANSFORMATION of information • Make decisions based on limited prior knowledge: lack of building background before focus and formulation • Focus on product construction rather than knowledge construction • (Limberg, Sweden 2005)

25. Transportation of Text • Cutting and pasting: plagiarism • Amassing of facts without imposing any organizational or reflective structure • No local or global coherence to the facts • No interpretation of data / facts or development of positional stance • Little evidence of internalization of understanding

26. Transportation of Text Presentation Final version Rewriting Print-out Interaction (Limberg, Sweden 2005)

27. Transformation of Text • Collection of information and data pertinent to specific focus and responding to how knowledge is constructed in a particular discipline • Imposing of a personal organizational framework on informational inputs to create thematic substructures and to represent deep understanding • Identifying interrelationships of themes • Critically reflecting on themes to develop personal viewpoints, positions

28. Limberg’s Research ”Get the material from the Net, I read it. Write down some good sentences, make a few changes and read through it again. Making my own, sort of! Then I think - Replace here and there. Pick certain words and make my own text by adding new words. I recognise the text if I read it several times. Use those expressions that fit in.” (Kris)

29. Limberg’s Research ”I borrowed a book on sharks, picked out words from the book, from the text. I jotted these down in a little notebook as rough notes, then I rewrote it and then I painted a front page and then I put the whole thing into a boklet and the job was done.” (David)

30. Why do students transport text rather than transform text? • It is rewarded: copying and pasting by being undetected • Erroneous notion that more facts = deep knowledge and deep understanding • Assignment task promotes transport of text • Not engaged or motivated • Poor information competencies: particularly those involving analysis, manipulation and synthesis • Stress and competition • Poor time management and planning skills • Lack of confidence to manipulate information • Unwillingness to ask for help and when they do ask, told this is an independent project – you have to work it out for yourself • Low level of assignments – no critical thinking required • Assessment of product only • Absence of clear assessment criteria that emphasize deep knowledge and deep understanding

31. CASE STUDY Productive Pedagogy and the Leading of Learning

32. CASE STUDY Do teacher librarian-teacher partnerships contribute to quality learning outcomes, evidenced in: • Intellectual agency • Personal Agency • Social and Cultural Agency In other words, is the PoLT framework useful for understanding the benefits of learning partnerships of teacher-librarians and classroom teachers? How is a supportive learning environment created through the school library?

33. CONTEXT OF RESEARCH • Grade 9 cohort at Gill St Bernards’ school, New Jersey • Research involved 43 students (21 girls, 22 boys) undertaking a semester long course “Research Project” • Collaboration of 7 teachers and teacher-librarian to develop complex research skills, strategic and deep information seeking, higher-order information analysis and synthesis to represent new understandings as a result of the research • Instructional program built around the stages of Kuhlthau’s Information Search Process and a series of carefully planned interventions targeted to the knowledge construction process.

34. Information Search Process Tasks Initiation Selection Exploration Formulation Collection Presentation ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------→ Feelings uncertainly optimism confusion clarity sense of satisfaction or (affective) frustration direction/ disappointment doubt confidence Thoughts vague-------------------------------------→focused (cognitive) -----------------------------------------------→ increased interest Actions seeking relevant information----------------------------→seeking pertinent information (physical) exploring documenting

35. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS • Free generation written protocol administered at three stages in the information search process undertaken by the students (Initiation, Formulation/Focus and Presentation stage of research) • students’ knowledge of chosen topic • perceptions on levels of knowledge • information seeking and use experience • Structured search log kept by students which recorded all the sources used in constructing their research papers • Affective Domain / Next Task Log: feelings and task progression

36. CHANGES IN INTELLECTUAL QUALITY • Substance of knowledge: knowledge about topic • Amount of knowledge • Structure of knowledge: unstructured to high levels of organization and coherence • Estimate of topical knowledge: coded: Nothing, Not Much, Some, Quite a Bit, A Great Deal 5. Title of knowledge

37. MEASURING CONCEPTUAL CHANGE Graesser & Clark’s typology (1984) of statements based on the nature of relationships embedded in them. The statements were: Properties: statements describing characteristics Manner: statements describing processes, styles, actions Reason: statements of explanations of how and why Outcome: statements providing end result Causality: statements of some event causally leads to another Set Membership: statements about class inclusion Implication: statements showing predictive relations Value judgment: statements presenting personal position or viewpoint

38. INITIATION OF RESEARCH TASK • Initial representations were lists of unrelated concepts, and generalities, language associations • Statements were primarily property (is a), manner (describe how something happens) • Average number of statements was 4 (range from 0-11) • Random representation: unstructured, no clear sequence or organization; guess work “I think that…”, or at best chronological / historical • Some indication of inaccuracy / misrepresentation • Acknowledge that students knew very little • Motivated to learn: personal experiences, personal connections, intriguing facts about topic, curiosity, teacher/librarian recommendation

39. MIDPOINT OF RESEARCH TASK: FOCUS FORMULATION • Dramatic increase in number of propositional statements; range from 6-34 statements; average number 17 • Focus on Properties: describes characteristics; Manner: describe processes, styles, actions; Reason: explanations of how and why • Some evidence of organizational structure of ideas; some attempt to develop conceptual groupings • Cognitive intents: From initiation to formulation : getting a bigger picture (building background) getting a changed picture (correcting misinformation); getting a clearer picture • Key mechanism: writing of abstract and its feedback

40. CONCLUSION OF RESEARCH TASK: SUBMISSION OF RESEARCH PAPER • Clear and precise listing of properties, manner and increasing use of set membership; • Final representations also stronger on reasons, outcomes, causality, implications, predictive, reflective (increased complexity) • Average number of statements – 31 (range 8 – 63) • For 4 students, decrease in number of statements reflect higher levels of synthesis: coalescing lists into conceptual categories • Higher levels of structural centrality and conceptual coherence -ie. overall integrated and interlinked structure, yet subgroups of ideas • Cognitive intents: getting a clearer picture, getting a position in a picture (ie clarifying aspects in process of sorting and writing, developing a personal perspective) • Reflective, comparative, positional: personal ownership, and clearer focus on topics as evidenced by titles

41. PRODUCTIVE PEDAGOGY: INTELLECTUAL AGENCY • the collaborative program of instruction contributed to growth of intellectual AGENCY: • development of knowledge representations from simplistic, superficial and disjointed structures to structures that embedded explanations, causal, predictive and reflective statements = deep knowledge • organization of ideas into structured conceptual groupings = knowledge coherence and depth • use of specific terminology associated with the celebrations with descriptions and explanations surrounding these terms • choice of sources showed increasing complexity and depth: from general background to specific topicality • overall fluency and fluidity of the written representations indicate ability to substantially communicate in writing about their topical knowledge • Ability to deal with conflicting facts or viewpoints • evidence of constructing arguments and explanations in relation to conflicting aspects of topics

42. SUPPORTIVE CLASSROOM ENVIRONMENT • Rollercoaster of emotions: Very distinctive ebb and flow of emotions follows the six deadlines required to guide the students effectively through the research process • Initial feelings: varied from a state confidence to slight hesitation/uncertainty • Increase in optimism and confidence as they identify a general topic and begin to investigate sources for relevant information • Highest increase in negative emotions: where complex information processing and knowledge construction takes place – analysis, synthesis, dealing with conflict, structuring arguments, sequencing ideas – with “stress”, “pressure” and “brain strain” being reported.

43. SUPPORTIVE CLASSROOM ENVIRONMENT • roller coaster of emotions was recognized by the teaching team, and interventions implemented to support students • Individual meetings and feedback sessions encouraged students to talk about their feelings and learnings: opportunities for dialogue, feedback, encouragement • instructional interventions explicitly targeted to the skills requirements, especially knowledge construction • instructional intervention that modeled the intellectual scaffolds for successfully completing the task • stages and milestones approach • clear expectations of tasks to be submitted, criteria for assessment, dates, and feedback and support mechanisms • providing direction and regulation to keep students on task and engaged, as well as able to manage all of the complexities of the task

44. MAKING CONNECTIONS • Reasons for choice of topic: connections made to personal real life contexts • personal experiences (participating in a particular celebration) • personal connections (know someone who participates), knowledge of intriguing facts or aspects about topic • curiosity (typically based on having read or viewed something) • As students learned more about their topic, the specific new knowledge they acquired generated curiosity and motivation, encouraging them to dig deeper into their topic. • links to students’ background knowledge and connection to the world beyond the classroom

45. DID I LEARN ANYTHING? • Perceptions of knowledge gained: • Know “heaps” more • Know lots more, and surprised at breadth and depth of knowledge • Know lots more, but still could learn more • Know lots, but dissatisfaction about not knowing enough

46. PERSONAL AGENCY • “learned to follow a set plan and be organized” • “help me through papers in high school, college and life in general” • “getting genuine information is hard and tedious work” • “learned the basics of writing a more professional research paper” • “research approach is more complicated but creates a much better paper” • “my project is amazing. I have put a lot of hard work into it”

47. SOCIAL AND CULTURAL AGENCY • Topic “celebration of culture” was an invitation to cultural exploration 81% of students chose celebrations outside of USA • Able to draw out cultural comparisons • Able to reflect on changes in perception about different cultural celebrations • More accepting of different / strange cultural beliefs and systems which context of these more clearly understood

48. School Librarians And TheLeading Of Learning Learning to Read Guided Inquiry Reading to Learn

49. Schools Context • 10 New Jersey public schools chosen by call for nomination and selected by NJ Expert Panel • Experienced and expert school librarians • Diverse schools • 10 teacher-school librarian teams • 10 school librarians working on curriculum projects with 17 classroom teachers • 574 students in Grades 6 – 12 • Data collected over four weeks, Spring 2004 • Inquiry Training Institute Feb 24, 2004: overview and critique of units, use of data collection instruments, procedures and ethical guidelines

50. Inquiry Learning An inquiry approach to learning is one where students actively engage with diverse and often conflicting sources of information and ideas to discover new ones, to build new understandings, and to develop personal viewpoints and perspectives.