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Preservice Teachers’ Knowledgeof Information Literacy and TheirPerceptions of the School LibraryProgramElizabeth A. LEE a , Brenda Reed b & Corinne Laverty ba Faculty of Education , Queen's University , Kingston , Ontario ,Canadab Education Library , Queen's University , Kingston , Ontario ,CanadaPublished online: 09 Mar 2012.
To cite this article: Elizabeth A. LEE , Brenda Reed & Corinne Laverty (2012) Preservice Teachers’Knowledge of Information Literacy and Their Perceptions of the School Library Program, Behavioral &Social Sciences Librarian, 31:1, 3-22, DOI: 10.1080/01639269.2012.657513
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Behavioral & Social Sciences Librarian, 31:3–22, 2012Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 0163-9269 print / 1544-4546 onlineDOI: 10.1080/01639269.2012.657513
Preservice Teachers’ Knowledgeof Information Literacy and Their Perceptions
of the School Library Program
ELIZABETH A. LEEFaculty of Education, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada
BRENDA REED and CORINNE LAVERTYEducation Library, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada
Graduating preservice teachers were surveyed regarding theirknowledge of information literacy concepts, the pedagogy of in-formation literacy, and the role of the teacher librarian and schoollibrary programs. The preservice teachers felt poorly prepared toteach information literacy to pupils, had a limited array of infor-mation skills, and held a narrow view of the role of the schoollibrary. In response to these findings, the education librarians re-vised their instruction to the preservice teachers by moving the focusfrom information literacy skills for teachers to strategies for teachinginformation literacy skills to K–12 students.
KEYWORDS information literacy, preservice teachers, school li-brary programs, teacher education, teacher librarians
INTRODUCTION
In the 21st century, information literacy skills are at the center of success-ful learning. The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), theAmerican Association of School Libraries (AASL), the International Federationof Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), and UNESCO all articulate thisbelief in their various definitions of information literacy (ACRL 2000; AASL2007; Lau 2006; UNESCO, 2008). ACRL, for example, defines information
This research was supported in part by a Seed grant from the Faculty of EducationQueen’s University. We thank the preservice teachers who participated in the study. For helpwith data analysis, we thank Bo White.
Address correspondence to Elizabeth A. Lee, Faculty of Education, Queen’s University,Kingston, ON, Canada, K7L 3N6. E-mail: [email protected]
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literacy as an ability to “recognize when information is needed and [to] havethe ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information”(ACRL 2000, 2). Better performance by elementary and secondary schoolstudents on academic achievement tests has been linked to competence ininformation literacy (Lance 2002). To equip students with these desirablecompetencies, teachers and librarians need to move beyond a research skillsinstructional approach to consciously and thoughtfully incorporating infor-mation literacy skills into all instruction. As noted by the ACRL in 2000,“Achieving competency in information literacy requires an understandingthat this cluster of abilities is not extraneous to the curriculum but is woveninto the curriculum content, structure, and sequence” (ACRL 2000, 5).
Curriculum documents for elementary and secondary schools at thestate, provincial, and national levels include standards for each disciplinethat echo the competencies described as informational literacy in the libraryfield. Standards articulated by national teacher associations also reflect anincreasing recognition that the ability to navigate and critically evaluate in-formation is a piece of the definition of literacy in the 21st century. For exam-ple, the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and the InternationalReading Association (IRA) now include the ability to “use a variety of tech-nological and informational resources to gather and synthesize informationand to create and communicate knowledge” as a key component of literacy(NCTE and IRA 1996, 3). The Ontario School Library Association (OSLA)has—through its documents Information Studies: Kindergarten to Grade 12(1999) and the newly released Together for Learning: School Libraries andthe Emergence of the Learning Commons (2010)—provided Ontario educa-tors with access to an information literacy curriculum that aligns with theOntario curricula. The 1999 document describes information literacy as “thekey to helping students use learning throughout their lives as a way to solveproblems, act ethically, plan for the future and prepare for change” (OSLA1999, 4). In the new Together for Learning document, “learners move beyondmerely retrieving factual information to constructing personal meaning andbuilding individual and collective knowledge” (OSLA 2010, 14). It describesa physical and virtual space called the Learning Commons where “learnersread, research, experiment, discover, perform and create” (OSLA 2010, 14).All of these statements point to the need for a highly information literateteaching profession.
In-Service Teachers’ Knowledge of Information Literacy
Information literacy is still a problematic concept for many classroom teach-ers. Whelan surveyed media specialists (teacher librarians) at the middle andhigh school level and 68 percent of them reported barriers to teaching in-formation literacy. These barriers included a lack of support from teachers
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and low levels of understanding about the teacher’s role in information lit-eracy instruction (Whelan 2003, 50–53). Slyfield’s 2001 survey of schools inNew Zealand revealed that in 90 percent of secondary schools, less than halfthe teachers had taken some form of professional development relating toinformation literacy (Slyfield 2001).
School Library Program and Student Achievement
A school library program with a trained teacher librarian can compensateto a degree for the lack of teacher knowledge about information literacyconcepts and strategies identified in the research. When Lance and his col-leagues examined four library systems, they found that the two factors thatconsistently increased student academic achievement were teacher librarianscollaboratively planning and teaching with teachers, and teacher librariansdirectly teaching information literacy concepts to students (Lance 2003). Theperformance of high school students on reading tests was highest in schoolsin which teacher librarians planned instructional units with teachers. At themiddle school level there were two factors that led to higher achievementon reading tests: the teacher librarians’ selection of material for instructionalunits, and the teaching of information literacy skills to students. Consultationwith a teacher librarian broadens the resources that a teacher draws uponin planning instruction and provides an opportunity to ensure informationliteracy is an integral part of the planned instruction. Other researchers havefound that students in schools with libraries that are well staffed, that havehigh quality resources, and that are appropriately funded score from 10 per-cent to 25 percent higher on standardized tests than students in schools withpoorly resourced libraries. The results of these studies also reveal that stu-dents in appropriately staffed school libraries identify the school library asan important part of their learning experience.
Over the past 25 years teacher librarians have sought to expand theirrole as information specialists to include more involvement in teaching asa collaborative instructional partner with teachers (Cooper and Bray 2011,48). There is evidence that teachers are unaware of this shift in the role ofthe teacher librarian. In 1991, for example, Haycock stated that teachers andadministrators had little knowledge of the role of the library. Nine years laterHurray (2000) made the same point. Research has established that schools inwhich the teachers and teacher librarians collaborate to plan curriculum andsystematically teach information literacy skills have students who performbetter on a number of measures of learning.
Preservice Teachers’ Knowledge of Information Literacy
A few studies have examined the inclusion of information literacy in teachereducation programs. In a study of Canadian teacher education programs,
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Asselin and Doiron (2003) found minimal inclusion of information literacypedagogy or information about school libraries in the programs. These re-sults were similar to Carr’s 1998 review of teacher education programs in theUnited States. Preservice teachers are not familiar with the skills and contentof information literacy (Asselin 2000). Durbin (2007) found that elemen-tary school teachers who had received information about the school libraryprogram and spent time in a school library during their teacher educationprogram were more likely to work collaboratively with a teacher librarianas a classroom teacher. In a case study of five novice teachers in BritishColumbia, Miller (2005) found that none had received any information aboutschool libraries in their teacher education programs.
As school library research shows, pupils benefit most when teachers andteacher librarians collaborate. In their teacher education program, preserviceteachers would benefit from learning experiences that model this collabo-rative planning process that research has demonstrated enhances studentlearning in schools (Haycock 2003; Lance 2001; Lonsdale 2003). However, inmost teacher education programs information literacy instruction takes theform of short “one-shot” voluntary sessions provided by the library (Asselinand Doiron 2003). An exception to this in Canada was the integration ofinformation literacy into the elementary teacher education program at theUniversity of British Columbia (Asselin, 2000; Asselin and Lee 2002), wherestudents participated in an integrated unit over six weeks. Teacher librari-ans from the field assisted university librarians and instructors in workingwith students to incorporate information literacy throughout the lessons ina student-designed unit. In most other programs, stand-alone sessions areprovided by the library and typically focus on introducing the preserviceteachers to the library system of their particular institution, as well as bestpractices for research in education and resources for subject area teaching,such as multimedia DVDs, kits, and fiction and nonfiction.
K-12 Preservice Teachers’ Information Literacy Practice
There has been little research on preservice teachers’ information literacyskills and practices as a group. A 2004 study of preservice teachers (Colaric,Fine, and Hofmann 2004) found that 36 percent of the preservice teachersdid not have sufficient knowledge to use search engines effectively. There isa considerable body of research on university undergraduates’ informationliteracy knowledge and skills (Foster 2000; McClure and Clink 2009; Weiler2004). This body of research provides evidence that many undergraduate stu-dents have a low level of competency in locating information so that eventhe ability to formulate search statements appropriate for the source theyare searching is poor. University students frequently lack an understandingof how information is linked and they are not proficient at evaluating the
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reliability of information sources. Foster et al. reported that students reliedsolely on the most popular search engines and frequently selected advocacyweb sites and commercial sites as sources of information for research papers.The primary criterion for selection of a source was ease of use and conve-nience. Lastly, the majority of undergraduates overestimated their ability andunderstanding of information literacy.
In a previous study (2008) we examined preservice teachers’ searchbehavior in the last two weeks of a bachelor of education program througha survey and six online-searching behavior case studies. Using a rating scaleconstructed for that study, we determined preservice teachers to be onlymoderately successful at locating information relevant to their search task,although they were confident that they were experts at searching. We askedthe preservice teachers to use Google, as the focus of the research was ontheir ability to create and later modify search statements and on the choiceof web sites they considered to be reliable and appropriate sources for theirtopic. The preservice teachers frequently selected sites on the basis of thesite offering a limited amount of text, and they frequently judged the valueof the site as an information resource on the basis of it being personal—that is, written by a teacher—and not on the information being supportedby research. The criteria of speed and ease of locating somewhat relatedinformation, not the quality of the information, were given higher value bythe preservice teachers.
Research Questions
The purpose of the research was to learn how well prepared our graduat-ing preservice teachers were for the information literacy demands that theywould face as teachers. We investigated the following research questions:What was the preservice teachers’ understanding of information literacy andwhat were their practices? To what degree did the teacher education pro-gram prepare the preservice teachers to effectively teach information literacyto their future students? What was the preservice teachers’ understanding ofthe role of the school library, and for what purposes do preservice teachersuse school libraries on their practicum? And finally, what was the graduatingpreservice teachers’ understanding of the role of a teacher librarian?
METHOD
Participants
In total, 524 preservice teachers participated in the survey, out of a possibletotal of 634 enrolled in the bachelor of education program. These preserviceteachers were candidates in a 1-year bachelor of education program that
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leads to accreditation to teach in K–12 classrooms, depending on the programfocus of the candidates—elementary or secondary education. The candidatesall had an undergraduate degree before entering the bachelor of educationprogram. The survey was administered at the end of the academic year duringthe final week of classes. Completed demographic data were available for 522participants. Of these participants, 88 percent had only one undergraduatedegree, 5 percent had multiple undergraduate degrees, and 7 percent alsohad a graduate degree. Slightly more than half (52 percent) of the participantswere enrolled in the elementary teacher education program. The majority ofthe preservice teachers in the elementary program (56 percent) were female.In the secondary program 46 percent of the participants were female.
Materials and Procedure
A paper-and-pencil survey of 26 questions was distributed in cross-cohortclasses during the last week of the B.Ed. program. The survey combinedLikert scale and yes/no response questions, checklist questions, and open-ended questions. Questions addressed aspects of the teacher education pro-gram related to the preservice teachers’ understanding of information literacyand their use of information literacy skills, the degree to which the programhad equipped them with the pedagogical knowledge and skills to teach in-formation literacy to their future students, and their knowledge of the roleof teacher librarians and school library programs.
A comparison of the response rate to the various questions revealed thatthe open-ended questions were less likely to be answered. However, therewas considerable variation in the response rate of the open-ended questions,suggesting that a low response rate to particular open-ended questions maybe due to a lack of information on that topic rather than to an unwillingnessto answer questions that required a written response.
RESULTS
Understanding of Information Literacy
The first open-ended question, “What is your understanding of the phraseinformation literacy?,” was answered by 70 percent of the participants. Theresponses to this question were analyzed qualitatively by the classification ofeach response into one of nine response categories that emerged from thedata. Four of these categories referred to terms that are typically associatedwith a definition of information literacy: variations on how to access, process,evaluate, and transfer information. For example, the response “when you cananalyze and synthesize information” was categorized as process. These fourcategories are the key components of a commonly articulated definition of
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information literacy (AASL 2007; ACRL 2000; IFLA 2009), so it made senseto use these terms as categories. The other five categories that were createdfrom the responses covered more general aspects of information literacy,including library and education research skills and general computer useskills. A basic language and literacy definition was also identified to cover,for example, responses like “it’s being able to read and understand at acertain level,” and finally, a category of “Other” responses was used to classvery general responses such as “the ability to be resourceful.” Some of thepreservice teachers provided several of the terms commonly associated withinformation literacy (access, process, evaluate, transfer) for their definitionof information literacy: 61 percent responded with at least one term, 31percent responded with two terms, 6.8 percent included three terms, and 1.4percent included all four terms. Of this set of respondents who used a termfrom the recognized definition of information literacy, one-third also includedadditional responses that matched the Internet and computer category. Otheradditional responses matched the “Other” category; for example, the phrase“Another form of teaching students” was classified as “Other.”
Still within the responses that used terms officially associated with infor-mation literacy, 35 percent of these responses were categorized as referringto accessing information, 22 percent included a term that was categorized asthe processing of information, 6 percent of the responses referred to eval-uating information, and 3 percent were considered to be referring to thetransferring of information. As seen in Figure 1, a sizable number of the re-sponses referred to other aspects of a library program, and the most frequentat 12 percent used a term categorized as language and literacy.
Pedagogy for the Teaching of Information Literacy
Participants were asked four questions that addressed how well they thoughtthe B. Ed. program had prepared them to teach information literacy to theirfuture students. On a 5-point Likert scale they were asked to indicate howwell the B.Ed. program prepared then to teach students how to: (1) findinformation, (2) evaluate and use information, (3) search the Web and eval-uate websites, and (4) use library resources in their projects. The questionswere intended to discover how confident the teacher candidates were thatthey were now ready to teach information literacy skills.
Paired-sample t-test analysis of these four questions revealed that ques-tions 1, 2, and 3 differed significantly from question 4 but did not differ fromeach other. The majority of the preservice teachers responded on the lowerend of the scale, indicating that they felt only somewhat prepared (39 per-cent) or poorly prepared or not prepared (38 percent) to teach informationliteracy skills to their future students. Only 23 percent of the respondentsindicated that they felt that the B.Ed. program had well prepared or fairly
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FIGURE 1 Preservice teachers’ understanding of information literacy.
well prepared them to teach how to find, use, and evaluate information andhow to search the Web and evaluate websites (see Figure 2). In response tothe fourth question, which asked how well they were prepared by the B.Ed.program to teach students how to use library resources, 50 percent indicatedthat they were poorly prepared or not prepared, while 32 percent felt some-what prepared and 18 percent felt fairly well prepared or well prepared toteach library skills to future students.
Inclusion of Information Literacy in the B. Ed. Program
The majority of the preservice teachers (69 percent) reported that informationliteracy had not been a topic in their curriculum courses. They were alsoasked whether during the year in any of their classes they ever had planned
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FIGURE 2 Preservice teachers’ self-evaluation of preparation to teach information literacyand library skills.
a lesson for students that focused on how to search for information; only 36percent reported that they had.
School Libraries
As the preservice teachers were in the last week of the program when theycompleted the survey, they had by then completed 12 weeks in schools onthree separate practica. Several survey questions addressed their knowledgeof and use of the school library when they were in the schools. The majorityof respondents (93 percent) stated that all of the schools they encounteredhad a school library; the remainder of respondents reported that some ofthe schools had a library (6 percent), and 1 percent stated that none ofthe schools had a library. The majority of the respondents (78 percent)reported that they had used the school library with at least one of theirclasses while on practicum. On average, 72 percent of the preservice teacherswho were in elementary schools reported that there was a classroom libraryin the classrooms in which they taught. This question was not asked ofpreservice teachers who worked in secondary schools, as there is variationacross subject disciplines as to the practice of classroom libraries at thesecondary level.
Use of the School Library
If they reported using the school library on practicum, participants were thenasked to indicate, from a list of nine possible uses, all of the reasons thatthey had used the library. Consequently, multiple responses by individual
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FIGURE 3 Purposes for using school library while on practica.
students were possible for this question. More than half of the respondentsreported using the library as a place to select books (37 percent) or to accessequipment (21 percent), with only 10 percent indicating that the library hadbeen used as a place for teaching specific research or information skills andstrategies (see Figure 3).
Understanding of the Teacher Librarian’s Role
The majority of the preservice teachers (80 percent) reported that they hadnot learned about the role of the teacher librarian in any B. Ed. course. Inaddition, two-thirds of the preservice teachers (74 percent) reported that theyhad not had the opportunity to work with a teacher librarian on a practicum.
The preservice teachers who had had the opportunity to work with ateacher librarian (22 percent) were asked the purpose(s) that they had hadin working with a teacher librarian. These qualitative responses were catego-rized into six categories. The most common response (31 percent) referredto activities that were categorized as contact with the teacher librarian asa source of resources: for example, “To identify new items that the libraryhas collected” or “Find video sets.” The second most frequent response (24
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FIGURE 4 Purposes indicated for working with teacher librarian on practica.
percent) referred to activities related to some form of student research: forexample, “pulling resources for students” or “teaching a lesson on citing ref-erences.” Only 21 percent referred to experiences that were categorized asreferring to the teacher librarian in a teaching role; however, this teachingrole was teaching in the broadest sense: for example, “ran reading buddiesgroups” or “helped ESL students with assignments.” Moreover, 11 percentof the preservice teachers referred to activities that were extraneous to thelibrary: for example, literacy test organization” or “Help photocopy” (seeFigure 4).
Preservice teachers in the B.Ed. program where this research was donehave an alternative practicum of three weeks that differs from regular schoolclassroom placements. They have worked in a variety of settings, includingpublishing houses, sports camps, international schools, and hospitals. Thepreservice teachers were asked, “If it had been available would you havechosen an alternative practicum placement in a school library?” A smallpercentage (18 percent) answered yes.
Preservice teachers’ understanding of the teacher librarian’s role as acurriculum expert was elicited through a qualitative question that asked howa teacher librarian could help them implement the Ontario curriculum. Asthis was a qualitative question, participants could provide multiple answers.The majority (59 percent) stated that the teacher librarian could provide themwith resources, for example, “Help find material for classes” (see Figure 5).
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FIGURE 5 Perceptions of how teacher librarian can assist preservice teachers in implement-ing curriculum.
Seventeen percent of respondents referred to an aspect of teachingresearch skills to students, such as “Introduce to research assignments, teamteach how to properly cite works/books used for project,” and 6 percentindicted that the teacher librarian had a role in teaching the curriculum.
Preservice Teachers’ Information Preferences
In response to a question about their preferred formats for locating informa-tion, participants could check off multiple sources, and the majority chosemultiple categories. The preservice teachers indicated a preference for Webresources overall, both on campus and at home. When asked what resourcesthey used to complete assignments during the year, the majority of respon-dents indicated that they relied upon Google searches first, followed byonline journals. Consulting a librarian received the lowest ranking and wasselected by the fewest respondents (see Table 1).
An open-ended question asked the preservice teachers to list the skillsthat they had used to carry out research during the B.Ed. program. Multipleresponses were possible. The majority of the preservice teachers (85 per-cent) answered this question, and on average each one provided 2.2 items.
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TABLE 1 Preservice Teachers’ Information Sources
From education library From home
Google 85% Google 96%Websites 88% Websites 95%QCAT for books 87% Online journals 72%Online journals 81% Online lesson plans and activities 67%Lesson plans and activities 63% QCAT for books 67%Audio visual materials 57% Online indexes for print journals 44%Print journals 53% Online audio visual materials 28%Reference librarian 52% Reference librarian 13%
Responses were grouped into categories and analyzed as a proportion of thetotal. More than 40 percent of the preservice teachers listed an ability thatreferred to very general information literacy skills (21 percent)—for exam-ple, “The ability to navigate through library catalogues and search enginesto locate desired material”—or to general research skills (20 percent), suchas “use of planning.” The other categories referred to Internet skills (18 per-cent) computer skills (13 percent), and online database skills (13 percent).Personal traits, such as “independence” and “patience,” were listed by 11percent. Specific information literacy skills, such as evaluation of informa-tion sources, were provided by 5 percent of the students.
Opportunity to Develop Their Information Literacy Skills
Slightly more than half of the respondents (52 percent) stated that they hadnot had the opportunity to develop or improve their research skills while inthe B.Ed. program. They were also asked whether they had acquired newresearch skills during the B.Ed. program that would enable them to continuetheir professional development as a teacher. The majority stated that theyhad not acquired new skills (65 percent).
An open-ended question asked the preservice teachers to state whatadditional skills they would have liked to have the opportunity to learn inthe B. Ed. program. The response to this question was lower, as it was thelast question on the survey, with only 197 out of a possible 524 responses,a response rate of 38 percent. Multiple responses were possible. Of thosewho responded, the most frequent category (25 percent) referred to a varietyof research skills, for example, “how to organize a search for information,”“how the catalogue system works,” or “how to find primary sources likemaps, letters, poems.” Given that the earlier questions may have alertedrespondents to their limited understanding of information literacy, it is notsurprising that a desire to know more in this area surfaced in responses tothis final question. The second highest category at 19 percent referred to
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FIGURE 6 Additional skill development desired by preservice teachers.
teaching skills, such as “how to level books” and “how to create and userubrics” (Figure 6).
DISCUSSION
Preservice teachers graduating from this B.Ed. program have a profile similarto that of practicing teachers in terms of both information literacy knowledgeand perceptions of the teacher librarians’ role and the library. Preserviceteachers had not had the opportunity to learn how to teach their studentsthe information literacy concepts and skills described in curriculum andlibrary documents.
Overwhelmingly, 77 percent of the preservice teachers surveyed feltinadequately prepared to incorporate information literacy into their teachingand to teach students to use the library effectively. It is not surprising thatthey feel ill prepared when the majority reported that neither informationliteracy concepts nor skills were featured in their courses or assignments.
They have a traditional view of the function of the school library asa source of books and equipment. Their understanding of the role of theteacher librarian is narrow, as a provider of resources. This limited perspec-tive is understandable, given their lack of opportunity to work with teacherlibrarians while on practica in the schools. This reflects the low level of col-laboration between teachers and teacher librarians found in some schools
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or, as is the case in 55 percent of Ontario elementary schools, the absenceof a teacher librarian (People for Education 2009).
In particular, the teacher education program did not integrate informa-tion literacy within the program or inform the preservice teachers of howschool libraries and teacher librarians can contribute to student learning.Preservice teachers cannot be faulted for their lack of preparation when theyhave not had the learning opportunities that would begin to equip them withthis knowledge.
Reaching the lofty goals for students in the 21st century cited earlier willbe difficult when newly graduated teachers resemble the current in-serviceteaching body in their perceptions and knowledge of information literacyand school libraries. Compounding the problem of their lack of preparationto teach information literacy skills to students of the 21st century is theirreliance upon Web resources for teaching. A teaching profession unfamiliarwith information literacy concepts and skills was perhaps less problematicwhen students used textbooks that underwent an editorial review for theaccuracy of the content and the reading level of the text. The move to elec-tronic resources and the overwhelming preference of preservice teachers forGoogle, combined with their inadequate information literacy skills, suggeststhat in many cases the content that will be presented to students will bedisjointed, inaccurate, and difficult to read. This will make learning all themore difficult for students.
The B.Ed. program in which this study took place has embraced theintegration of technology into courses; however, as reflected in the preserviceteachers’ responses, it has not included the information literacy concepts andskills that are also needed if technology is to be used effectively for learning.When more than half of the preservice teachers state they did not learn newresearch skills in the program and then list low-level skills such as, “howto use the catalogue” as ones they would like to have learned, there is asignificant problem not only for their continuing learning as professionalsbut also for the continuing learning of their future students.
Library’s Response
In response to the results of this study, the librarians undertook a revisionand reorientation of the library’s instructional program for preservice teach-ers. Library instruction was reframed from focusing upon informing andimproving the preservice teachers’ own information literacy strategies andskills, to instruction oriented around how to incorporate and teach informa-tion literacy to their future students. This approach was designed to addresspreservice teachers’ feedback on the survey concerning topics that they hadindicated they would like to learn more about. Almost half had identifiedwhat we would categorize as “information literacy” skills, such as how to
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evaluate resources, use databases, teach the research process, and search theWeb, as skills they needed to pursue. Laverty, Reed, and Lee (2008) foundthat preservice teachers believe they are knowledgeable and skilled users oftechnology and information. It may have been this level of overconfidencethat had contributed to the previous low participation rate in information lit-eracy workshops in the library. We believed that they would be more opento acquiring greater skills if this were seen as contributing to their teachingrepertoire.
In response to the survey results, we created the INSPIRED TeachingSeries (INnovative Student Participation in Research and EDucation). Thisfive-part series offered four sessions on each of these topics over two months(Table 2).
In the first year of the library’s revamped instructional program, 60classes were given in this series to 1469 students, for a total of 52 teach-ing hours on the part of two librarians. Apart from these drop-in classes,the librarians began to increase the additional sessions they gave within theindividual subject curriculum classes at the primary-junior and intermediate-senior levels. Today, this latter format is preferred because it is course inte-grated, focuses on resources and curriculum content specific to subject ar-eas, and provides an opportunity to model librarian-instructor collaboration.Partners in Learning: Teachers &Teacher-Librarians is a guide prepared forpreservice teachers (Laverty 2006) that outlines how teachers can work withteacher librarians to implement the many inquiry objectives in the Ontariocurriculum.
The education librarians also began an outreach program with localteacher librarians to better understand what preservice teachers learn aboutschool libraries and librarians during their practica. Meetings with librariansfrom local school boards began with this study and continue today as ameans to exchange new approaches to inquiry learning and informationliteracy development with the field. Through the collaboration of universitylibrarians and teacher librarians, orientation activities were developed forpreservice teachers to collaborate on professional development initiativesand to identify new methods for bringing the role of school libraries andlibrarians to the attention of preservice and practicing teachers. A website wasestablished to host these ideas (Laverty 2011), with two further outcomes.
Some of the teacher librarians in the local community schools expressedan interest in working with preservice teachers, and as a result the universityeducation librarians developed an alternative practicum in libraries wherepreservice teachers could work with a teacher librarian in an optional teach-ing placement. Explore an Alternative Practicum @ Your Library (Laverty2006) outlines this option and encourages preservice teachers and teacherlibrarians to consider working together. Subsequently, a number of preser-vice teachers have carried out their three-week alternative practicum in aschool library or in the Faculty of Education Library. A second outcome of
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TABLE 2 INSPIRED Teaching Series
Session Learning objectives
Best Classroom Resources:Display and discussion of
resources/computer demo
� Meet your librarians and learn about what they do inschool libraries and your professional library.
� Find fiction, nonfiction, textbooks, teacher guides,lesson plans.
� Find multimedia: videos, DVDs, kits, posters,websites.
� Find Ontario Ministry of Education elementarycurriculum units and secondary level course profiles.
� Find popular teacher-friendly magazines withclassroom ideas.
Assignments Already?:Hands-on in e-classroom
� Consider the level of your own information literacyskills and how this will impact your future students.
� Use two key education journal indexes and identifythe special characteristics of each database.
� Search effectively by keyword on current educationissues to find journal articles that support the actionresearch project.
Be a Subject Expert:Display and discussion of
resources/computer demo
� Learn about school librarians and their role inteaching.
� Find key print/online teaching resources in yoursubject area.
� Link specific curriculum units to information literacyobjectives within the Information Studies K–12 guidefor Ontario classrooms.
� Review tools (journals and associations) that featureteaching strategies, curriculum ideas, and professionaldevelopment for your area of subject specialization.
When YOU Teach Research:PowerPoint/computer demo
� Create research questions that require your studentsto develop thoughtful answers rather than find textthey can copy.
� Learn about inquiry-based learning.� Identify steps in a research process.
Out-Google Your Students:PowerPoint/computer demo
� Learn how research strategies are changing in K–12schools and the role of the teacher librarian inkeeping current with new information tools andsearch strategies.
� Discuss how to teach Web-search strategy to yourstudents.
� Test Google search tips that your students won’tknow.
� Review lesson ideas for teaching the criticalevaluation of websites.
the present study was a new study of a grade nine inquiry-based learn-ing unit at a local secondary school. Video footage was gathered to createan introduction for preservice teachers to inquiry learning and informationliteracy. (The final version of this video, The Mystery of Student Inquiry,is available to view at http://library.queensu.ca/webedu/tl/index.htm.) Thisvideo offers a real-life snapshot of students as they undertake project work
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20 E. A. Lee et al.
in the school library. This video documentation has helped us to achieve ourgoal of reorienting the library’s programs by moving to a teaching approachthat integrates information literacy into the content of preservice classes.We continue to seek ways to address the information literacy needs of ourpreservice teachers as they were identified by this study.
In conclusion, we argue that while students from kindergarten to grade12 are being expected to use increasingly complex concepts and apply higherlevel skills of information literacy at younger ages, newly graduated teachersentering the field are not being adequately equipped to teach these skillsand concepts to their students. This study highlighted the gap that existsbetween the desired learning environment in schools of the 21st centuryand the preparation of the teachers who will staff these schools.
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