We have used a form of FOSIL called CWICER in Guernsey for the last few years.  This has led to some really encouraging collaborative sessions where the teacher has brought the knowledge of the subject and the understanding of their students and the librarian has brought the information literacy skills to guide the enquiry. This framework has provided us with the ability to talk to teachers about how school librarians can work alongside them in a way that they understand.

Terminology has been a huge barrier to teacher and librarian collaboration, words like pedagogy and information literacy are not something that both use so remembering to explain specialist words will be an important part of the conversation.  Although I do think that adding another word like ‘acquiry’ is probably an unnecessary complication at this point.

Chris I was really excited to read your description of teacher knowledge and how it is relates to teaching. There seems to be a real spit in the conversation on twitter about what is more important and you are either on the teach knowledge camp or the teach skills camp. What is exciting about our conversation is that we are bringing it all together. I will read your link with interest!

I tried to make some sense of this very conversation on my own blog found here. If you have not come across Tara Brabazon she is a fascinating character but manages to explain herself very well.

Absolutely, Chris, it can’t be one or the other it has to be both!

I think finding knowledge underpinning librarianship, in general, is easier to find than for school librarians.

We have our professional body called CILIP where best practice and knowledge are shared. There is a lot of research about university libraries which is not surprising as that is where all the researchers are but it is so much more difficult to find research about professional knowledge and school libraries. I think this is because the profession has been severely hit over the last decade and we now have a real cross-section of staff in our school libraries from professionally qualified to professional with CILIP qualifications to those who have no library qualifications at all. They are all doing their best but it is not the same as having a profession like teaching. As much as I love my profession this is just the way that it is at the moment. Hopefully, FOSIL will help bring some change to this. I have not come across any papers regarding professional learning for school librarians but saying that I have not looked recently.

There is a lot of talk on Twitter (one of my favourite places for learning) at the moment about professional learning for school librarians so hopefully, there will be more out there soon. I wrote a blog post (I do a lot of that too…) about CPD for school librarians and I had some interesting comments via Facebook. Many share best practice with public library staff but many work on their own in a school and it can be very isolating.

Hopefully, we will get some on here to share what they understand about professional learning.

To further clarify what I mean by the lack of a body of professional knowledge underpinning school librarianship in this country, please see below for the letter that Jenny Toerien wrote to Information Professional, the magazine of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, which was published on 28 June 2018 and is reprinted here with permission.

Your view: Why isn’t it possible to study school librarianship?

I would like to comment on the contrast and connection between two articles in the latest fascinating and informative edition of Information Professional (April-May 2018), particularly in the light of the new Great School Libraries campaign.

Elizabeth Hutchinson, backed up by her outstanding work with Guernsey Schools’ Library Service, wrote a passionate portrayal of school librarians as dynamic, innovative, professional experts who have a vital contribution to make in an age where even teachers can often need help with basic information literacy skills (Why do teachers need school librarians?), while Rob Mackinlay (Future LIS: debating the challenges) reported on the views of 10 leading UK institutions offering CILIP accredited Library and Information Science courses.

Professional equals

In arguing for greater collaboration between teachers and library staff, Elizabeth describes school library staff as highly-qualified professionals who bring information literacy expertise to the conversation and, in my view, should be regarded as co-educators and educational partners with teaching staff.

For me this contrasted starkly with a question asked in the article “Future LIS: debating the challenges” as to “whether the profession and its learning providers are too focused on a postgraduate-heavy profession.” There was a range of different views as to whether or not it would be desirable to “[dilute] the profession’s postgraduate density”, but for me the article highlighted and reminded me of a particular problem for school librarians. If we are asking teachers, 98.5 per cent of whom are qualified to degree level or higher (UK Department for Education, School Workforce in England: November 2016, https://bit.ly/2rZjFqJ), to treat us as professional equals, recognise our area of expertise and collaborate with us in the pursuit of educational excellence, then we need to be at least as qualified as they are.

The problem is that it is not actually possible to study school librarianship in this country, even as an optional module. Of the 16 CILIP-accredited institutions, offering almost 40 postgraduate courses between them, the only one that offers even one module (in English) on school librarianship (titled “Teacher Librarianship”) is the University of Hong Kong and (as far as I can tell) this qualification is not available by distance. The situation in undergraduate qualifications is at least as bad.

Learning on the job

My husband and I both entered school librarianship from within teaching and are both qualified teachers as well as qualified librarians. While I am certainly not suggesting that dual qualification should be essential for school librarians (although I note that in countries where school librarianship is particularly strong, such as Australia and the United States, it is the norm) it seems inconceivable to me that school librarians should have to learn everything they need to know about schools and education “on the job”, simply because they are not offered any opportunities to learn whilst training. In fact, my husband and I both found that attempting to ground our postgraduate assignments in our school settings was actually a disadvantage because that setting was so poorly understood in library schools.

Shaping the future

School libraries are vitally important both for the nation and the profession, because school may be the only occasion in some people’s lives when they will encounter a library/librarian, particularly if they do not go on to tertiary education. All information sectors are important, but school libraries at their best should be playing a vital role in shaping the future of every child in the country – and therefore every future member of society.

All children deserve great libraries, and all school libraries deserve great librarians (of whom there are many, despite the odds) – why aren’t our library schools interested in training them?

Find out more about the CILIP, CILIP SLG and SLA #GreatSchoolLibraries campaign and add your support and see the news story.

I think we all feel ‘imposter syndrome’ at times – I know I do. However, as we often tell the students, feeling like we are out of our comfort zones (and sometimes out of our depth) is actually a really good sign that we are stretching ourselves. If it feels too easy, it probably is! This year I have been privileged to work on a year-long collaboration with Joe Sanders, one of our lead practitioners, which has stretched both of us to achieve more than we ever could have done alone. Joe and I have recently written about this collaboration on Oakham School’s Teaching and Learning Blog and because it is so relevant to this discussion I have reproduced the article in full below, with Joe’s permission:

Broccoli

Natural detoxification, improved digestion, keeping you regular. These are the main benefits of eating broccoli. Nothing to do with actually liking it. Perhaps they’ve never properly tried it, gulping it down and moving onto the roast potatoes as quickly as possible, failing to appreciate its versatility, vibrancy and taste. Children and adults around the world try to hide their little trees under the half-chewed Yorkshire pudding or tough bit of beef left at the side of their plate. Though, in the end, all that matters is that they eat their broccoli, we can’t help feeling they are missing out.

A Form 6 Politics student recently provided us with our own broccoli moment, when they stated, greeted with one of our FOSIL essay wraps in Politics, “I don’t like it, but it works”. The ever-enthusiastic refrain of students when we spend a bit of time creating resources for them. But we didn’t mind (well, we did a bit). Their motive for this comment, far from malevolent, was to pay us a compliment on our resource design. And though it missed the fact that the FOSIL wraps are aesthetically stunning, it got to the heart of their real purpose; to provide a clear structure for constructing understanding in a subject by using the FOSIL cycle.

We knew that our broccoli looked and tasted great, but from its inception, its main job was to get results. The academic demands of the three assessment objectives in A-level Politics were taking their toll on some students, who were suffering from issues such as surface-level application of evidence and a lack of analysis. From a subject-specialist point of view, something needed to be done to provide a structure that would illicit higher order thinking across each assessment objective. Added to this was a curiosity on both sides over how we could intertwine the specific needs of an exam specification with the FOSIL cycle which, in many people’s opinion, was only useful for inquiry.

What we discovered, however, was that the metacognition required for A-level examination success was actually crying out for a framework such as FOSIL. Each stage of FOSIL is closely linked to the thought process students should be going through as they prepare and plan for essay-writing. We are always tweaking aspects of our FOSIL wraps to fit the needs of the students (a little more Connect and Wonder, a little less Investigate in this case), but we know that what we have produced offers a simple, well-signposted and easily-revisable framework to prepare for assessment. The collaboration between a FOSIL specialist and a subject specialist is what made this possible.

One premise of the FOSIL cycle is that it becomes, after early scaffolding and modelling, second nature to the students and the explicit resource can drop away. If we have to firmly nudge students into making good use of the amazing resources at their disposal to begin with, by, for example, assessing not only the essay, but the entire FOSIL cycle of the wrap, then so be it. To produce effective metacognition amongst students, we have to teach them how to do it in the first place. Over time, this becomes self-regulated learning and students begin to the follow the FOSIL cycle without thinking about it explicitly. Much like broccoli’s roles in building strong, healthy bones, heart and immune system and in preventing cancer, internalising FOSIL helps to build strong, healthy thinking habits and defences against panic under pressure. A much younger student, prone to panic when asked to give presentations, observed that “when I use FOSIL I am confident that I know what I am talking about”. Confidence plays a huge role in exam success too.

But what about staff? Can we just ignore the positive effects of collaboration between FOSIL experts and subject specialists, like we do with our broccoli? For us, what began as curiosity and a reaction to academic concerns, has now morphed into a longer-term collaboration into more broccoli-based resources, with prep investigation sheets and an entire pressure group inquiry project, culminating in debates and exhibitions of students’ own creations. This, of course, sounds like a big job, a burden on your time. I can guarantee, it is the opposite. Through a little investment of time, specialism and experimentation, teachers are left with quality resources that are ready to use year-in, year-out. For librarians, the insight into preparing students for a subject exam that only a subject specialist can provide gives us important tools that we can use to support both teachers and students in other subjects who need similar skills. Librarians have a vital role as knowledge brokers, helping different elements of the school community to connect and share their expertise – and this only happens through collaboration and relationship. Most importantly, as a result of this collaboration we both have a deeper understanding of the role of FOSIL as a tool for thinking with, and have both become far more creative and reflective in our resource design.

In our case, the broccoli has provided lasting benefits to students and staff alike – and we’ve actually discovered we really enjoy it after all!

Note: More detail about the two focus areas of our collaboration can be found in the forum topics Pressure Groups Inquiry (A-Level Politics) and Essay Planners (A-Level Politics).