ASLA in partnership with SLASA | Keys to Learning

FOSIL Group member Elizabeth Hutchinson will be delivering the opening keynote address at the Australian School Library Association 2021 Virtual National Conference – Keys to Learning – held in partnership with the School Library Association of South Australia.

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Thinking and Acting in a Global Village: A Story in Three Parts

The IFLA/UNESCO School Library Manifesto declares that “school library is integral to the educational process”. This, however, is not the day-to-day experience of many, if not most, school librarians around the world, or their classroom colleagues. There are many and varied reasons for this, which the Manifesto addresses in principle. The IFLA School Library Guidelines, which translate the principles of the Manifesto into practical terms, describe the conditions necessary for the school library to be integral to the educational process, key to which is a well-trained and highly motivated staff in sufficient numbers – professional and paraprofessional – according to the size of the school and its unique needs. Appropriate library staffing is, then, essential for an effective pedagogical program that frames learning through an inquiry process, such as FOSIL, which is based on the work of Dr Barbara Stripling as reflected in the Empire State Information Fluency Continuum. FOSIL, then, is both a model of the inquiry process and a means for collaboratively structuring teaching around a framework/ continuum of the literacy, inquiry, critical thinking, and technology skills that students must develop at each phase of the inquiry process over their years of school and in the context of subject/ content area learning. This session explores the convergence of the IFLA School Library Guidelines and FOSIL in the Great School Libraries campaign, a joint initiative of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP), CILIP’s School Libraries Group and the School Library Association.