The Effect of Professional Development on Teacher and Librarian Collaboration: Preliminary Findings Using a Revised Instrument, TLC-III.

Abstract

This study describes preliminary results of a study with elementary school teachers and librarians. Professional-development intervention workshops were conducted to improve teacher and school librarian collaboration to integrate library and subject content. A revised 24-item teacher and school librarian collaboration instrument (TLC-III) was used as a preand postworkshop measure to evaluate teachers’ and librarians’ perceptions of their collaborative endeavors. The instrument was used with intervention and control teachers and school librarians to assess their perceptions about how frequently they collaborated and how important their collaboration was to student learning. Participants included librarians from six elementary schools, and third-grade and fourth-grade teachers attending intervention workshops, and a control group who did not attend the workshops. Findings indicate that professionaldevelopment workshops can significantly change teachers’ perceptions about collaborating with school librarians. Of particular interest are changed perceptions in the intervention group regarding high-end collaborative endeavors involving integrated jointly planned and taught lessons. Key terms: teacher and school librarian collaboration, survey for teachers and school librarians, TLC-III, levels of collaboration, teachers’ perceptions of teacher and school librarian collaboration, teachers’ perceptions of importance of collaboration to student learning The Effect of Professional Development on Collaboration Volume 15 | ISSN: 2165-1019 2 School Library Research | www.ala.org/aasl/slr Introduction For over thirty years, school library and information science professionals have attempted to become integral players in the education of students by participating more fully in the teaching and learning process. To address growing concerns in the twenty-first century that students must become more information-literate and proficient information seekers and users, school librarians have recommended greater communication and collaboration with teachers. School library professionals consider collaboration with teachers to be an essential responsibility of 21stcentury librarians (AASL and AECT 1998; AASL 2007, 2009); and teacher and librarian collaboration (TLC) is considered a critical means of improving teaching and learning. National studies indicate that school libraries are an important factor in improved student academic achievement (Lance 1994; Lance, Rodney, Hamilton-Pennell 2000, 2002; Lance and Russell 2004; Rodney, Lance, and Hamilton-Pennell 2002), and although findings from studies have not specifically focused on teacher and school librarian collaboration, the connection between school librarians and improved student achievement is apparent. For decades, multiple models (Chisholm and Ely 1979; Cleaver and Taylor 1983, 1989; Eisenberg and Berkowitz 1990) and guidelines (Loertscher 1988; Callison and Preddy 2006) have described methods and procedures to guide school librarians in their work as collaborators with teachers (Turner and Naumer 1983; Turner and Riedling 2003). However, there is a paucity of information about the extent to which prescribed models and procedures are implemented by teachers and school librarians, and how teachers and school librarians learn to collaborate on instructional activities recommended by school library professional guidelines (e.g., teaching essential learning skills, jointly creating classroom projects). Considerable evidence from library and information science professionals about school librarians collaborating with teachers exists (Callison 1997; Callison and Preddy, 2006; Donham 1999, 2008; Harada 2002; Haycock 2003), and research exists on various aspects of collaboration, including student motivation (Small, Synder, and Parker 2009), the role of principals (Farmer 2007; Oberg 2006; Shannon 2009), pitfalls of collaboration (Branch 2006), improved instruction (Chu et al. 2011), and teachers’ perceptions of TLC (Montiel-Overall and Jones 2011), but there is a paucity of empirical data on how teachers and school librarians learn to collaborate and on how to assess this collaboration. This information is critical to advance school librarians’ agenda to collaborate with teachers to improve teaching and learning (AASL 2007, 2009). This paper reports on the first phase of a two-year study involving professional-development intervention workshops for teachers and school librarians at six elementary schools. The intervention workshops included instructional modules related to TLC and teaching inquirybased science to Spanish-speaking and Latino students. The TLC module was designed to teach teachers and school librarians about collaborating to link information-literacy standards and science standards. Using a revised instrument to evaluate TLC, data were collected to determine how often teachers and school librarians collaborated, and how important they perceived their collaboration to be to student learning. This study adds to an understanding of teacher and school librarian collaborative practices and makes a significant contribution to the literature on teacher and school librarian collaboration for several reasons. First, it provides valuable information about the role of professional development to improve teachers’ and school librarians’ 1 Other terms used are school librarian, school library media specialist, instructional specialist, technology specialist, and teacher-librarian. “School librarian” will be used throughout this paper to avoid confusion. The Effect of Professional Development on Collaboration Volume 15 | ISSN: 2165-1019 3 School Library Research | www.ala.org/aasl/slr understanding of high-level collaboration. Second, it provides further validation of an instrument to assess types of collaborative activities in which teachers and school librarians engage. Results from this study provide additional evidence that library professionals as well as teachers benefit from instruction on what it means to collaborate to improve students’ ability to access and use library resources within the context of classroom lessons. Research Questions Four main research questions are addressed in this study: • To what extent do professional-development intervention workshops change teachers’ and school librarians’ perceptions of how frequently they engage in collaborative activities? • To what extent do professional-development intervention workshops change teachers’ and school librarians’ perceptions of the importance to student learning of their collaborative activities? • To what extent does professional development help align teachers’ and school librarians’ perceptions about the frequency of their collaborative activities? • To what extent does professional development help align teachers’ and school librarians’ perceptions about the importance of their collaborative activities to student learning?