What Evidence?
Recently I was asked to provide our district with year-end information regarding the library. There were the basic questions:
**Number of books in the collection?
**Number of books weeded this year?
**Age of the collection?
**Total circulation for the year?
**Number of lesson taught?
**Number of students served?
While the information is interesting to a librarian who wants to know exactly what materials were circulated or how many items were added or deselected over the past few months, I knew that this was not the information that would show administrators, teachers, or parents exactly what happened in my library. In fact, I’d hoped for a form that asked for lesson plans, evidence of assessment, and teacher-collaboration evidence. Obviously, I was way ahead of myself.
During the year, I’ve been reading about teacher-library collaboration and how it impacts student achievement. While the Ross Todd, Keith Curry Lance, and Carol Kuhlthau studies that show that providing up-to-date library materials, as well as additional support staff can add to the librarian’s ability to actually impact student achievement, the evidence still shows only the statistical quantities within the library— (How many new books were added? How many certified librarians? How many support personnel? How many hours is the library open?). What about the quality of the instruction? How can you determine if the students are learning? What evidence do you have to show that instruction and collaboration has improved student achievement?
Maybe I’m just a professional student (my kids call me a “library geek”) because I’m always reading library research, but recent articles (and books) by Dr. Violet Harada (from the University of Hawaii) have intrigued me. Her work centers on Evidence-Based Practices or how we can provide the information that administrators need in determining that libraries (and librarians) impact student achievement. (See articles: http://www2.hawaii.edu/~vharada/Jounals.htm )
While teachers are being asked to show evidence of student achievement through grades, test results, and classroom activities, librarians are still counting books, calculating the number of hours the library is open, and determining the age of our collection. We pull all the information together and share it with lackluster responses from those who have the power to determine our futures. Then when library programs are cut and positions are eliminated, we wonder why others don’t see our value to the instructional curriculum. We are teaching important skills! We know we’ve taught some wonderful lessons with outstanding results….but does anyone else know?
What evidence do we provide to show that our students are learning? With state academic content standards, as well as Information Power standards, librarians should be collaborating with teachers to design instruction that provides evidence that students can demonstrate what they know and what they can do. At that point, librarians can collect that evidence that demonstrates that the library has made an impact in student achievement.
The big questions that still loom are:
Are librarians being provided the opportunity to work as instructional partners? Can they collaborate with teachers to design instructional content that will help students demonstrate what they know? If so, what evidence is gathered and shared? These questions hold the key to determining what impact libraries make on student achievement. It’s time to stop collecting quantities of “things” in our libraries and start collecting the evidence of “quality” of student learning.
June 14th, 2007 at 10:34 am
Like you, Shonda, every year we report to district administration our annual circulation figures, collection value, collection age, number of scheduled and unscheduled users, amount spent on library materials, etc., etc., and every year we watch district funding to campus libraries continue to deteriorate. Our librarians teach great lessons! They interact (most of them) with the teachers! They attend workshops and conferences! They do anything and everything they can to show they play an important role in student performance. So far that has gotten us absolutely nowhere with the top-level district administrators.
This spring we decided to take it to the people, as our sixties-heritage taught us to do but which we forgot when we sold out to edu-managers. We created online student and staff surveys to get grass-level feedback on the library services we are providing. We are still compiling the data, and we are still trying to get a wide sampling of responses, but so far the responses already received are eye-opening. We intend to take these responses and direct our efforts next year towards satisfying the students and teachers instead of trying to please and impress the administrators who are doing precious little to help and support us anyway. If Wal-Mart employees can initiate a subversive revolution against their company in reaction to its unconcern and disinterest, we figure we can do the same.
June 14th, 2007 at 11:04 am
The cliche…Only a mother would love….? Well only a librarian can love inventory statistics! However in the Supplemental Resouces of the Texas Library Library Standards and Guidelines, you will find a process for collecting evidence-based data. http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/ld/schoollibs/
But I think you hit the nail on the head with this blog entry. I presented pretty much the same ideas at TLA 2007. Another area to consider is visibility. What visible impression does the library/librarian present? Does the library webpage show a picture of an empty library? When a class is checking out books, is the librarian sitting behind the computer or are students doing that clerical job while the librarian uses the time for reader advisory. (Yes even 1st graders can run the circulation computer. So what if a mistake is made?) Does the librarian actively seek opportunities to work on curriculum committes; does the librarian actively participate in faculty meetings; does the librarian read professional journals and send appropriate articles to faculty and administrators; does the librarian check out books to parents; is the library’s environment friendly and inviting, etc? I whole-heartedly agree that collecting data for evidence-based practices is critical, but informal impression may be more important in determining a library/librarian’s worth…to the learning community as a whole.
June 14th, 2007 at 5:03 pm
I just finished having my end-of-the-year mtg./evaluation with the head of my school. We went through the usual protocol…what do you think about the schedule?….do you feel you’re being effective…what would you do differently…blah - blah - blah.
Yes, I think I do a good job, I collaborate with a higher percentage of teachers each year, my collection is slowly being updated, my circ stats are through the roof…but, I had to turn it around…I asked him, “You tell me, what do you see and what do you think?”
In a nutshell, this is what he said…It is amazing that you know off-hand what were the last few books that each kid has read…you help students no matter what is going on in your library…the teachers are comfortable coming to you for help (never mind that it’s a small percentage of them)…the parents think you are so knowledgeable and have contributed immensely to their child’s reading enrichment…you’re flexible and willing to work with what you’re given…and always (here’s the clincher) with a smile.
And as I listened to this I was thinking to myself…the computers in the library need to be updated, I want to be in the loop hole when it comes to curriculum coordinator meetings, I need a little more funding to update the 500’s in my collection, my usage statistics for my databases are not as high as I’d like them, I only collaborate with the some of the History & English teachers this year — where are the rest?, etc. Evidently, my ideas of success are not the same as his despite my reports and hard work.
I am professionally active, I read professional journals almost daily, I check the blogs & wikis for the latest/best practices, I read YA lit voraciously, and manage to have a private life through all of this. I wholeheartedly practice and believe in doing all of the things that make us “indispensable” but I have to agree with Sharon on this one…in my case, it’s the informal “stuff” that has guaranteed me a contract renewal each year. Go figure!
Maribel