Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Post 6: Constructivism and School Libraries

Question: Make a list of the sequence of skills necessary for ultimate mastery of the content of your lesson through a constructivist approach. Which of these learning activities/skills lend themselves to student’s individual or group construction? How might you structure learning activities that lead students to discover these skills/principles? 

In a previous post, I outlined a set of competencies that would enable a student to use the library and find information successfully. The steps closely model the cognitive skills outlined in Bloom's Taxonomy -- Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation. A student would know and understand basic information about the library environment, how materials are arranged, and a process for finding them. Then, the student would apply that knowledge in a search process, which eventually leads to the analysis, synthesis, and evaluation, not only of the resources found, but of the process itself and how effective it was.


When taking a constructivist approach, I'm not sure that the skills would be different. In fact, I think they would probably be very much the same. However, as I said in my original post, because library use and research are by nature process-oriented, the ways in which I teach or present, or facilitate, students through the steps of research lend themselves to a constructivist approach.


In the early stages of teaching basic research or library skills, I can see great value in cooperative learning or group construction. Students will certainly learn a lot from working with, listening to, and watching other students engage in the same tasks. Eventually, particularly in older grades or into higher education, learning and research will shift more toward the individual and his/her own research needs and processes.


I see my role as a librarian as more of a guide or facilitator. Certainly, more traditional means of instruction have a place in school media centers. There is a certain amount of "teaching" that accompanies any lesson in any subject. However, traditional methods should be accompanied by more learner-centered, rather than teacher-centered, activities. Then learner, then, constructs his own knowledge of the process based on experience. In addition, the higher-order critical-thinking skills which we so desire our learners to master (analysis, synthesis, evaluation, and application) are inherent to the success of the research process and must be performed every step of the way.


Sources for further reading:


James O. Carey, in Library Skills, Information Skills, and Information Literacy: Implications for Teaching and Learning, looks at two approaches to problem-solving, as Cognitive Objectivist (or instructional design perpective) and Cognitive Constructivist. (AASL)


Jesus Lau provides an excellent discussion of learning theories and information literacy in a paper, Guidelines on Information Literacy in Lifelong Learning.


Monday, February 18, 2013

Post 5: Memory, Learning, and Instructional Design

Question: How might your knowledge of the memory processes guide your instructional decisions?

No one technique or presentation will met the memory demands of all learners. I hope to provide opportunities for students with a variety of learning styles to be successful.

In an article by Ruth Clark and Gary Harrelson, Designing Instruction That Supports Cognitive Learning Processes, we find:

Because working memory is a limited-capacity processor, instructional techniques that reduce cognitive load have been proven to improve learning effectiveness and efficiency. This is especially true of novice learners, who are most susceptible to cognitive overload.Numerous load-management techniques have been reported in recent literature. We describe several here, including the modality principle, the contiguity principle, the chunking of lessons and placement of practice exercises, and the use of worked examples.
Particularly in elementary grades, I think there is great benefit in having shorter lessons, chunked into self-contained and manageable bits. The lesson size or duration can be adjusted based on the age and attention of the group. I read a general guideline of age corresponding to minutes per lesson. For a group of 12 year olds, keep your lesson to about 12 minutes before breaking for activity, practice, or another topic.  As an example, don't try to teach a complex 30-minute lesson to a group of 10 year olds. Try 3 shorter, 10-minute lessons instead.
I also like the idea of examining worked examples (though you see this much more often in math and science). Presenting and walking through a research process before executing it gives everyone a sense of direction before setting out on one's one project.
Ultimately, performing the tasks will help each student commit research tasks to memory, so my instruction will certainly include lots of practice and room for trial and error.

Post 4: Skills and Cognitive Learning

Question: What are the essential skills and/or learning outcomes you want your students to know about and be able to do that relate to cognitive learning?

Because library use can be so process-oriented, a student would need a set of competencies in order to use a library effectively and to full benefit. In each case - whether the student is in grade 2 or grade 12 - the skill set is much the same, but as the student progresses, the range of sources and information, as well as the scope of the question will become more challenging.

First, a student has to ask questions about the problem to be solved. The student should be able to be able to identify a research question or questions (appropriate to grade level) that will guide his search. For a 3rd grader, this might mean deciding on a topic for a short paper on a specific president. For a 12th grader, perhaps they are seeking information specific to morality and society in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter.

Next, a student should be able to follow a search process for acquiring the needed information. Of course, this process becomes more complex as a student progresses in school, or in his learning. In early grades, students search the online catalog looking for books on a particular topic, or browsing sections of the library according to the Dewey classification pertinent to their research topic. Older students might search a full-text database looking for journal articles.

After the above process of discovery, a student should be able to organize the information into a usable set of data. Students will then analyze the data he has collected and determine if his research process has reached an end. Based on his findings, has the initial question (or questions) been answered?

It sounds complicated - especially when you think of teaching this to 1st or 2nd graders - but the point is that the process can be broken down into smaller parts for any age group. This is a set of cognitive skills for any age to acquire and use.

Monday, February 4, 2013

Post 3: Assessment in School Libraries: Can you find it?

Think of a lesson plan from your licensure area.  Knowing that assessment is an integral part of teaching, explain at least four informal and formal assessments that you will use in your lesson plan to provide you with feedback and involve the students in assessing their own learning.

Because my licensure area (school media centers) is a special area in which students are not graded, formal assessments and scoring will seldom be required. An individual teacher may require students to show proficiency in research or information literacy tasks, in which case the librarian should certainly consult on the best methods and practices for assessment.


In elementary grades, many librarian-driven lesson plans focus on basic activities such as finding or locating a book. This may involve searching the online catalog (technology skills; thinking skills, or how to conduct a search) as well as physically locating the book on the shelves (fiction versus non-fiction, alpha by author's name, Dewey Decimal system).  


Performance assessments where a student is asked to perform a task or conduct a search work well in this environment.  Informally, the librarian can check to see if students are progressing at these basic tasks. The librarian watches a student as he/she conducts a search of the online catalog, helping point to the correct links or shaping more effective search phrases.


When a student asks the librarian for help in finding a book, she can guide the student with a series of questions that allow the student to generate more of the solutions or steps. The librarian can then understand where the "disconnect" is for each student based on the feedback she receives. The goal of such informal assessments or "check-ins" is to see that the student is able to perform searches or finds books independently.  Students will know if they are learning how to search or find books if their efforts produce the book or material they want.


In more formal assessments, the librarian would check the students' knowledge about the library and how it works. One fun way to test this, particularly in younger grades, is with the use of a scavenger hunt. The Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) provides several examples of grade-appropriate scavenger hunts for use in your library.  (My favorite question for grades 2-3 is "What is the name of the children's librarian?" Always an important question! And it addresses the need for a librarian to have great relationships with all patrons!) I will note, however, that in older grades or in college reference situations, scavenger hunts - especially ones where the teacher is simply giving the students a busy-work activity to complete  - are not optimum. And they are often hated by librarians. Note to teachers: ALWAYS consult with your librarians on library and research assignments!


As students grow, basic library skills are a must, and the teachers can then assess students on more complex research and information literacy tasks. Extended research projects, annotated bibliography assignments, and the like can show if a student understands not only that a need for information exists, but what type of information is needed, and how that information can be read, understood, and synthesized to satisfy his/her needs.


For more information on how libraries affect academic achievement in all grades, I leave you with this quote from the American Library Association's Add It Up advocacy and awareness campaign:

Students whose library media specialists played [an instructional] role—either by identifying materials to be used with teacher-planned instructional units or by collaborating with teachers in planning instructional units—tend to achieve higher average test scores.
(from Lance, Keith Curry, Lynda Welborn, and Christine Hamilton-Pennell. 1993. The impact of school library media centers on academic achievement. Castle Rock, CO: Hi Willow Research and Pub.)

The American Association of School Librarians (AASL) also provides this bibliography on the topic of information literacy in school libraries, illustrating the push to develop more standardized assessment tools.