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Research in school library media for the next decade: polishing the diamond
Library Trends, Spring, 2003 by Delia Neuman
ABSTRACT
OVER THE NEXT DECADE, research in school library media should focus explicitly on the relationship between library media programs and student learning. Attention to this topic has been a growing theme in the field's research for decades, and a number of factors argue for making it even more central in the coming years: the increasing emphasis on learning and achievement throughout education; the deepening appreciation for the library media specialist's various roles as they relate to this emphasis on learning; the emergence of electronic information resources that highlight the relationship between learning and information use as never before; and the publication of the Information Literacy Skills for Student Learning in Information Power: Building Partnerships for Learning (American Association of School Librarians and Association for Educational Communications and Technology [AASL and AECT], 1998). These statements of learning outcomes related to information use tie the school library media field directly to learning as nothing has done before. They provide both a rationale and a conceptual framework for studying students' interactions with information as the kind of authentic learning that is the goal of education in the twenty-first century.
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INTRODUCTION
Picture a simple graphic--the shape of the diamond that you would see in a deck of cards. Now think of this shape as a visual metaphor for the next decade's most important research for the school library media field. One of the following four questions would occupy each of its corners:
1. What are the contributions of library media programs to student achievement?
2. What are the roles of the library media specialist in today's schools?
3. How do students use electronic information resources for learning?
4. What has been the impact of the Information Literacy Skills for Student Learning on library media programs?
At the center of the diamond, illuminating each of the questions and reflecting the light from the answers, is the issue that has always been at the center of education: student learning. For the next decade and beyond, the most important research area for the school library media field involves establishing and documenting the direct relationship of library media programs and library media specialists to that central educational focus. Thus, the four questions draw their luster from the centrality of student learning to the library media field. Answering them in ways that shed light on the relationship of the field to learning will polish the diamond and make it shine more brightly in its own right and sparkle more valuably in the larger field of education.
The questions are grounded in the field's existing body of scholarship at the same time they open new lines of inquiry. The first two have captured researchers' attention for over a generation, but new developments--political as well as technological--have changed the components of the questions and the nature of the answers. The third focuses on a "new" issue but cannot be answered without reference to what we know about learning in general and about learning with information in particular. And the fourth addresses an even newer issue, since there has not yet been enough time to gather enough data to answer it in any meaningful way. Nevertheless, it, too, is grounded in assumptions and priorities the field has held since its inception. And by the end of the coming decade, this facet of the diamond may represent the most important research question in the field.
Other questions will also be important to the field in the next decade--for example, more research like Latrobe and Masters's (2001) study of the implementation of the field's new national guidelines, Information Power: Building Partnerships for Learning (AASL and AECT, 1998), would obviously add to our understanding of a variety of issues. With over fifty-six thousand copies of these guidelines sold in twenty-four countries (Robert Hershman, personal communication, March 11, 2002), there is a substantial arena in which to conduct research on the influence of the document, both nationally and internationally. In addition, gathering national statistics about library media programs in the United States in a more regular and comprehensive manner than is currently done would clearly help establish a baseline against which future progress could be measured (A. C. Weeks, personal communication, March 10, 2002). But the four questions noted above are more fine-grained and ultimately more central to the field's essential and enduring concerns. Taken together, they represent library media's diamond-hard core as well as suggesting new facets that will help move forward both the field's research agenda and its effective practice.
1. WHAT ARE THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF LIBRARY MEDIA PROGRAMS TO STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT?
No one would deny that this is an area of singular importance to the field. While library media professionals "know" the value of their programs' contributions and can point to individual studies as evidence of that value, the field needs more systematic and widespread research evidence in this area to support its claims. Gathering this evidence is important on a professional level as well as a political one. As a professional discipline, library media has an obligation to examine itself and its programs continuously to ensure that they are useful and effective. Politically, until research yields compelling--and widespread--evidence of the nature and extent of library media programs' contributions to measurable student achievement--and until administrators and other decision-makers are convinced to pay attention to that evidence--library media programs' status in the schools will be marginal, even tenuous.
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