Teaching Teachers to Become School Librarians!? A Case Study from Sweden.
Type of Presentation
Individual paper/presentation (20 minute presentation)
Target Audience
K-12
Location
Room 218
Proposal
The new Education Act of Sweden states that all pupils, regardless of whether they attend a municipal or independent school, are to have access to a school library. Schools are responsible for ensuring that every pupil is able to use modern technology as a tool in searching for information, communication, and learning. The role of school librarians is now increasingly focused around the use of digital content in the classroom together with traditional reading comprehension. Librarians are being given more and more responsibility as information technology advances and they must keep up to date on the latest research techniques and digital equipment.
Today in Sweden current teachers wishing to become school librarians doesn’t need to take any library/information science classes to be licensed as a school librarian. This is deplorable since some of them are totally unaware of, for instance, the concept of information literacy. That means that they lack the knowledge and the pedagogy used in library and information sciences. In order to somewhat rectify this situation we offered a course of 7,5 credits to a couple of municipalities in Sweden. The course consists of different modules such as Knowledge Organization, Critical Thinking Skills, Open Educational Resources, Research Techniques and Academic Writing. Over 50 teachers applied and in January this year we examined the first ones. We would like to share our experiences and discuss further improvement of our course.
Short Description
We will present a newly established course where academic librarians teach current teachers to become school librarians. Emphasis will be placed on issues like how to teach information literacy in a school setting, how to instill a more scientific attitude among school librarians (according to the new Educational act of Sweden) and to discuss new emerging roles for school librarians.
Keywords
Education act of Sweden, School Libraries, Information Literacy
Publication Type and Release Option
Presentation (Open Access)
Recommended Citation
Brage, Christina Y., "Teaching Teachers to Become School Librarians!? A Case Study from Sweden." (2014). Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy. 11.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/gaintlit/2014/2014/11
Teaching Teachers to Become School Librarians!? A Case Study from Sweden.
Room 218
The new Education Act of Sweden states that all pupils, regardless of whether they attend a municipal or independent school, are to have access to a school library. Schools are responsible for ensuring that every pupil is able to use modern technology as a tool in searching for information, communication, and learning. The role of school librarians is now increasingly focused around the use of digital content in the classroom together with traditional reading comprehension. Librarians are being given more and more responsibility as information technology advances and they must keep up to date on the latest research techniques and digital equipment.
Today in Sweden current teachers wishing to become school librarians doesn’t need to take any library/information science classes to be licensed as a school librarian. This is deplorable since some of them are totally unaware of, for instance, the concept of information literacy. That means that they lack the knowledge and the pedagogy used in library and information sciences. In order to somewhat rectify this situation we offered a course of 7,5 credits to a couple of municipalities in Sweden. The course consists of different modules such as Knowledge Organization, Critical Thinking Skills, Open Educational Resources, Research Techniques and Academic Writing. Over 50 teachers applied and in January this year we examined the first ones. We would like to share our experiences and discuss further improvement of our course.
