What is the literacy supportive role of the school librarian in the United Kingdom?

Building students’ literacy skills is a key educative purpose of contemporary schooling. While libraries can play a key role in fostering literacy and related reading engagement in schools, more needs to be known about school librarians’ role in promoting these goals. To this end, this article seeks to identify the nature and scope of the literacy supportive role required of the school librarian in the United Kingdom. It also investigates how this aspect is situated within the broader competing role requirements of the profession. Using a hybrid approach to content analysis including both qualitative and quantitative methods, this article presents in-depth analysis of 40 recent job description documents recruiting school librarians in the United Kingdom to investigate these research aims. The vast majority of documents (92.5%) included literacy supportive roles or characteristics of a school librarian, and recurring salient components included supporting literature selection, having a broad and current knowledge of literature, promoting and modelling reading for pleasure, devising and supporting reading and literature events, promoting a whole-school reading culture, working closely with students to support reading and literacy skill development, and implementing and supporting reading programmes. This literacy supportive role was found to sit within a potentially highly complex and diverse work role which may compete with the literacy supportive role for time and resourcing in school libraries. This research suggests that the role of school librarians in the United Kingdom is both complex and evolving, and that school librarians in the United Kingdom have a valuable literacy supportive role to play in their school libraries.

[1]  S. Krashen.  The (Lack of ) Experimental Evidence Supporting the Use of Accelerated Reader , 2003 .

[2]  Lisa De Bortoli,et al.  PISA 2015 : a first look at Australia’s results data tables [Excel] , 2016 .

[3]  M. Merga,et al.  Building a school reading culture: Teacher librarians’ perceptions of enabling and constraining factors , 2019, Australian Journal of Education.

[4]  Debra E. Kachel,et al.  Why school librarians matter: What years of research tell us , 2018 .

[5]  C. Ritchie.  Filling a gap: would evidence-based school librarianship work in the UK? , 2009 .

[6]  Margaret K. Merga.  What motivates avid readers to maintain a regular reading habit in adulthood , 2017 .

[7]  Ulrika Centerwall,et al.  Performing the school librarian: Using the Butlerian concept of performativity in the analysis of school librarian identities , 2019, J. Libr. Inf. Sci..

[8]  Steve Rodriguez.  The Accelerated Reader Program's Relationship To Student Achievement On The English-Language Arts California Standards Test , 2007 .

[9]  Philip J. Calvert,et al.  ‘So what made you decide to become a school librarian?’ Reasons people currently working in New Zealand school libraries give for their choice of employment , 2016, J. Libr. Inf. Sci..

[10]  Norene Erickson.  I may not be a librarian, but I’m running the school library , 2019, IASL Annual Conference Proceedings.

[11]  Participating states,et al.  Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) , 2006 .

[12]  Laurel A. Clyde.  An Instructional Role for Librarians: An Overview and Content Analysis of Job Advertisements , 2002 .

[13]  M. Merga.  School libraries fostering children's literacy and literature learning: mitigating the barriers , 2019, Literacy.

[14]  J. Jennings,et al.  Accountability, Inequality, and Achievement: The Effects of the No Child Left Behind Act on Multiple Measures of Student Learning , 2016, RSF.

[15]  Suzanne E. Mol,et al.  Attitude profiles explain differences in pre-service teachers' reading behavior and competence beliefs , 2017 .

[16]  David Premont,et al.  Average and avid: preservice English teachers' reading identities , 2020 .

[17]  T. Cremin,et al.  Exploring teachers' knowledge of children's literature , 2008 .

[18]  Simone R. Haasler,et al.  The Interplay between Education, Skills, and Job Quality , 2019, Social Inclusion.

[19]  Vivian Howard,et al.  The importance of pleasure reading in the lives of young teens: Self-identification, self-construction and self-awareness , 2011, J. Libr. Inf. Sci..

[20]  Renita R. Schmidt.  Really Reading: What Does Accelerated Reader Teach Adults and Children?. , 2008 .

[21]  Steven M. Ross,et al.  A Randomized Experimental Evaluation of the Impact of Accelerated Reader/Reading Renaissance Implementation on Reading Achievement in Grades 3 to 6 , 2006 .

[22]  I. Darmawan.  The changes in attitudes of 15-year-old Australian students towards reading, mathematics and science and their impact on student performance , 2020 .

[23]  A. Vignoles,et al.  Measuring and assessing the impact of basic skills on labour market outcomes , 2001 .

[24]  D. Alvermann,et al.  Questioning the Separation of In-School from Out-of-School Contexts for Literacy Learning: An Interview with Donna E. Alvermann. , 2011 .

[25]  Stephen R. Burgess,et al.  Teachers' Leisure Reading Habits and Knowledge of Children's Books: Do They Relate to the Teaching Practices of Elementary School Teachers?. , 2011 .

[26]  Allan Wigfield,et al.  Instructional Contexts for Engagement and Achievement in Reading , 2012 .

[27]  Saiyidi Mat Roni,et al.  Choosing Strategies of Children and the Impact of Age and Gender on Library Use: Insights for Librarians , 2017 .

[28]  Jacquelynn A. Malloy,et al.  Upper Elementary Students’ Motivation to Read Fiction and Nonfiction , 2018, The Elementary School Journal.

[29]  R. Koestner,et al.  For the love of reading: Recreational reading reduces psychological distress in college students and autonomous motivation is the key , 2020, Journal of American college health : J of ACH.

[30]  Chin Ee Loh,et al.  School Library Perspectives from Asia: Trends, Innovations and Challenges in Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan , 2019, IASL Annual Conference Proceedings.

[31]  E. Gaygısız,et al.  The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) , 2022 .

[32]  The self-perceived status of school librarians , 2011 .

[33]  J. Nichols.  ACCELERATED READER AND ITS EFFECT ON FIFTH-GRADE STUDENTS' READING COMPREHENSION , 2013 .

[34]  Gary N. Hartzell,et al.  The Principal's Perceptions of School Libraries and Teacher-Librarians , 2001, School Libraries Worldwide.

[35]  Chin Ee Loh,et al.  Building a successful reading culture through the school library , 2017 .

[36]  Alice Sullivan,et al.  Social inequalities in cognitive scores at age 16: The role of reading , 2013 .

[37]  Cristina Sacco Ritchie.  The self-perceived status of school librarians , 2011, J. Libr. Inf. Sci..

[38]  Nancy L Kondracki,et al.  Content analysis: review of methods and their applications in nutrition education. , 2002, Journal of nutrition education and behavior.

[39]  Noraida Domínguez,et al.  The school librarian as motivational agent and strategist for reading appreciation , 2016, J. Libr. Inf. Sci..

[40]  P. Willett,et al.  Secondary school librarians as heads of department in UK schools , 2011 .

[41]  Hsiu-Fang Hsieh,et al.  Three Approaches to Qualitative Content Analysis , 2005, Qualitative health research.

[42]  James Collins.  LITERACY AND LITERACIES , 1995 .

[43]  John T. Guthrie,et al.  MOTIVATING STRUGGLING READERS IN MIDDLE SCHOOL THROUGH AN ENGAGEMENT MODEL OF CLASSROOM PRACTICE , 2003 .

[44]  M. Merga.  School Librarians as Literacy Educators Within a Complex Role , 2020, Journal of Library Administration.

[45]  Lesley S. J. Farmer,et al.  Trends in school library programs 2007–2012: Analysis of AASL’s School Libraries Count! data sets , 2019, J. Libr. Inf. Sci..

[46]  Mirah J. Dow,et al.  School Librarian Staffing Levels and Student Achievement as Represented in 2006-2009 Kansas Annual Yearly Progress Data. , 2012 .

[47]  M. Merga.  How do librarians in schools support struggling readers? , 2019, English in Education.

[48]  D. Streatfield,et al.  Information literacy in United Kingdom schools: evolution, current state and prospects , 2011 .

[49]  Saiyidi Mat Roni,et al.  Parents as Social Influences Encouraging Book Reading: Research Directions for Librarians’ Literacy Advocacy , 2018, Journal of Library Administration.

[50]  E. Daniels,et al.  Examining the Effects of a School-wide Reading Culture on the Engagement of Middle School Students , 2011 .

[51]  Margaret K. Merga.  “I don't know if she likes reading”: Are teachers perceived to be keen readers, and how is this determined? , 2016 .

[52]  V. Braun,et al.  Using thematic analysis in psychology , 2006 .

[53]  Elementary Students’ Motivation to Read and Genre Preferences , 2020 .

[54]  Karla K. Krueger,et al.  The Status of Statewide Subscription Databases , 2012 .

[55]  Marilyn Domas White,et al.  Content Analysis: A Flexible Methodology , 2006, Libr. Trends.

[56]  S. Asli Özgün-Koca,et al.  An Analysis of High School Transformation Effort from an Outcome Perspective , 2011 .

[57]  S. Gorard,et al.  Accelerated Reader as a literacy catch-up intervention during primary to secondary school transition phase1 , 2016 .

[58]  John W. Creswell,et al.  Integrating Quantitative and Qualitative Results in Health Science Mixed Methods Research Through Joint Displays , 2015, The Annals of Family Medicine.

[59]  Lisa C. Shannon,et al.  Computer-Assisted Learning in Elementary Reading: A Randomized Control Trial , 2015 .

[60]  Aileen Clarke,et al.  Pillar Integration Process: A Joint Display Technique to Integrate Data in Mixed Methods Research , 2019 .