Teachers & Librarians: Working Together

For this poster presentation, I have researched how teachers and teacher librarians work together and collaborate. Participants believe that the results of the collaboration between teachers and teacher librarians are more powerful and significant than the results of their individual efforts. I have analyzed 9 different articles that discuss ways in which teachers and teacher librarians interact and collaborate. After perusing the articles, I've found that there are factors that might deter teachers and teacher librarians from working together. There are also resulting benefits of teachers and teacher librarians working together. Assignments developed in partnership between teachers and teacher librarians are known to be more "authentic" and exhibit a higher degree of meaning and significance. When not guided in the use of a process, students tend to approach research as though there is only one right answer, and fail to learn how to use information to construct their own meaning. This ability to construct meaning is at the heart of information literacy, which collectively describes the skills students will need to cope in a complex world with access to an ever-increasing wealth of information. A significant number of prior studies also indicate a positive relationship between the library media program and academic achievement. Overall, teachers with experience in collaborative planning and teaching view the role of the library media specialist more positively and welcome continued collaboration. I want to further explain the teacher librarian’s role in a school and the importance of teacher librarians through my research.