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Collaborating With Teacher Librarians to Support Adolescents’ Literacy and Literature Learning
Author(s) -
Merga Margaret Kristin
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
journal of adolescent and adult literacy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.73
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1936-2706
pISSN - 1081-3004
DOI - 10.1002/jaal.958
Subject(s) - literacy , information literacy , interpersonal communication , pedagogy , psychology , identification (biology) , teacher education , quality (philosophy) , mathematics education , sociology , social psychology , philosophy , botany , epistemology , biology
The author explores teacher librarians’ ideas about teacher collaborations around literacy and literature learning, roles in collaborations, and the characteristics of good collaborations. Productive and strong collaborations between librarians in schools and their teacher colleagues can enhance students’ learning experiences and outcomes. Semistructured interview data were collected from teacher librarians at 25 schools. The author reports on teacher librarians’ identification of a range of barriers to collaboration in contemporary literacy‐learning contexts and explores the multiple roles that teacher librarians may adopt in collaborative relationships, identifying 11 characteristics of strong collaborations as identified by teacher librarians, which encompass diverse interpersonal qualities and professional activities. Findings offer ideas to enhance the quality of teacher–librarian collaboration, improving literacy outcomes for adolescent students.