6. How does your trend or issue impact the library media center program or the role of the School Library Media Specialist?
"Research indicates that library programs must be based around learning, not around libraries."
June Gross & Susan Kientz
"Collaborating for Authentic Learning." Teacher Librarian 27, no. 1 (October 1999): 21-26.
School Library Brain Research Checklist
David A. Sousa says…
If they understand what makes a brain-friendly learning environment, teachers can make logical choices as to how they can best present content and skills in their curriculum.
David A. Sousa is author of How the Brain Learns (National Association of Secondary School Principals) and The Learning Manual for How the Brain Learns (Corwin Press).
We say
that media specialists, too, can enhance the library experience with these same brain-friendly practices.MEMORY — Meaning has an impact on what will be stored. Curriculum must contain connections to past experiences.
EMOTIONS — How students feel about a learning situation determines the amount of attention they devote to it. They must feel physically safe and emotionally secure before they can focus on curriculum.
SENSORY ENGAGEMENT — The brain makes new neural connections when actively involved in interesting and challenging situations. Task-centered talking is critical and social interaction supports the learning process.
TIMING — Students will retain more from multiple, shorter learning episodes than from a single, longer session — two twenty-minute lessons work better than one forty-minute lesson.
BIOLOGICAL RHYTHMS — The "rhythms" of one’s body are responsible for overall intellectual performance and start later in the day for adolescents than for adults. Teens perform better later in the day.
Sousa, David A. "Is the Fuss About Brain Research Justified?" Education Week on the Web 18, no. 16 (December 16 1998): 52-57. Internet online. Available from <http://www.edweek.org/ew/vol-18/16sousa.h18>. [22 September 1998].
Judith Sykes says…
Judith Sykes is a principal and president of the Asso. For Teacher-Librarianship in Canada, President of the Alberta Asso. For Supervision and Curricululum Development, and Author of Library Centers (Libraries Unlimited) and Your School Library Through Action Research (Libraries Unlimited).
It’s time for media specialists to connect brain research with information literacy.
Media specialists will not be able to function in a brain-based learning environment without a radically different view of learning and teaching.
Media centers must become an integral part of every classroom, connecting to student lives, across curricular boundaries to other libraries and the community, connecting learning inside the school to learning outside, allowing the world to come in.
As learning becomes student directed rather than teacher directed, school libraries will transform from collecting and accessing resources to places of connecting and creation.
Virtual schools need places of connection—places for dialogue and discourse—and a myriad of resources that individual classrooms cannot provide.
Media specialists must change their teaching strategies from control of people and resources to developing questioning and curious people.
Media specialists must be continuous learners and sharers of brain research, engaging teachers in the newest mental models and teaching modalities.
Judith’s School Library Brain Research Checklist:
Does your school library…
Have a warm and inviting, welcoming environment?
Have stimulating work areas?
Have sounds of music playing?
Have multiple displays of cognitive work in many formats: poetry, sculpture, video, PowerPoint, web pages, docudrama, demonstrations, surveys?
Have students reading orally, silently, being read to?
Have students engaged in challenging and intellectually stimulating projects collaboratively planned with their teachers?
Include lots of student input?
Have sounds of laughter?
Alter in physical structures often? Every four to six weeks?
Include physical movement?
Allow water bottles or easy access to fountains?
Have reflective places and spaces where students are journaling, conferencing, observing, interviewing?
Have celebrations of learning?
Have projects that cross curricular boundaries?
Have a balance of novelty and relevancy?
Make effective use of time blocks?
Encourage the use of mind maps, webbing, charting?
Include ways for student empowerment through technology?
Sykes, Judith. "The Role of the Teacher-Librarian in the 21st Century." School Libraries in Canada 21, no. 2 (2001): 5-8.
Next: 7. What is the research base or evidence upon which this trend, theory or practice is based?
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University of South Carolina
College of Mass Communication and Information Studies
School of Library and Information Science
Page last updated on 01/28/08
