Evidence Based Practice

It is clear after reading many articles that trained TL’s undoubtedly make a difference in student achievement.

Di Wilson suggests in Todd’s article ‘Irrefutable Evidence’, that in order for T’Ls to gain support we need to show administrators, teachers and parents what impact we are having on student learning. This needs to be done systematically and in collaboration with other educators.

We need to be gathering different kinds of evidence including student and staff appraisals, student samples of work, lesson plans, surveys, test scores, rubrics and library statistical data. We should also be looking at sharing and accumulating locally generated evidence and data between schools and districts.

Todd believes evidence based practice is driven by the following questions.
‘Why do school libraries matter today? and How do we spread the word about the impact of school libraries on student achievement and demonstrate their educational social and cultural value?

Kramer and Diekman discuss the simple equation of ‘Evidence = Assessment= Advocacy.’ TL’s need to be consistently delivering the message that they have a positive affect on student learning. The teacher librarian needs to collaborate and strategically plan with educators to assist in achieving specific outcomes. They state that ‘assessment is an ongoing examination of learning and shared responsibility with other teachers’
Assessment of whether or not the objectives or outcomes have been achieved is important. If these achievements are evident, then teachers can become the TL’s most supportive advocate.

I believe that TL’s also need more opportunity to collaborate with each other. Combining and sharing expertise, skills and experience should surely be effective in achieving good evidence based practice. Meeting with other TL’s two or three times a year doesn’t seem adequate. I also feel many TL’s including myself do not have a deep knowledge and understanding of evidence based practice. This was also found to be evident in the research carried out by Hay and Todd in ‘School libraries 21st C” (2009). They stated that ‘many teachers didn’t have sustained, evidence based arguments when discussing the future of school libraries and that a ‘sustained evidence based practice program take place, with an emphasis on school wide approaches to charting and identifying significant syllabus outcomes, and the skills and understandings required of digital citizenship, as a result of school library initiatives and interventions.’