Survey of Scottish school librarians and their knowledge and use of Curriculum for Excellence

Thank you to everyone who completed the survey. There were a total of 74 responses of which 72 were from the secondary sector - a response rate of 20%.

The survey suggests that the school librarians are tending to concentrate primarily on the Learning Experiences and Outcomes and not the Principle Papers which are said to be “essential reading for staff” and “a range of practitioners” including themselves as the following quote demonstrates.

It is expected that the literacy experiences and outcomes and this accompanying paper [principles and practice], will be read by a range of practitioners, including those who work in school library resource centres, who make an enormous contribution to the literacy skills of children and young people. 

33 respondents (75%) indicated that they had identified ways in which information literacy can be used to achieve or assist achievement of the experiences and outcomes.

26 respondents (53%) replied that they are or have been involved in any piloting activities, created any new activities or updated existing activities based upon the experiences and outcomes.

28 responses were generated to the question of  'How can school librarians optimise their efforts to support information literacy and the Curriculum for excellence Experiences and Outcomes locally and nationally?'  The main points which were frequently repeated were: 

• becoming involved in school activities through school committees such as literacy teams,


• getting the support of the head teacher,


• demonstrating an understanding of the aims of CfE,


• supporting cross curricular activities, 


• developing links with primary schools,


• being involved in all discussions and training and in-service opportunities,


• liaising closely with subject departments,


• working with other school library colleagues,


• working with teachers to standardise terminology, 


• promoting a whole school approach


• involving Learning and Teaching Scotland.  

The full results and findings are to be written up for publication including articles for

The School Librarian - The Curriculum for Excellence: knowledge, engagement and contribution by Scottish school librarians, Chrisitne Irving to be published in 2010.

Aslib Proceedings - The Scottish Information Literacy Project and school libraries, John Crawford and Christine Irving to be published in 2010.

Other publications being looked at are education publications.

 

Lead role for Learning and Teaching Scotland confirmed by Scottish Government

Following a review the Scottish Government have confirmed that Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS) will continue to play a key role in transforming education in Scotland. Their new core remit

builds on the organisation’s strong track record in delivering significant education reform, including its key role in Curriculum for Excellence and the implementation of Glow in all 32 local authorities.

core remit is:-

• Curriculum – to keep the curriculum 3 – 18 under review and provide advice and support, including quality assured resources, on the curriculum 3 – 18 to Ministers and the education system;


• Assessment – to provide advice and support to Ministers and the education system on assessment to support learning, with support from SQA as appropriate, and to work with SQA to ensure the availability of quality assured resources to support assessment;


• Glow and ICT in schools – to provide advice and support to Ministers and the education system on the use of ICT to support education, to establish and maintain technology standards for education, to ensure practitioners have easy online access to advice and support, including digital resources and to manage the provision of the national ICT infrastructure to support education, currently Glow, the LTS Online Service and the local authority Interconnect.

There are a number of other areas that LTS may work with other partners, perhaps leading on certain elements, to ensure effective provision, including research and intelligence gathering, professional development and the sharing of good practice. 

The project has worked with LTS on a number of information literacy related projects and it is good to see that LTS will continue to work with partners on "research and intelligence gathering, professional development and the sharing of good practice." The current project we are working with them on is very much based in these areas linked to the Curriculum for Excellence - ‘Real and Relevant – Information and Critical Literacy Skills for the 21st Century Learner’ (Early and First Level)

Survey of Scottish school librarians and their knowledge and use of Curriculum for Excellence.

As part of the work commissioned by Learning and Teaching Scotland Curriculum for Excellence Literacy Team the project is carrying out an online survey of Scottish school librarians and their knowledge and use of Curriculum for Excellence with regard to information literacy.

We are aware of some IL activities in this area:

• piloting and creating new activities


• mapping IL activities across the CfE Learning Experiences and Outcomes


• mapping IL activities to the four capacities

but would like to get a clearer more detailed picture of all activities to enable activities, concerns and ideas including ways to optimise school librarians efforts to support information literacy and the CfE to be shared with other school librarians, local authorities and LTS CfE Literacy Team in order that we can promote the valuable work / contributions school librarians are playing in CfE. 

We would therefore be grateful if school librarians and local authority departments responsible for education resources for schools within their area would take time to complete the online survey at SurveyMonkey which consists of 10 questions.   

The survey will run for six weeks until the 4th September 2009.

I will be sending this message out to email distribution lists and would be grateful if it can be circulated as widely as possible.

Thank you for your support in advance.

Christine

Meeting with Learning and Teaching Scotland / Curriculum for Excellence

On Wednesday December 10^th Christine and I, along with two of our Project partners, Cleo Jones, Principal Officer, Libraries & Resources at Edinburgh City Council and Ian McCracken, Learning Resources Centre Manager at Govan High School attended a meeting at Learning and Teaching Scotland’s (LTS) offices to discuss possible Project input to the development of the Curriculum for Excellence (CfE).  LTS was represented by Stuart Ritchie, Director of Curriculum at LTS, Fiona Norris, Team Leader, language and literacy and Ian Graham, Schools ICT Programme Director. Although we have been working with LTS for several years, including most recently the case studies of IL in secondary schools, this is the first opportunity we have had to engage with LTS staff at a policy level and the meeting opportunity was therefore very welcome.

We reviewed with LTS colleagues the work of the Project and Cleo and Ian explained some of their work which underlined the key role our partners play in our work. Fiona explained that she is keen to have a project involving school librarians.  Having reviewed what both sides have to offer and identified IL as sitting within the CfE Literacy team – Literacies for Learning, four action points emerged to be taken forward.

1.      A joint project is to be formulated with the CfE Literacy team. As a first stage Stuart and Fiona will discuss it and come back to us with firm proposals. Christine and I will meet with Fiona and colleagues early next year.

2.      We will work with the Literacy team on an IL proposal for presentations / workshops at the Scottish Learning Festival in September 2009

3.      There was some discussion about the presence of IL in different parts of the GLOW (the national intranet for Scottish schools) website which are not linked together. We will jointly look how at how Information Literacy should sit within Literacy

4.      Following a discussion on the need for CPD for teachers in IL we agreed that   online resources are required. Some funding will be available to support the development of this.

5.      A Literacy event is to take place at the Hilton on the 10^th March, 2009 at which the keynote speaker will be Professor David Booth from Toronto. We will discuss Project involvement in this with Fiona.

We will hear more from LTS on the implementation of these plans by mid January. 

PS Thanks to Rob Westwood for giving the blog a mention in the current issues of CILIP Gazette. Apparently we are up there with the Prime Minister and Stephen Fry.

Scottish Learning Festival - CfE Science and Technology

New for 2008 at the Scottish Learning Festival was Topic Surgeries which according to the programme would faciltate informal discussions with presenters lasting 12 minutes. Having identified Joyce Henderson, Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS) new Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) Technologies: The Draft Experiences as the one for me. I joined the surgery to find two teachers doing most of the talking about what they liked and didn't like about the outcomes, leaving no time for me to get a word in, in the 12 minute allocated time. I did however manage to have a quick word with Joyce and her colleague about information literacy, it's cross curricula relevance to CfE, the work of school librarians / learning resouce co-ordinators plus leave her with a copy of the national framework (Scotland).

Information I gleaned is that they (CfE) are going to be looking at skills, which will tie in nicely with the work we are doing and that following consultation / research carried out by Glasgow University (interim report is on the web) they are redoing the Science draft learning outcomes and experiences.