Participatory Librarianship and Learning

Participatory librarianship is a lens that posits learning as the primary mission of libraries. Every aspect of the library program comes back to Dr. David Lankes’s mantra, “It’s all about learning… there isn’t a part of the library that isn’t about learning. Learning is a collaborative conversation.” This framework emphasizes inquiry, promotes shared decision-making and ownership of the library vision and program, and honors knowledge construction and content creation. When learning is the focus of practice and programming, school librarians can function more effectively as instructional partners, information specialists, leaders, teachers, and program administrators in their school ecosystem.

The possibilities of the library as a learning space disrupt the traditional concept of the library as a data warehouse and, instead, establish the library as a site of participatory culture. Henry Jenkins, Professor of Communication, Journalism, and Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California, identifies five essential conditions conducive to participatory culture:

• Relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement
• Strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations with others
• Some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices
• Members believe that their contributions matter
• Members feel some degree of social connection with one another (at the least they care what other people think about what they have created) (Jenkins 2006).

This vision of librarianship is transforming The Unquiet Library at Creekview High School into a central participatory network for students and teachers. These five essential conditions provide the basis to “distribute” ownership of the library and make it a shared environment for both students and teachers. The library is learning centered and focused on scaffolding students’ ability to read, write, and create content through social interaction in physical and virtual learning spaces as well as multiple forms of media. The participatory culture is also conducive to helping students create personal learning networks and environments to cultivate resources for accessing, evaluating, and sharing information locally and with the world.

Participatory Culture

What does participatory librarianship and learning look like at The Unquiet Library? How does the librarian facilitate conversations for learning, and how are Jenkins’s five essential conditions for a participatory culture reflected in the library?

The progressive filtering policies of this school district provide students access to a multitude of cloud computing and social media tools for creating, sharing, and discussing ideas. Students and teachers use tools like Ning, Google Sites, Wikispaces,Wordpress, Evernote, Skype (with the assistance of the librarian), and Netvibes. These provide avenues for questioning, information sharing, reflection, networked learning, and exploration to connect not only with each other but with experts in the world outside of Creekview High School.

Students use these tools to express their insights on world issues. They may be Skyping with author Allan Stratton about the HIV epidemic in Africa, participating in a blogathon to help others in need, or sharing a presentation about the conflict in Sudan through video via the library YouTube channel. Students learn that they can spark conversations about local and global issues through the resources in the library. The conversations for learning created in this participatory environment are “eye-opening” for many students and transform their world view. One student, “Nicole,” wrote,

I can actually say that I have changed for the better. I have never had such a life changing research topic and this definitely has changed my life. I couldn’t believe how much this research project affected me. It definitely forced me to look at myself and made me ask myself what I could do better in my life to help impact other people. I feel that this research that I have done will make a huge difference to others because they too will see what they can do to help others. I hope that by reading my essay, others will decide to devote their time and life to helping those that are in need (Personal Communication, 2011).

Another student, “Ben,” reflected,

I realized that we all need to be more aware of things going on in places other than our backyard. We should be concerned with the well-being of everyone and not just the people within our borders. I think I, in particular, should be more aware of other countries and try to help in any way I can. I’ve heard the phrase “it only takes one person to make a difference” my whole life. But, I’ve never considered myself to be that one person. And I’ve just been waiting for someone else to do something. I believe that most Americans are like that. However that needs to change (Personal Communication, 2011).

Alternate expressions of learning and knowledge are also encouraged through multimedia Web 2.0 tools like Glogster, Xtranormal, VoiceThread, and Masher. These tools are also used to create multi-genre research projects, virtual collections of learning artifacts created in a diverse range of mediums that represent students’ key insights and perspectives from their research experiences. Whether students are composing alternate “texts” through traditional forms such as art, poetry, songs, games, diary entries, one-act plays, or character or event recipes, or through new media creations such as videos, interactive electronic posters, fictional Facebook pages (created with Publisher and PowerPoint templates), they have a diverse menu of choices. Students can create content as part of a virtual learning portfolio that they publish and share not only with their peers but with a global audience.

The librarian’s collaborative partnerships with tenth and eleventh grade English teachers and students have also provided ways for students to explore the art of poetry by learning how to compose poems based on photographs. They participate in small-group poetry readings that are recorded and synced to slidedecks featuring the touchstone photos that inspired each student’s poem. Publication of these poems and student response interviews via the library’s blog, Slideshare, and YouTube channels, allow the students’ poetic art to be shared with the school and the community. In addition, student poetry is featured annually during National Poetry Month on the “poetry clotheslines” throughout the library .

Collaborations with members of the school photography club, art teacher, and the librarian have provided another way to focus on the talents of Creekview High School students. Photo galleries and contests throughout the school year are held in the school library, and students can discuss the art of photography and enjoy seeing their work featured as an essential part of the physical library environment. Creations from art classes are displayed in the library throughout the school year, and the annual school art show to highlight and honor the talents of Creekview students is another library event. Student artwork is also showcased on virtual learning spaces, including the library’s Flickr photostream, blog, Slideshare channel, and YouTube channel.

These learning experiences help students, teachers, and librarians engage in formal and informal conversations for learning through multiple mediums.

As students and teachers engage in conversations for learning through the library program, the librarian is no longer the central expert figure, but instead, becomes a true partner with students and teachers.

One way the library sparks conversations for learning and information literacy is through the research pathfinders or subject guides that are created by the library in collaboration with teachers and students for every research project. These research guides, hosted through LibGuides, ignite discussions about authority and evaluation of traditional and emerging information sources ( http://theunquietlibrary.libguides.com [updated link: http://creekview.libguides.com/index.php]). They also serve as a model for the students’ subject guide creations Netvibes.

How can students become information experts? A collaboration with English teacher, Susan Lester, and the librarian provides a way to introduce Netvibes, a digital platform to display information sources, tools for learning and research, and learning artifacts to students. Netvibes provides students a means for creating an information dashboard for organizing all of their information sources (RSS feeds from blogs, online news sources, or saved database searches). This vision of students creating their own subject guides or information dashboards is inspired by Howard Rhein-gold’s concept of “infotention.” He states, in a comment posted to the City Lights Blog on September 1, 2009, “Knowing how to put together intelligence dashboards, news radars, and information filters from online tools like persistent search and RSS is the external technical component of information literacy. Knowing what to pay attention to is a cognitive skill that steers and focuses the technical knowledge of how to find information worth your attention".

Students like Netvibe’s extensive gallery of widgets and diverse range of themes for a custom look and feel; students also find it easy to add content and embed more types of Web code to showcase their learning tools and artifacts, such as videos. While students are provided a list of required elements for their Netvibes information portals/learning dashboards, they still have flexibility and creative license in choosing additional content. These information dashboards help students construct individualized research guides that can be easily shared with their classmates.

As students become fluent in the use of these learning tools and platforms, they can assist the librarian and teacher in instruction. Sometimes this sharing of knowledge is formal as the librarian may ask student “experts” to help their peers with a skill such as NoodleTools. In other instances, the effort may begin spontaneously, such as when students show their peers how to use a tool like Evernote or Diigo. The librarian can use these spontaneous moments as a learning activity for classes and share them on the library blog. Students are also encouraged to share their opinions and knowledge via the library blog and YouTube Channel. Students can become guest bloggers and publish book reviews, or they can participate in a video interview and share a book recommendation or gaming tip.

Another powerful example of “novices” becoming the “experts” is evident in a “participatory professional development” session led by the librarian this past fall with the help of five fellow teachers who discussed the use of blogs, wikis, and Web 2.0 content-creation tools. These teachers shared their collaborative learning projects facilitated by the librarian, the positive outcomes, and the challenges they encountered. Each teacher was passionate, honest, and eloquent as he/she shared the impact on student learning, tips for replicating or adapting their projects, ideas for future collaborative learning experiences, and how to implement new strategies for teaching and learning. The workshop generated discussion and questions that extended the session an additional twenty minutes beyond the planned hour, yet not a single attendee left early!

These teachers articulated and shared their experiences and are now budding experts who can support other teachers. They can help other teachers who want to design innovative learning experiences for students that meld together project-based learning, inquiry, collective knowledge building, and multiple literacies. The teachers’ perspectives were the most powerful testimonial that could be provided for other faculty members. The professional development session led to new collaborative partnerships and brought more teachers and students into conversations for learning through the library.

In summary, school librarians as trainers and instructors should consider inviting participation from learners and enlist their assistance in leading instruction as they gain skill, knowledge, insights, and confidence. This, in turn, can inspire others in the classes or workshops. What better demonstration of application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation can be asked for when those taught can help create new conversations for learning with others?

One way the librarian invites participation and honors the perspective of students is by sharing ownership of assessment. Conversations for learning and self-reflection are supported by requiring students to be active participants in formative and summative assessments of their work. In the class Media 21, each student maintains a learning blog throughout the year, and blog posts are a medium for reflection and thinking. In addition, students use their blogs to share how they are mastering AASL Standards that have been explicitly shared with them as learning benchmarks. By blogging how they are achieving these standards as they think, create, share, and grow, students have a more intentional and purposeful awareness of these standards and how their work demonstrates a growing mastery.

During the presentation for the one unit, Zen Guidelines, students had the opportunity to provide ongoing assessment of each other’s work in a constructive way. Their handwritten feedback was collected and compiled into a document posted on the Google class site as well as Slideshare, a free document hosting/share Web site. Another tool used to engage student self-assessment was Google Forms; this assessment tool provides students a more private space to engage in self-assessment. For example, this Google Form was embedded into daily class agenda on the class Google Site as a medium for reflecting on their class presentations. This kind of assessment not only requires the student to examine the strengths and areas of improvement in their presentation, but it also allows the teachers to easily analyze the data collected from students in a spreadsheet format. Students also engaged in peer review of their classmates’ digital learning portfolios through a written feedback form as well as via the comments feature of each students’ portfolio page. These assessments not only engage students in conversations about what they have learned, but students know their feedback is valued and incorporated into the ongoing tweaking of assignments.

Student and teacher input are also a prominent element of the monthly multimedia reports. The monthly reports feature interviews with students and teachers as well as videos of student learning activities. In addition, each report features a photo slideshow highlighting library events and experiences. A page for each multimedia monthly report is now being incorporated to highlight student work. The participation of students and teachers in monthly reports helps tell the story of the library program in a powerful and meaningful way to the school community and world at large. It shows how the school library focus is on learning and learning experiences.

Conclusion

A climate of participation, risk-taking, acceptance of “messy” learning, and inquiry in the school library creates conversations for fostering organic, responsive, relevant, and dynamic school library programs. When the school librarian is a partner for learning, the boundaries between the traditional classroom and library space become one shared learning space. The strength and relevance of today’s school libraries lie in the relationships and sense of community that school librarians build within the school community. The future of school libraries does not lie in the latest trends, most expensive technologies, or newest facilities, but instead is shaped and transformed by school librarians who take a participatory and inquiry-driven stance focused on learning.

Originally published in School Library Monthly 27, no.8 (May-June 2011). Links updated August 2016.