Activating the Reading Brain

So, in my previous post about mapping the reading brain (here) I talked about some of the research I had undertaken in determining what it takes in an individual for them be a successful reader. Similar to my idea of a hierarchy of reading (here) but instead of being about what we can do to make reading fully integrated it is about what must be happening within an individual child for them to become a successful reader.

 

Since publishing this post I had a number of schools approach me looking at how this might be something they could use and implement in their schools. I have had some really good, positive conversations with SLTs and literacy coordinators and SENCos  on the things that they might be able to do in their schools to help every child become a successful reader. It’s also sobering to see that it is both primary and secondary schools that feel this model can be used to further the amount and quality of reading of their students.

In looking at how a model such as this might be able to be used within a school we’ve taken each of the areas and looked at the types of things that might need to occur for that section to be activated within the student.  This could be an activity or something else that is the spur for this section. In working with these schools we’ve also discovered that there are some things that they are already doing and thinking about but that these aren’t as explicit as they should be.

 

There is no particular place to start with a model like this as all the elements are just as important as each other however I’m going to begin with the knowledge section as I believe this to be about the bedrock of creating successful readers.

 

When talking about Knowledge the part this plays in creating successful readers can be seen in the choices our weaker readers make. Prior knowledge of a subject gives an understanding and comprehension that cannot be underestimated. It is this velcro, this stuff that we as readers use to turn the ideas of text into an understanding of what those ideas are. The full intentions of the author, with this understanding which we can only infer, become ‘laid bare’ in the text for us. This is true of pretty much all fiction where the author doesn’t make everything explicit, it is a vehicle, and a needed one in fiction otherwise all stories would be extremely tedious. Weaker readers, when they do select books, and this is also true for reluctant readers, choose books that they have an understanding and knowledge of. So for instance the sport mad weak reading boys pick football books. OK a bit of a generalisation however you can see the truth in that reading to those students is something that is hard anyway so they might as well read a book that they get, that they understand the terminology and can infer meaning from.

This knowledge though can only come from having a life. From having experiences as we grow up, from coming across as many different things as possible. You can see where this is heading as I’m sure you know from your own school where a student has clearly lacked this (for whatever reason) and the impact it has on their reading. So what can be do, how can we activate this in a student and help them maintain to this to become a successful reader?

To start with we need to get an understanding of our students as individuals. What do they like, what are their interests? We need to build profiles of them as readers linking together the soft, non cognitive areas of attitudes (my gold dust in reading improvement) and also their abilities within reading such as reading ages etc. We need to make sure that we are providing a range of resources for students to be able to access. Not just different types of books but also different ways of accessing reading. We need to help students create and have new experiences, to build upon their velcro and to give them more of that ‘stuff’ that’s going to help them make connections.

After Knowledge comes Curiosity. For a student to be successful in reading they need to have in them the want to read. This is really the fundamental of the non-cognitive skills with the leading light being that of attitude. If a student does not want to read, no matter how proficient they are, they will not do it. This attitude leads to a curiosity to find out more, to know more, to read more. It is with questioning and wonder that a student will become successful in achieving this but how can we achieve this in our schools? How can we foster this with our students? The first thing is to truly understand a student’s weakness is and the reason why their attitude is as it is. Is there something that is holding them back or something that has led to them having a negative attitude. By analysing and assessing these soft skills, or fundamentally the non-cognitive skills we can begin to put things into place to make an improvement. Whether this knowledge needs to specific interventions or an ability for us to promote different things in different ways to the individual depends on many things: how we work, our contexts in our schools, the time we have to work with students etc but the knowledge that we gain from doing this tracking leads us to what we can do.

Another important thing is to make sure that the school is promoting and disseminating a love of reading for pleasure. Now, in my opinion this is best done through a library and librarian where all types of reading is allowed and celebrated, where reading is promoted across the school and in every classroom and a culture is built where reading is not only celebrated but is also accepted as the norm. This article doesn’t aim to say whether a library is the best place for this to happen: there are schools where a library and librarian is in place and this doesn’t happen and also schools where a library and librarian aren’t present where it does happen. For me, a library is the most obvious and visible place (the thing with reading is that it needs to be visible) however I do not wish to ascribe to schools the method which they should use (maybe another article at another time).

 

The next step on our way to activating the reading brain in our individuals in schools is all about cognition. We have talked already about the importance of non-cognitive skills and especially that of attitude. But alongside this, if we are to truly activate an individual into reading, we need to give them the skills to be able to physically read. For so many students this is the backbone to comments that start ‘I don’t like reading’. What is behind this is the fundamental ‘I don’t like the process of reading I have been through’ or ‘I don’t like what I associate reading to be’. What is the student at a reading crossroads and what can you do about it knowing what the barriers are?

Is reading given a chance in the curriculum across all subjects or is it only ever associated with English. Are opportunities given to promote the benefits of reading and the enjoyment that reading can give as well as giving a positive interpretation of what reading actually is?

This is where the ‘literacy’ element of reading comes into play. This is where the school needs to promote the links between literacy and good teaching and learning across the whole school. In a classroom where a teacher not only understands the weaknesses some of our students face concerning literacy but has strategies in place to help them, differentiate etc and allow them access to the learning the promotion of reading skills is explicit. Knowing that some students need reading chunked as they process words slowly, or that they have trouble decoding so bullet pointing reading can be of real benefit, is extremely useful for both the teacher and the student. This is what literacy skills across the curriculum really entails and what ultimately makes a difference.

To make this happen though we need to track the students to know this and to be able to share this information. We also need to think about how we can use our knowledge of our students’ weaknesses to be able to help them in different ways. Do we think this is going to be via 121 intervention. What is the benefit of this? Are we taking students out of lessons they enjoy/are capable of, just to give them more of what they know they cannot do? Or, are we trying to improve the quality of teaching in our school so instead of having an intervention for 1 hour a week extra they are receiving help and guidance in all their lessons so 25+ hours a week?

 

 

Finally, the last piece of the jigsaw that is activating the reading brain is that of grit. How we can have young people sustain reading? How can we keep them on the reading curve and make sure that when they fall off they get straight back on? Young people need to have this resilience built into them around reading if they are to be successful but what things can we do to help make this happen? This is where we need to think back again to perception to those ‘soft’ non-cognitive skills, to young people’s perception around reading. We need to continually praise and challenge students with their reading and there needs to be someone in school is invested solely in the students’ reading outcomes. Do you have someone like this in your school? Do you have someone that is committed to engaging young people into reading and wants them to continually improve. More importantly do they this under the guise of allowing students the ability to see that they can read and that they can enjoy reading?

 

In activating the reading brain in our young people we need to have all these things going on all the time. As a school we need to realise exactly what it is that is stopping from young people from reading in the first place and then put things in place to break down the barriers that exist. We are all capable of being successful at reading though some need more support than others. Fundamentally, these are the things that make a difference. These are the points that when encouraged, nurtured and grown will have an impact and will create readers.

Inspirational Libraries don’t need lots of money

It’s brilliant to see pictures and write-ups of school libraries in the national press, hell anywhere really and the Guardian, with it’s reach is a great place for it to be (see here for the article)  However, it seems nowadays inspirational school libraries have to go hand in hand with lots of money, new buildings and refits and most likely be part of a new build academy. But when we look at the figures this only accounts for such a tiny amount of schools. It’s also worth noting that a building that looks ‘fresh and innovative’ doesn’t actually make an inspirational one it takes a lot more and the a lot of this comes from the person in charge. In the article some of the schools mentioned have made their librarians redundant and have removed large amounts of stock, putting them in the school’s basement.

The majority of schools don’t have the money to create what is now becoming seen as inspirational. With tight budgets and bigger restrictions on them, the loss of Building Schools for the Future money and too many school buildings needing desperate repairs (most schools in the country are 1960’s builds that weren’t meant to last past 25 years) there is no money for schools to spend on resourcing a library.

If we’re not careful we’re going to find ourselves in a position where librarians and schools know they can’t replicate this view of ‘inspirational’ so do not even try. However there is so much they can do and achieve on a limited budget and inspiration doesn’t need a rebuild or tens of thousands of pounds. What it really needs is very different and what inspirational can be is just as different too.

Over the last year we achieved something akin to this though our library space (note we are still a library as really every other name given to the space is what a library actually is). We are a state funded school and a truly comprehensive one. We take students from a large locality, have a pan of 225 and a roll of around 1400 with 25 feeder primary schools. We focus on the more academic subjects rather than BTECs and do not attempt to do anything ‘creative’ with our curriculum and learning to cater for low aspiration/ability (eg project based learning etc) we expect the best from our students regardless of their ability and adjust the support to allow them to excel.

The library is an extremely busy space. We have upwards of 100 students using it for a multitude of things on a break and a lunch and spend a lot of time listening to and working with students in understanding how they want to use the space and what they require it to be. Even though the work our library has had done on it was completed last year and over the summer the planning has been going on a lot longer through these discussions with students and staff. We’ve also made sure that we’ve kept abreast of wider school issues such as the impact of an increased pan, the need for more resources etc etc. All of this has enabled us to put a case forward for different bits to be completed.

One of these first things was to encourage the school to see the benefit of employing 1-2-1 tutors through the Pupil Premium funding as members of staff rather than agency staff to work with weak literacy and numeracy students. Alongside this we argued that the library would be a good base for them but that they would need an office space to work from. Coupled with expanding our computer room and creating a larger ‘research room’ with new technologies available to students we argued this would enable larger classes to use the space and solve the problem the school was having of finding bookable computer spaces. We even doubled the argument by stating that this would help fill the need, that had been grown from an increase in 6th form numbers, of supporting year 12&13 students during free periods with research help and resources.

In knowing that these were issues within the school we were able to argue the case that this small restructure of existing space rather than expensive alternatives was a much better option. This resulted in the school bidding for a small amount of money from the DFE (that all business managers should know about) to do a small amount of cosmetic work to expand the computer room and also create an office space. We already had 14 computers in this room and knew we didn’t want to spend money on any more plus laptops weren’t a route we wanted to go down. Laptops require more upkeep, need replacing more often than desktops and have too many issues related to them that would cause more admin and expense than was necessary. Instead we opted to introduce ipads, and other tablets into the room so classes and students could have a mix of equipment to access. We also knew from our own research that students who used ipads were more likely to use a number of information literacy strategies and skills than using a desktop or laptop as they could not copy and paste information or print straight from the web. Tablets require the students to make notes on what they are searching for and so their learning is much richer because of this. This has had a very positive impact on students’ skills as well as the quality of the work they are producing. These devices we paid for via a bid to our PTFA who were more than willing to help out with such a project that would enhance the learning of the students.

This wasn’t the end of the improvements either as we also put together a proposal of how we can maximise the space of the library and the stock we have. This was by removing our very old shelving units and purchasing some more durable, adaptive ones that could be moved and repositioned. This, for us, was a really big factor. The way we run our library is led by the students and staff that use it. We adapt as much as we can to their needs and how they want the space to be used. By having furniture that allows us to do this means that we continue to do this but with even more success. Again, we were trying to do this on a tight budget that would be feasible to achieve.

The shelving also had to be reflective of how we required the space in the library to be used so not only did we need it to be movable we also needed it to be placed in the room in such a way that it was conducive to how students used it. Previously the room was ‘split’ into different areas by the shelving however students wanted to have a stronger feeling of space with more of a flow. They wanted to have more individual seating for reading and they also wanted to be able to read with their own devices as well as the option to access devices from the library. A lot of the comments we had from students also revolved around the ‘feel of a bookshop but with the practicalities of a library’.

For our non-fiction books we had also been trialing a new way to organise these. I’ve written posts about this before but the idea is to not shelve books via dewey but in the way that students want to access them: so via the subject, the year group and the term that they are being studied.  What this mean though was that we also needed to think about how we could organise these books on shelving. Traditional shelving wouldn’t work as we wanted it to, so we needed to be a little bit more creative with what we were purchasing. We purchased all our furniture from Peters Books Suppliers in Birmingham. Not only do they have a fantastic range of furniture but their service and support is exactly what you would want. We even had a representative, free of charge, come and talk to us about his thoughts and advice based on what we said we required. This was invaluable as having an ‘outsiders’ opinion helped guide our own thoughts.

The result has been that we have been able to transform our library on a very limited budget. We accessed pots of money available to state funded schools, made sure we kept up-to-date with school issues where we could offer a solution and importantly kept true to what our students and staff wanted and how they wanted to use the library. We have been able to create what our users call inspirational and we haven’t done it with a rebuild or a load of money and we have also created the library space we wanted rather than have someone else design and dictate a space that might look good but is completely impractical.

So when you read these articles and look at these pictures and think that you never do this to your space remember that inspiration can be a number of things and that with intelligence and smart thinking you can make your own space the place you want it be without spending a fortune.

Make them read more with the anchoring effect

Continuing our look at how psychology can have a positive impact on reading and libraries this post looks at how we can have students reading more books using the anchoring effect.

The anchoring effect is a cognitive bias and typically, when it comes to psychology, it’s used a lot in retail!

In shops they use the anchoring effect a lot to make you think you’re getting a better deal than you actually are. For instance, if you go into a shop and see a great pair of jeans that you’d love to have you immediately look at the label and see they’re £100. ‘Too much’ you think and you put them back. The sales assistant quickly siddles over and tells you it’s your lucky day as the store is having a 40% off day. ‘Brilliant’ you think, you can now buy the jeans and feel like you got a great deal. Another example is when you barter the car salesman down from the £25,000 list price to £22,000 what a great deal and what a haggler you must be? The answer is actually no. You’re not. You see what’s happening here is the anchoring effect. As its so hard to think about the value of things you need some sort of cue or reference point. That comes in the form of the price price you are given. You see, as human beings , we are too easily influenced and put too much stock in the first piece of information we are given. The £100 jeans are just too much but when we’re told they’re actually only £60 in comparison to the £100 they’re a really good deal. But the question is would we have paid the £60 if this had been the initial price?

So knowing that we are influence d by the first piece of information we are given in terms of the anchoring effedt, how can we use this in our libraries and with our young people to encourage more reading?

One thing we’ve been working on is how this might look in terms of challenging young people to read a certain number of books through the school year.

We used our yr8 students as a test group and gave them, at the beginning of the year an assembly on reading. We gave them an example of an ordinary student, one that some of them knew from older siblings and one that we knew was relatively ‘cool’. We described him as someone who surprisingly (to some) enjoyed reading. We gave them the figure of 20 books a year that he usually read. Not loads, but as we were really aiming this test at our weaker, or reluctant readers it was a believable number (the student in question knew all about this having given us their permission to try this – they were now a sixth former studying psychology!)

This was our anchor. 20 books a year. We followed by explaining that of course we didn’t expect everyone to be able to reach this amount but to honestly think about how many they might be able to achieve. We told them that even half would be a fantastic achievement. We then asked them to write down the number they felt they could achieve in their planners.

When looking through their estimations in the following weeks it was interesting to see that many of them had put closer to the 10 mark. It was even more interesting to see that there was a large number of students that had put close to ten that I knew would previously had said none or very few. Now, whether it was the assembly and the anchoring effect that had caused this and whether the students do actually read as many as they thought it would be interesting to see. When talking to the students it certainly feels they are reading more but we will continue to remind them of their thoughts and estimations throughout the year.

I’m sure there are other ways that the anchoring effect might be used to encourage reading and we will certainly try and find as many as possible!

Stats and facts create readers

Carrying on this week’s look at how psychology can have an impact in creating readers and improving the use of libraries I want to have a look at hindsight bias.

The idea behind hindsight bias is the belief that we as individuals, when confronted with new information, treat it as though we already knew this. This is instead of the misconception that we look back and see how arrogant and wrong we used to be.

The reason we do this is because we edit our memories to make sure that we don’t look or feel stupid. Numerous studies have taken place to prove this effect one of which having been undertaken in Oslo where students were given a number of proverbs including things such as ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’. When asked about these all the students comments that of course this was obvious. It’s just common sense. The study then gave the same students another set of proverbs including ‘if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck then it probably is a duck.’ Again asked about this the students again agreed that it was obvious and just common sense. So what is it then? What’s true? And what’s going on?

Hindsight bias is a very relation to availability heuristics which states that you make decisions based on the information you have at hand whilst ignoring all the other information that might be out there. What this means is that you make decisions based on what you now know rather than what you used to know.

So how can we use this information in our schools and libraries to take advantage of this and create more readers.

Well, to me, what this means is that we need think about how we can use the numerous studies and evidence around reading and position this around our schools. If young people are coming up against this kind of research, telling them the positive effects of reading, then this is the information they have at hand. If these appear in all classrooms, in all corridors then students will regularly be told that reading is a positive thing.

This means we need to think about our advertising in places outside of the normal library space. We need to think outside of the four walls of the library and make sure that students are have this positive reading statements to help them make the decision that reading is going to be a good thing for them.

If we can do this then we continue to use psychology to improve reading and library usage.

Prime your library to gain readers

Further to my previous post about using psychology to improve reading I thought I’d continue looking at ways in which we could use these theories to improve reading and our libraries.

One area that I love the idea of is priming. It comes from the misconception that you are actually aware when you are being influenced by something and how this affects your behaviours. In reality we are completely unaware of the constant nudging we receive from the ideas that are formed in our subconscious mind.

My favourite illusionist/mentalist is Derren Brown and it is this that he relies on so much to perform a lot of his work. For any of those that have watched his shows I was particularly taken with how he used this knowledge in the Hero at 30,000 feet episode. In this he created a belief in an ordinary young man that he had the potential to seize opportunities and be better than he ever thought was possible. Derren uses this gentle nudging of the sub conscious all the way through the episode. If you haven’t watched it I would certainly urge you to seek it out.

This is happening all the time everywhere we go and there are certain people and organisations that know and use this to their advantage. Advertisers are a prime example but so are places such as casino’s, probably the best example. What they do so well is to prime their customers by playing certain sounds very loud. As soon as you walk into a casino you are blasted with a cacophony of postive happy sounds. These are sounds of people being happy, sounds of money coming out of machines, of people winning. All of this gives the customer a feeling that they too can win and encourages them to want to be part of that feeling.

So the question is, if everyone else is using this knowledge can we, on libraries do the same thing and what would it look like?

The answervo think, or at least an answer is to think along the ideas and the premise as t o why this works. The users are being made to feel good about themselves in each example. The noises and sights of a casino are there to be a positive thing: lots of flashing lights and happy sounds draw the users in and with advertisers it is the little nudges on the sub conscious that work. What if we combined both these in our libraries? I don’t mean play sounds of people winning or being happy because our goal isn’t to have people spending money. Our goal is to have people wanting to use our spaces and to want to pick up books and read. So why not play noises, sounds that make our users happy and then use the sub conscious nudging of advertising whilst their ‘guard is down’ to encourage them to read?

One thing that we, and other libraries do is play music through the day. I’ve always been fascinated by the effect this has on young people, especially when you look at the types of music you play. This interests me so much that we actually undertook some research.

We don’t play classical music, as some places do, we instead pick a certain type of easy listening, current music. This is mainly indie based with a hint of folk for softer it’s softer tone. So for instance over the last couple of weeks we have played Ben Howard, Mumford and Sons, Paulo Nutini, Damien Rice, Amy MacDonald, George Ezra, Jason Mraz and Kate Walsh. A good mix of a certain kind of music. We wanted to find out what impact the music was having on students so we decided that at random some days we would play music, some days we wouldn’t and we would monitor a couple of different things.
1. No of students in the library
2. How much work they were doing
3. Their happiness, gauged by simply asking if they were happy today!
4. How they were working i.e. in groups, on their own etc

We did those over the course of a half term, 8 weeks to have a long enough time and also to pick different days so we weren’t always not playing music on the same days. Now, there are of course so many different sets of possibilities, reasons and variables as to why we might have got the results we did. It might have nothing to do with the music, or it might have everything to do with it but we found a couple of interesting things.

1. There was no link to the number of students using the library. We averaged around 80 students at breaktime and 120 at lunch(these totals were taken at the same time each day of how many students were in the library at that time so we may have had many more use the library over the course of these times).

2. We noticed a vast increase in the amount of work being completed when the music was playing. This was frpm our ‘gut’ feeling but also in asking students how much work they had done what there answers were.

3. Students regularly commented that there happier when the music playing. We made no comment to them about the music at all during these times, just asked the same question on each day.

4. There seemed to be no relation to how students worked and the music. We thought that we might see more individual work with the noise from the music stopping groups from talking, however this wasn’t the case.

Other things that we noticed though was that the noise level from students was lower when the music played. We don’t have a silent library policy but the students used the music as a self regulator always staying below that of the music level. Funnily enough on days when we had music playing we noticed the students that had used us during the day came back after school, whereas this happened a lot less on those days when we didn’t play music.

The final and probably most interesting thing we discovered was that on the days we played music more books were being borrowed, both fiction and non fiction. The library felt like it had a much better vibe on these days too that the music was somehow doing something to everyone’s mood.

It was certainly an experiment worth taking and one that justifies why we play music and why we choose the music we do. So maybe this is psychology having a positive effect on reading and our library. Or maybe it’s just a load of rubbish!

Add some attractiveness to your reading

So, I’ve been reading a lot recently. More than usual, which means a lot!

I’ve been reading up slightly different things though from the usual research and fantastic children’s books on the market. I’ve been ‘going back to my routes’ and looking at lots of psychology and learning research. Having had a carthartic emptying of very old boxes (those ones that never get opened after you move) I stumbled across some old papers and this led me to thinking about changes from those research papers to, well to god knows where! However, I did end up reading about the idea of the sunk cost fallacy.

This is what lots of companies use, especially app designers, to get their users to continually buy and spend money. A perfect example of this are apps/games that allow you to buy coins or equivalent to make the games run quicker. One example would be farmville where the user can quite happily play the game for free but only at a certain speed. You need to wait to build up experience until you unlock different , better things that enhance the game play. However by purchasing extra coins you can make things move faster. The thing, that the developers know will happen, is that users will ‘sink’ money into the game to move it along faster. Once they have done this the user will start to feel they have to continue putting time, effort and money into the game otherwise they will see their previous investment as a waste. This only ever increases over time with the more time and money put in the more likely the user is to continue playing.

It is something the developers are more than aware of and the exact reason why they design games as they do. This got me thinking that there must be ways that we can us e this exact same knowledge in terms of reading in our school. How can we make young people feel this way towards reading? Is a way that we can make students feel that they need to continue reading based on how much they have already sunk into it?

This had me thinking along the lines of my reading brain and hierarchy of reading models ( here and here). The more you think about it the more you see that actually this is something that can easily be achieved. If we want to keep students on the reading curve then we can certainly help them to see that the effort they have already invested is a good, important thing. By engaging them into reading and breaking down barriers to change attitudes we can make reading possible for our weak readers and by getting this ‘buy-in’ we can use the sunk cost fallacy to our advantage.

Once this became apparent I started to question whether there were other psychological elements that might just be useful in terms of reading.

I’m going to be looking at some of these over the next few weeks but one that immediately took my eye was that we are more likely to believe information if it is presented to us by someone attractive. We trust beauty more and this is significantly increased when the person is telling us bad news. So this got me thinking maybe we need to get more attractive people working in libraries and telling people to read. Or at least getting attractive people to advertise reading in school. So maybe we need to try and add a bit of attractiveness to reading to get more young people to buy into it!

To all the information literacy specialists

Dear Information Literacy Specialist,

Are you an information literacy specialist in your school? Do you teach information literacy skills to your students? Do you consider this to be your role?

Have you ever thought that your insistence on doing this or being this is actually having a negative and detrimental effect on the teaching of information literacy across your school?

Let’s look at the facts and numbers. Surely a model that all schools should be looking for with the teaching of any kind of skills is that it is in every classroom. On the whole students are lazy so for them to gain a understanding of certain skills they need to access them on a regular basis. If we want them to use these skills without thinking when they come across situations in which they are needed we need to make sure that they become second nature to students.
I think most sensible people would find this hard to disbute.

So, if you teach information literacy skills are your students getting a diet of this on a daily basis, because surely it must have to happen on a daily basis for these skills to become natural? And by this I of course mean all students not just that you are teaching the skills regularly but one student will only have have this type of teaching once a month or so. I also mean that it needs to happen to all students all the time not just intensively with one year group , like yr7 or yr12. Even if you work with some classes and ‘teach’these skills ad hoc that’s all it ever is.

Surely the only answer to these questions can be no. If you’re the specialist and you’re ‘teaching’ it there is no way you can do this. If you have 8 form groups in each year 7-13 and 5 periods in a day that’s 280 classes each day, so are you in all these classes embedding these skills? Clearly not.

So the question then becomes is your insistence on you being the information literacy specialist in school having a negative effect on the teaching of information literacy? Is your precious nature of this being part of your role giving off a negative view of what information literacy is? When you drill even further are you actually the best person to be teaching information literacy skills? This answer I would have to say is a big no. For if you ‘teach’ it then students will only ever view it as a skill that is separate from everything else just because your teaching it, this is regardless of how much you can actually do and how many classes you can be in.

The best model is that every teacher is an information literacy specialist. That every teacher, in their lessons is teaching these skills on a lesson by lesson basis. Then all students not only get a fantastic diet of these skills on a regular basis but they see how these skills fit together in all their subjects. This cannot be achieved any other way.

So are you the person that is stopping information literacy skills being an integral part of the classroom? Is it your precious nature that only you can ‘teach’ these skills that is stopping students from having access to them and them becoming ingrained in their learning? Are you making these skills so far removed from the classroom with the view that only you are the specialist?

Why not alllow all teachers to be information literacy specialists and allow them to do the things they are good at, teaching, while you enable them to do so by leading them. Why not let others, especially the students see that they can be specialists and that it isn’t something only one person in the school can be?

Are you the person stopping this from happening or are you enabling it to grow?

Why school libraries are killing school libraries

I’m actually going to start this potentially controversial post by expanding on the title and adding in that it is also school librarians that are part of the reason why school libraries are a dying breed.

There have been so many discussions recently about the fact that school libraries should be statutory, that Ofsted should and must visit a school library as part of their inspection and that the reason why school libraries are dying is because there is not enough support from senior leaders in education and schools.

(Before I begin the entirety of this post I want to mention that I feel this kind of outcome isn’t necessarily what we should be aiming for. What we should require in schools is for there to be some part of it that is dedicated to all the things that a library can/should achieve but not necessarily  dictate to schools what that is. Let’s be honest a school that has a great librarian and a library doesn’t always equate to one that has an impact. But let’s not dictate to a school, ala M.Gove exactly what that should look like especially when we’re not so clear ourselves what this looks like… )

Well, I’m going to take a slightly different tact on this and suggest that maybe the reason why there seems to be so little support for school libraries outside of school libraries is that there is a mass of uncertainty as to what a school library actually is. This apparent opaqueness, in my opinion, is perpetuated by those that run libraries. For instance how many schools actually have a space that is called a school library? Ok, they might have a space that runs as a school library but is it actually known as that or has it been given some other name in an attempt to redefine it as something else such as an LRC or the many other, numerous, ‘rebrands’ that go on in schools?

For me, and remember this is my opinion, the reason people rebrand their school libraries is to change people’s perception about what a school library is. The belief is that the term library has so many connotations and so, by renaming the space, we can change the perception. In actual fact this is probably the worst thing that you can do. What you should be doing, to change the perception, is change the ethos and behaviour of what goes on in the library. You can change the name but if the behaviours persist then you’ve just destroyed people’s perception of that name as well as that of library. What you should be doing is changing those behaviours to make sure that the perception itself changes. The change of behaviour results in the change of perception not the other way around.

A case in point is that of the ‘learning commons’ a name that is starting to become ‘on-trend’ and synonymous with supposed forward thinking academies. Unfortunately their interpretation of the model (which in itself is full of contradictions) is basic in the slightest. In fact by even calling something a learning commons you are defeating the purpose of what it really is. Having spend many hours researching and attending conferences etc that have covered the premise of a learning commons I feel confidently able to point out that a learning commons comes about when a library adapts itself to the 21st Century and most importantly to it’s users. Stemming from the 1990’s and the digital commons, where spaces were available for customers to use this new technology (that wasn’t readily available in the home) a learning commons is more about an ethos behind how you run your service and what you offer your users, depending on their needs. It most certainly isn’t about giving something the name of a learning commons and expecting everyone to accept your space as the learning commons model. Remember you need to change the behaviours first.

When ‘drilling’ down to what a learning commons is and how it can be used in schools you see that a school isn’t necessarily the best place. Larger universities and colleges are more suited to the more formal model of a learning commons as they (the learners) are going to more likely be undertaking self organised learning where they require the space to be adaptable to them. In a school however the majority of the time students are undertaking  directed learning in a dedicated space, i.e. the classroom. They are only ever going to need a ‘learning commons’ space for self organised learning during break/lunch and after school. However, if you were to take the learning commons ethos, which it appears differs from the formal model, then it isn’t just about one space in a education environment. All students need this ethos perpetuated throughout their learning lives and embedded and interwoven in their classrooms.

It appears, in the numerous articles available on learning commons, that to achieve a learning commons a library needs to be responsive and adapted to it’s user needs. To be reflective on how they might need to use the space and to allow this to happen. A common in these terms is similar to that of the local village green, a place to congregate. Really what they are saying is that a learning commons is achieved when a library evolves and stops being a static model that just holds and organises books and information. This is a really jarring point for me. It relies on the belief that a school library doesn’t do this already. That it doesn’t respond to it’s users needs, that it doesn’t adapt, evolve and change as technology and needs do. This, for me, then begs the question who is giving people this impression, for someone must be otherwise there wouldn’t need to be a ‘model’ renamed as something else telling us how to evolve our school libraries. The only people that this can be are the librarians themselves, surely?

So, not only do I have an issue with the learning commons in itself I also have an issue as to why anyone felt that they needed to point this out. A learning commons is what you get when you have the foresight to adapt your school library to it’s users. It is not a separate entity to a library and so in calling something a learning commons you continue to perpetuate the myth and belief that a library cannot do this on its own. It is the same when you rename your library an LRC or research centre, or discovery base. All you are doing is saying that a school library can’t be this, instead of changing the perception of a school library so people can see that this is exactly what it can be, and so much more.

If we want school libraries to be in all schools, if we want them to be valued then we need to start with our own perceptions as to what a school library is. We need to be clear in our own profession about this before we can begin to expect anyone outside of the profession to understand what we do and what we can achieve. It is down to us to define what a school library should be and look like and I don’t mean a tick list I mean a fundamental vision of adaptability to needs and requirements and behaviours. We need to stop trying to rebrand ourselves by giving ourselves different titles and stick to one name for us and one name for our space and be clear on what that means. If we can’t do this then we can never expect anyone else to get it.

So my question is; who are you, what do you do? What is your space called and are you adding to the destruction of school libraries or are you helping to build a positive perception about them and what they do by challenging the behaviours associated with school libraries and making sure your ethos is one of adaptability and credibility?

The Makings of a School Librarian

I’ve been thinking a bit recently about what a school librarian needs to be to be successful. I’ve been working a little bit with some young librarians looking at going through chartership and the question arose from one of these conversations. I can’t remember the precise wording but it revolved around a question as to the different needs and skills of librarians in different sectors.

It was an extremely interesting question and one that required me a little time to think about what it was about a school librarian that was either different or just specific to a school librarian.
Therefore in this post I’ve tried to show what I feel is required of a school librarian and the reasons why. I don’t necessarily see these skills/personality traits as something that is only covered by school librarians but I do feel they are all vital in becoming a successful one.

1&2. Number one (and two) for me is to be adaptable. So much so I’ve put it twice! Twice because firstly I feel you need to be adaptable in both your processes but also in your beliefs around how a library can/should run.
Being adaptable in your processes for me is about having to change the way you go about things depending on your circumstances. In most libraries you can move from one to another yet things are always done the same. However, in a school this couldn’t be further from the truth. If you move from one school to another you need to be able to change and adapt to the way that your new school works. School libraries are very much at the mercy of the establishment they belong in and work in very different ways to each other depending on the needs of the school and opinions of the headteacher/school leadership.
Therefore, just because you have gone about things in one way in a school it doesn’t mean that it will be the same in any other.

The second adaptable then is that of the beliefs that you have in libraries. Many school librarians come into the profession from either public libraries or other library backgrounds and so already have a sense of how a library should work and what a library should be. These beliefs however must be taken with a pinch of salt in a school library. They really are unlike any other library. Even FE or HE libraries have little in common with schools. In reality a school library is a hybrid of other types of libraries with its own bit of crazy added in too.

What this means is that you really can’t come to being a school librarian thinking that you can put a public library or any other library model into play. You need to realise, acknowledge and importantly embrace that a school library can be anything and that that anything is solely dependant on what the needs of the students in the school are.

3. This adaptability in beliefs links to the next point to me which is being open minded. Open minded to changing your beliefs of how to run things but also open minded into what you might be able to achieve through a school library. Not many other libraries can have such a direct impact on daily, even hourly basis on your user. As I’ve mentioned many times before a school library needs to be responsive to its users and not demand its users to fit into its own model. In public libraries the user needs the resources so will adapt their practice to use it. However in a school the users, or students can easily decide they don’t want to use the library and they don’t necessarily need to. However, if you match your library to their needs and be open minded about this then what you can achieve is something really special, personalised to your students and ultimately a great success.

4. A resilient optimist. By this I mean you have to realise that it is impossible on a day to day basis to make the impact and achieve your goals. In a school these need to be long term things that you want to achieve and you need to be realistic in understanding that these goals and objectives might change at the drop of a hat as education so often does! You’re going to face disappointment and failure on a daily basis especially if it’s trying to work with other departments, however if you realise this and importantly accept it then it’s not that bad. Importantly it also allows you to realise that there are opportunities out that and that you need to take them whenever they arise and that you need to keep trying no matter what the setback is. Unfortunately too many librarians see this as being passive aggressive and thinking that everyone should listen to you and want to work with you because , well they just should. This may be the case but this attitude doesn’t achieve anything positive.

5. Thick skinned. Being a resilient optimist and having to face numerous setbacks also means it’s vitally important to gain a bit of a thick skin. In education and in many schools you will come across lots of people who are ‘in it for themselves’ and only concerned about getting one up, or looking good. Unfortunately this mentality seems to permeate most schools as it’s the kind of attitude that normally ends up getting what they want in the ever fickle bubble that is education. However, just remember that it’s not about being seen to do the right things it’s about actually doing it and doing it for the right reasons!

6. Reading Specialist. This is the final point and the one that I feel really embodies what a school librarian should be. OK, so a big part of a school librarians job is about information. Information searching, gathering and information literacy skills. But these are skills that are best delivered through the classroom by the teachers on a consistent explicit basis rather than an ad hoc one. The thing that is needed in schools and the thing that no one else is able to do is to be that of a reading specialist. What I mean by this is a person that has not only the knowledge about how we read and the science behind it but also about how we can engage readers and develop them in our schools. How we can promote and advocate reading and a reading culture across the our school community and importantly how we can use our knowledge and understanding of the individuals in our school to help them to improve their proficiency and ability in reading and so help improve their learning at the same time as helping our teachers to improve their teaching outcomes. This is the real thing that sets us aside from anyone else in school and the thing that can really make a difference.

The messy business of impact

In pretty much every workplace and beyond people are always concerned with impact.

What impact is the government reforms having? What impact is the new Tesco advert having on sales? What impact is my parenting having on my children? Etc etc

Just behind impact is its smaller yet more important siblings measurement and proof. When you talk about impact you can help but also talk about measuring it. As a society and a human being we are concerned to the point of obsession with measuring impact. It makes sense though, if you’re going to talk about impact and it’s important to you then you need to think about how you’re going to measure it so you can prove it.

How do Tesco measure the impact of their new advert – sales figures most likely, focus groups potentially, surveys etc. what about the government then? Maybe opinion polls, votes at local/general elections? And the parent? Well maybe how your child acts in relation to the moral code you’ve tried to instil, how they grow up as a human being maybe?

There’s something each of these have in common and probably akin to any way of measuring and proving impact. It is by looking at the outcomes. If the outcomes are what you had hoped them to be then you have been a success. If the government puts austerity cuts in place to save money then they’ll look at how much money has been saved – the outcome. If Tesco wants to measure and prove their new advert again it’s the outcome, sales figures etc and a parent? Well no surprise it’s again the outcome – how close to my ideals of a success have they grown up to be?

The only problem, and the messy part of impact and measuring impact is that you cannot categorically prove impact. It may seem strange but in most cases it’s either impossible or very difficult to say definitively that the outcome has been defined by the action.

Let’s look at Tesco and their new advert. They release their new advert and then look at sales. Sales are up on last year and the advert is a success (ok there’s probably a little more to it than this but just go with it). We can assume that the advert has had a positive effect on sales. But do we know that categorically? Yes it seems the most likely answer but how about any other things that may have occurred?

A national press article slamming another supermarket for their food containing non traditional meat? Or a link to a sweat shop in India? Or how about the advert coinciding with the closure of another local store?

Ok some of this may seem far fetched but the point is there, you cannot definitively pin the outcome on the action.

How about the government then and their austerity cuts? They are saving money so things must be working? Maybe or maybe it’s because we’re taking more care of finances all over the place and being less frivolous , accounting for everything so that money is being saved? Maybe, maybe not?

How about the parent? Well you only need to think nature vs nurture for there to be many variables. And that’s the real point in each of these issues there are too many variables to be able to measure with any kind of certainty what impact your action has had.

How about in education then does this happen there? You bet it does!

In fact it happens on daily, neigh hourly basis! We are forced to think exactly that, what impact is my teaching etc having on the learning of the children. Importantly it’s also part, or should be part of a library. What impact is the library having on teaching and learning, students, the school?

But let’s think a little about the implications in a school and the classroom.

First let’s think about a history teacher in the classroom who teaches a terms worth of the Romans. A student takes an assessment at the end and the student passes.

How about a student who is failing in their English GCSE? A teacher runs some extra intervention, 3 months later the student is back on track. Excellent in both examples, you may think.

But maybe in the first example the student’s dad is a historian specialising in the Romans? Maybe. And in the second example the student’s parents pays for some extra tuition from an external tutor. Maybe.

The thing that makes impact so messy is the variables. It’s due to these variables there is no way to actually prove impact.

It may be a shock but I’m afraid it is the simple truth. You cannot prove impact.

So the question is if you can’t prove impact then what’s the point and what have we been doing all this time?

Although it seems silly it is vitally important that we do this. We need to put all our cards on table and be as explicit as possible as to what we have done.

We need to do this because instead of trying to prove impact what we’re really saying is, it’s started here, I’ve done this and the outcome is this. Prove that I haven’t had an impact.

And that’s really what it is. Doing everything you can to have an impact, being explicit about it and noting the outcome. If the outcome is positive then it’s very difficult to say you haven’t had an impact.

It’s very hard to prove impact but even harder to disprove it too.

So what does this mean then? What it means is that we need to be explicit about the things we are doing, we need to rate start and end points, we need to measure and track progress and lay it all out.

So how about a library then?

What are you doing to improve reading in your school? Where did your students start, what did you do with them and where did they finish? If it was a positive outcome then challenge someone to prove from your tracking that you didn’t have an impact.

The tracking part is vitally important too. If you can’t show all the things you have done then there is no way your argument can hold up.

So the real answer to proving impact is to ask someone to disprove it!