Working Together is Working Smarter

Jack, Gordon

National Center for Literacy Education (NCLE). (2012, October). Working together is working smarter. National Survey of Collaborative Professional Learning Opportunities.  Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/aasl/sites/ala.org.aasl/files/content/researchandstatistics/NCLE_AASLinfographic_FINAL-download.pdf

Summary

This infographic summarizes the data compiled from the National Center for Literacy Education study of 2,404 educators nationally.  The data confirms that collaboration is a key component for teacher-librarians.  While schools do not always make time for collaboration, librarians are actively seeking professional networks at their site and beyond.  In this particular study, librarians are participating in greater numbers than traditional classroom teachers, with 51% reporting that they share ideas “at least weekly in online networks and communities, compared with 23% of educators overall.”

Evaluation

This data confirms that librarians are not isolated professionals, but engaged collaborators both with teachers at their site and external learning communities.  While most working librarians won’t see any surprises here, this information shows others how connected librarians are and how vital they are to school improvement.  This data should be shown to any person interested in becoming a librarian as a snapshot of the type of work we do.