As with many of those who have posted forum comments I'm happy with the result. I also agree that my marker's feedback was clear and helpful. There are two comments that I would make for the interest of those attempting this task in the future. The first is that two observations that I made about the practical use of the Information Literacy Models were questioned for not having a supporting reference. These were observations from my experience as a teacher. Obviously, I couldn't say, "From my experience ..." in such an assignment (it wouldn't be in the third person) but it appears that, even at this level, a scholarly paper must have more received wisdom than original thought and that critical analysis must carry the authority of published research rather than first-hand observation. I wonder if it would have been more acceptable if I had found the time to conduct my own research, following the advice of Ross Todd. One small postscript is that I used the term aspirational to describe the ASLA twelve standards, the later found an article in which the author of the standards used exactly the same term, so I added the reference. Does this make the observation any more valid?
I would, therefore suggest, that students select three Information Literacy models for which they can find published critical analysis. Obviously the ones that spring to mind are the Big6, Kulthau's Model and the Herring PLUS model. The Alberta model is another that falls into this category and is one of three that I chose. I obviously needed to make more of the studies of this and the Big6 (another of my choices) and less of my own critical analysis.
The second piece of feedback is that it's important to include specific curriculum-related observations in the analysis of the ASLA twelve standards. If these aren't apparent from the readings, then use the SCAN periodical which makes practical suggestions about teacher librarians and curriculum in just about every issue. In hindsight I would have said more about the collaboration of teacher librarian and class teacher in design, implementation and assessment of curriculum programming.
As always, I hope these reflections may assist others.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Reflections on ETL 503 Assignment 2
I expect that you, like me, may well be receiving back your second assignment soon. I thought that I'd reflect on the marker's comments as they may be of use to those attempting this task in the future. There is no gripe here, just things that I could have done better that may assist others, especially as it is not always easy to interpret the guidelines in the assessment task itself.Firstly, although I used two measures of collection analysis I should have included other methods, or possible methods, that could be used to measure the usefulness of the collection in the learning/teaching process. There are a number of these given in the readings, for example the Bishop reading.
The needs of the curriculum are paramount in shaping the curriculum and I did not identify these well enough in the opening. I also failed to refer to enough sources, even if they may have said the same thing. I can see that me knowing that is not readily apparent to the marker unless I include the reference for a similar point. I also omitted to refer to Debowski with relation to budgeting in Part A. (Well I had and then I moved it to keep within the word limit. In fact, the same could be said of the extra measures of collection, which I included in the reflection in Part C). I certainly referred to Debowski specifically in Part B and Part C.
I also got into trouble for using an old edition of Learning for the Future. I know that a 2001 edition exists and our library catalogue says that we have it but it couldn't be found. I suppose it shows I'm limited in how far I will search out resources.
The suggestions about the Policy itself are helpful. As many others indicated on the forum, it was very hard to fit in with the word limit. Interestingly, under Ashley's advice I dropped all the specific school standards and vision statements. The marker wanted these included in my policy, even though they were in the Appendix A and I commented more than once on their effectiveness.
I did not include enough aids to selection (I had heaps more from Ashley's study guide and left them off due to the word limit) and I ignored the School Library Bill of Rights, although I knew that others were including this. Once again, all of its statements appeared in some form or another in the original library policy (Appendix A) and I left them out in this form due to space.
I failed to include collaboration in the policy, specifically collaborative development and review,even though I did nominate teachers and head teachers as part of the selection team for resources (as is the case with the present school policy). The policy needed to specify the collaboration taking place in the decision-making process and the benefits of this for ownership of the collection development by all staff. I know that I did use this almost exact phrase somewhere in my four assignments – I think ETL 401 Assignment 1. It's useful to make the cross overs.
The final omission was not to include a policy review date (as, of course, we have on every other school policy document) and reference to the approval by Principal or school Board. I did discuss the need to review in Part C. It is worth noting that, in the Board of Studies inspection, every policy except the Library policy had to be submitted for detailed scrutiny.
As I said this has been for the purpose of helping others with their future assignments. The rest of the detailed comments will help me to go back now and polish up my own library policy – without the pressure of a word limit!
The needs of the curriculum are paramount in shaping the curriculum and I did not identify these well enough in the opening. I also failed to refer to enough sources, even if they may have said the same thing. I can see that me knowing that is not readily apparent to the marker unless I include the reference for a similar point. I also omitted to refer to Debowski with relation to budgeting in Part A. (Well I had and then I moved it to keep within the word limit. In fact, the same could be said of the extra measures of collection, which I included in the reflection in Part C). I certainly referred to Debowski specifically in Part B and Part C.
I also got into trouble for using an old edition of Learning for the Future. I know that a 2001 edition exists and our library catalogue says that we have it but it couldn't be found. I suppose it shows I'm limited in how far I will search out resources.
The suggestions about the Policy itself are helpful. As many others indicated on the forum, it was very hard to fit in with the word limit. Interestingly, under Ashley's advice I dropped all the specific school standards and vision statements. The marker wanted these included in my policy, even though they were in the Appendix A and I commented more than once on their effectiveness.
I did not include enough aids to selection (I had heaps more from Ashley's study guide and left them off due to the word limit) and I ignored the School Library Bill of Rights, although I knew that others were including this. Once again, all of its statements appeared in some form or another in the original library policy (Appendix A) and I left them out in this form due to space.
I failed to include collaboration in the policy, specifically collaborative development and review,even though I did nominate teachers and head teachers as part of the selection team for resources (as is the case with the present school policy). The policy needed to specify the collaboration taking place in the decision-making process and the benefits of this for ownership of the collection development by all staff. I know that I did use this almost exact phrase somewhere in my four assignments – I think ETL 401 Assignment 1. It's useful to make the cross overs.
The final omission was not to include a policy review date (as, of course, we have on every other school policy document) and reference to the approval by Principal or school Board. I did discuss the need to review in Part C. It is worth noting that, in the Board of Studies inspection, every policy except the Library policy had to be submitted for detailed scrutiny.
As I said this has been for the purpose of helping others with their future assignments. The rest of the detailed comments will help me to go back now and polish up my own library policy – without the pressure of a word limit!
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