How do librarians in schools support struggling readers?

Abstract

While librarians in schools often face significant budgetary cuts, they can play an important role in supporting learning in literacy and literature. However, little is known about the practices that they may employ to this end. Of particular interest is the role of librarians in schools in supporting struggling readers, as these students may be increasingly disadvantaged as they move through the years of schooling. Semi-structured interview data were collected from teacher librarians at 30 schools and analysed to identify practices exercised by teacher librarians that aligned with extant research around supporting struggling readers. Teacher librarians provided support by identifying struggling readers, providing them with age and skill-appropriate materials, undertaking skill scaffolding supporting choice, supporting students with special needs, providing one-to-one matching, promoting access to books, enhancing the social position of books and reading, reading aloud to students, facilitating silent reading, and preparing students for high-stakes literacy testing.

Collaborating With Teacher Librarians to Support Adolescents’ Literacy and Literature Learning

“…However, in the context of budget and staffing cuts to libraries in the United States and Australia (Merga, ), it is important to note that the potential for powerful collaborations with teacher librarians cannot occur in their absence. The valuable contribution that teacher librarians make to students’ literacy attainment (Merga, ) will be lost if we lose them.…”

“…librarians cannot occur in their absence. The valuable contribution that teacher librarians make to students' literacy attainment (Merga, 2019b) will be lost if we lose them.…”

School libraries fostering children's literacy and literature learning: mitigating the barriers

“…Teacher librarians also grappled with issues with low student engagement, skill and motivation in literacy and literature learning, with efforts to foster one‐to‐one support, interest in students' diverse needs, and to furnish students with appropriate materials just some of the numerous efforts employed to support struggling readers, which are explored in detail elsewhere (Merga, ). As low student attitudes can be related to parental attitudes, and parental support was also seen as a notable barrier, schools need to become more effective in fostering strong home–school literacy partnerships that do not end once children have acquired independent reading skills.…”

“…For example, Cremin and Swann () note that “there is scant research focused upon the interaction patterns of school librarians, the ways in which they position themselves in reading groups and their roles in enhancing reader engagement” (p. 120). While even dual qualified teacher librarians who hold qualifications in both education and library fields may not be broadly recognised as educators (Merga, ), “classroom teachers are not the only literacy educators in schools; while librarians in schools often face significant staffing and budgetary cuts, research supports the contention that they can play an important role in supporting learning in literacy and literature” (Merga, , p. 1). Lack of attention on librarians' educative capacity may be due to a devaluing of the educational contribution of school librarians, who may be viewed as an ‘expensive luxury' (Dow et al, , p. 11).…”

“…While school librarians may foster literacy and literature learning through a range of strategies, and for diverse purposes (e.g. Cremin & Swann, ; Merga, ), perhaps their most expected contribution relates to the fostering of literacy and literature learning through wide reading and reading engagement in students. As contended by Pihl et al (), “teacher and librarian partnerships facilitate reading for pleasure and reading engagement in work with school subjects and curriculum goals” (p. 1).…”