A Barbarian in the Reading room

This month I have run a couple of interesting training courses both looking at the delivery of information skills.

Firstly for Creative Education, the day long course concentrated on the need for information literacy inclusion in the secondary school curriculum and ways in which this could be embedded. Part of the difficulty of course for librarians is the non statutory status in England and this is reflected in the lack of direct inclusion in the National Curriculum. So this course looked at opportunities to work with teachers in delivery and considered why some teachers were reluctant to embrace the library and the services of the librarian. What made this particularly interesting was that there were two qualified teachers on the course and so they were able to make insightful comments. Both had experience of school librarians and one was temporarily managing /caretaking the library until a librarian was appointed. Both agreed that they were unaware of the extent the librarian could be involved in teaching and learning and so hopefully this course achieved something in spreading the word. The course was very based on libraries and geared towards librarians and so it also covered learning styles and classroom management. It got me thinking about whether there is room for a course about the delivery of research skills for teachers.

The second course saw me back again at the wonderful Heath's Educational Books Showroom and we had a lively day dealing with research and writing up skills for 6th formers embarking on extended projects be it EPQ, IB Diploma Extended Essay or Cambridge Pre U. The delegates had a chance to put their own research skills into action by exploring the showroom for resources using a real essay title. We also looked at sources of information, evaluation and synthesis and touched briefly on academic honesty (although the latter will be run as a more in depth course in the autumn).

So next month I am returning to sessions with 6th formers and Year 10s in schools and leave the adults behind for a bit! .....and looking forward to the book being launched by the SLA.