Supporting You: Measurement & Growth Tool

Measurement / Growth Tool – For Review And Goal Setting

 

“School libraries and school librarians are rarely evaluated in a consistent and systematic way, but evaluation helps to ensure that the library’s programs and services are relentlessly focused on learning.” Relentlessly Focused on Learning: The Role of Evaluation Dr Dianne Oberg (2017)

 

The Leading Learning document has many purposes. Primarily it provides a guide for the transition of school libraries to vibrant centers of teaching and learning responsive to the diverse needs of learners today and into the future. It also serves as a measurement tool to help schools determine where they are now with library facilities and programs and where they want to advance to. Standards can indeed help measure practice, but Leading Learning does much more.

 

Leading Learning focuses on growth and a culture of learning and continuous improvement. The standards themselves are expressions of the core actions that effective school library learning commons programs take to have an impact on student learning. Progress in achieving effectiveness for each standard is expressed in terms of growth. The growth indicators help schools to identify strengths and areas of need, and steps that they can take to address those needs. Every school can find its place, and be empowered to move forward. Kirkland and Koechlin (2015)

 

Schools can use Leading Learning to assess their own stage of development in each of the five core standards. These standards are broken down into themes, and each theme further broken down into indicators of progress across a continuum of levels. Each level builds on the next from early “Exploration” and progressing to “Leading into the Future”.

Approaches and Tools to Help

  • Every school will find that they are at varying stages of growth for each theme in every standard. Use an organizer like Appendix 3 or create a spreadsheet of the standards and indicators to map out progress. Use these ongoing records to help set goals, plan budget and create regular progress reports.
  • Explore suggestions to engage everyone in the school community in professional reflection and renewal.
  • Transparency is key to working towards whole school improvement. Make use of collaborative technologies to keep teaching and learning together visible and accessible to all from anywhere. Develop major units of study in virtual Knowledge Building Centers and archive, celebrate, review and revise these learning experiences on a Virtual Learning Commons. Appendix 6.
  • Take lots and lots of pictures and create videos to document progress.

 

Leading Learning in Action:

When the standards are mapped with Provincial, Territorial and local goals and curriculum standards a powerful framework is created to invest in support for the work of SLLC.

 

 

ALBERTA & LEADING LEARNING

The ultimate purpose of an effective learning commons is to support and move forward the student learning goals and outcomes of the ministries of education.

Alberta Education endorses Leading Learning as a resource for its Learning Commons Policy: Benefits of Learning Commons.

Alberta Education Learning Commons Policy Statement:

To support students in attaining the goals and standards as stated in the Ministerial Order on Student Learning, school authorities must ensure that students have access to a learning commons. A learning commons is an inclusive, flexible, learner- centred, physical and/or virtual space for collaboration, inquiry, imagination and play to expand and deepen learning.

  • Alberta Regional PD Consortia webinars/video clips (Shantz-Keresztes, Sykes) use Leading Learning throughout as a resource for policy implementation.
  • Alberta teachers, principals, and learning commons teams have responded that Leading Learning is empowering (puts instructional leadership/vision for the learning commons in the forefront), inclusive (learning commons team concept) and focusing (for collaborative learning, teaching and assessment).
  • The Alberta Education Learning Commons Policy (2014) is included in the annual Alberta Education Guide to Education (pgs 29, 84). The policy aligns with Alberta Education curricular outcomes and “Competencies for 21st Century Learning”.
  • Click here to open and download a PDF Alberta and Leading Learning Curriculum Connections Chart prepared by Judith Sykes. This chart demonstrates alignment of Alberta Competencies for 21st Century Learning with Leading Learning standards to guide district/school implementation strategies for the learning commons. Use this example to align learning goals and competencies in your district.

Exploring ways to marry Together for Learning and Leading Learning in Ontario Schools

Together for Learning (T4L) was developed in collaboration between the government, Ontario School Library Association (OSLA) and school library leaders in response to the forces of change affecting society and schools… “all while ensuring students emerge with the skills they need not only to survive, but to thrive – development of a Learning Commons addresses this challenge”. The slideshare presentation “Leading Learning to Transform School Libraries” (OLA Superconference 2015) introduces Leading Learning to colleagues in Ontario, illustrating how it can be used as a framework for implementing T4L by aligning library learning commons system and school planning with the “Board Improvement Plan for Student Achievement” (BIPSA).  A powerful way to “marry” the documents and make goals realistic, achievable and measurable is through collaborative teacher inquiry for professional development, outlined in Ontario’s Collaborative Teacher Inquiry Monograph.