To Infinity and Beyond! New and Updated Leading Learning Standards

By the CSL Leading Learning Committee

The update of Leading Learning: Standards of Practice for School Library Learning Commons in Canada represents the culmination of an exercise that took place at Treasure Mountain Canada 7 to identify areas that needed updating or additional themes needed to be added to CSL standards. Leading Learning is a living document and a CSL volunteer committee works to continuously keep it growing to reflect the realities of ever changing approaches in school library learning commons across Canada.

What are Framing Provocations and why are they there?

In the latest edition of Leading Learning one of the major changes has been to add framing provocations to each of the themes. Many teacher-librarians and school leaders ask where to start when trying to move forward with library transformation. These provocations are designed to be questions that you can ask yourself, your team, teachers and administrators as you begin the transformative work. Much like provocation questions you might ask students at the start of a unit or lesson, there is no truly ‘right’ answer. Instead these should provoke thought and reflection. The “see it in action” for each theme is just one way that you could answer the prompt. Every Library Learning Commons is unique and their journey to being the centre of collaborative learning leadership within their school community will be different.

New Themes

There have been thirteen additions or revisions to the themes across all five strands. What follows is a list of each new and updated strand along with a rationale for the changes or inclusion.

Facilitating Collaborative Engagement to Cultivate and Empower a Community of Learners

• Student Voice and Community Partnership *Updated*
  • This has been updated to centre and make explicit two pieces that were implied but not spelled out as well as they could be. Firstly, though it may seem obvious that we are talking about this happening through the library learning commons, it came up that this should be made clearer. Secondly, emphasizing how students develop a voice within the library learning commons to make positive change. This is something that has been threaded through the update as one of the biggest goals moving forward.

• National and Global Engagement *New*
  • This is the first new theme and factors into that emphasis on student engagement for positive change. It starts with awareness of global issues and finishes with proactive, positive global citizenship. This continuum is designed to push students into utilizing our interconnected digital tools to reach out and touch the world around them.

Advancing the Learning Community to Achieve School Goals

• Leading Action for School and Board Improvement *New*
  • One of the biggest asks from TMC7 was to encourage participation in issues of librarianship beyond the school; including showing leadership within your school district, province and within Canada. This new theme focuses on contributing to professional learning communities through action research, through publishing articles, presenting at conferences and helping to advance the body of work on school library learning commons being done across Canada and globally.

Cultivating Effective Instructional Design to Co-plan, Teach and Assess Learning

• STEAM/Maker Pedagogies *New*
  • Surprisingly, there was not an overt theme for STEAM and Maker pedagogies within Leading Learning before this. In this theme there was a definite need to differentiate from simply having a makerspace to using it for productive tasks. Play based learning and exploration certainly have their place within education, but there needs to be a way for students to engage in something that will make a difference. Returning once again to the idea of centring student learning within the LLC as moving towards transformative, positive change this made sense to pull the continuum towards design thinking in an explicit way in addition to free-play.

• Indigenous Ways of Knowing and Being (First Nation, Métis and Inuit Ways, Traditional Skills and Knowledge) *New*
  • Given the journey of Canada over the last decade as institutions, particularly education, continue to grapple with the calls to actions, we designed this important inclusion for the standards. There are certain areas that needed to be intentionally called out as parts of this continuum. Specifically that LLCs need to be using authentic resources – ones written by Indigenous people – with attention paid to the locality of the resource – “If not here, then where?” – Jo Chrona – and moving beyond stereotypes or narrow views of Indigenous culture. Finally, circling back once more to students engaging in transformative, positive change through the LLC, the continuum ends with active participation in decolonizing action.

• Inquiry Project Organization for Success *New*
  • Separate from “Engaging with Inquiry Approaches”, it was brought up that there needed to be explicit teaching of the hard skills involved in inquiry such as time management and shared resource handling. While often called out within individual inquiry models, it is often an afterthought for classroom teachers as they get students to conduct inquiry and engage with the curriculum. This is an area where teacher-librarians can take a lead and model best practice. As the ability to work collaboratively has increased enormously through advancements in technology, there are many digital tools that can support this collaborative approach to project management. For instance this article and the associated changes to Leading Learning were written by people working in Ontario, Alberta and BC simultaneously on a single document.

• Differentiated Learning *Updated*
  • The psychological aspects of learning, particularly as it relates to differences in learning, have evolved and language has changed. This update cleans up the language to modern standards and adds some new see it in action that relate to modern practice.

• Technology for Learning *New*
  • When leading learning was first written, the focus was on getting the infrastructure for technological learning. That is still something that needs to exist (and has moved to Designing Learning Environments). This new theme refocuses on how technology is used within the LLC, moving from understanding basic applications to empowering students to be innovative in leveraging technologies to achieve new possibilities.

Fostering Literacies to Empower Life-Long Learners

• Building Reader Skills and Capacity *New*
  • A general observation that has emerged over the last ten years is that students’ general ability to read is weakening. The focus here in this new theme is on the LLC role in building skills and capacity within traditional literacy. It sits separate to “Engaging Readers”, which instead zeros in on a lifelong love of reading, and “Literacy Leadership”, which targets the leadership aspect of literacy development for the LLC.

• Digital Media Literacy and Citizenship *Updated*
  • The updating of this theme takes cues from Jennifer Casa-Todd’s approach to digital media literacy as being synonymous with citizenship; as well as Dr. Lucy Santos Green’s view of Library Learning Commons as fostering disruptive approaches to participatory learning as tantamount with citizenship. This update recognizes the need to move students beyond just critical evaluation in digital media literacy, and into engaging ethically and positively with the digital world. There have also been changes to the ‘See it in Action’ as older models such as the CRAAP test no longer function as well as they once did and are replaced by more robust tools that take into account the overwhelming amount of information flowing now.
  • Indicators have also been aligned with a framework developed in MediaSmart’s report From Access to Engagement: A Digital Media Literacy Strategy for Canada, which was introduced and studied at TMC7.

Designing Learning Environments to Support Participatory Learning

• Designing for the Individual *New*
  • Another area that has emerged is the need for students to build identity. With so much information coming at them, especially for adolescent learners, the building of identity has become more complex than ever before. Having space for exploration of identity as well as the building of positive participatory identity is identified in this new theme. Within some provinces, such as BC, the building of personal, social and cultural capacity is fundamentally embedded into the curriculum and it is an expectation for all areas of the school to pursue activities that will help students form these core competencies.

• Designing for Transparent Knowledge Building in the LLC *New*
  • This theme was where the idea for provocation questions came from as the central idea here was to consider how someone, the principal primarily, could see the learning that was happening in the LLC. Administrators are often baffled by the LLC and what goes on in there, even if they are supportive. Helping to make learning visible for them, for parents and for anyone in the school community improves the LLC staff’s practice, as well as creating a vital communication piece for “why do we matter”.

• Designing for Effectively Leveraging Technology in the LLC *Updated and Moved*
  • This theme was originally under instructional practice and was moved to the learning environment to differentiate between the infrastructure and the practice. As schools age and new schools are built or renovations happen, being able to point to standards that describe elements of infrastructure is important.

Leading Learning provides a vision and practical strategies for continuous improvement in library learning commons programs. Every school can find themselves on that continuum, and use Leading Learning to guide next steps.

CSL has made a commitment to ensuring that Leading Learning is a living and growing document that demonstrates the work of library learning commons in schools across Canada. What are you doing in your school or district that demonstrates one or more of Leading Learning‘s themes? Please tell us about it by responding to this short questionnaire, so that others may benefit from your experiences. Submit your exemplar here.

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The Canadian School Libraries Leading Learning Committee:

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