UNESCO’s Nine Ideas for Education – Canadian School Libraries Journal

Concrete Action Today That Will Advance Education Tomorrow: Implications for School Libraries

By Caroline Freibauer

Every educator, administrator, student and parent of school-aged children has a story about the ways the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted education. Even those not directly connected to any form of schooling hear a steady stream of stories through all media channels.

During a CBC noon phone-in show, a father complains that his son lasted only a month with online high school. The teenager got a job. “He’ll probably never go back to school,” the father said.

A recent article in The Globe and Mail (The cure for loneliness – and almost everything else. May 1, 2021), reported that a quarter of students from Grades 1 to 3 were not reading at grade level according to the Canadian Children’s Literacy Foundation. Research from the University of Alberta showed that Edmonton students in those same early grades had already fallen behind in their reading by six to eight months. The same article referred to a study in the Netherlands that indicated that children’s test scores dropped significantly after online learning and, the more isolated the student, the sharper the drop.

A school board in southwestern Ontario continued to provide all-day, in-person schooling for all students, giving families, if they had concerns, the opportunity to choose a separate virtual school. A principal from one of the high schools shared that participation through daily attendance at the bricks-and-mortar school was 99 per cent. At the virtual school it was only 66 per cent.

An elementary teacher shared that he tried to stay online with his students because he was the only stable influence in their lives. One student was locked in the bedroom all day, unable to access food, as a parent’s way to ensure she did her schoolwork.

A network of teacher-librarians from independent schools shared stories of how they have been redeployed to the classroom, library books and furniture packed away. Despite all creative efforts, access to books for pleasure reading was down. Many are not certain what will be happening to their learning commons spaces in September.

Certainly, the repeated and unplanned pivots to online education have had an impact on students, educators and families. Research and anecdotal evidence show that the most vulnerable groups are most affected by this change. One cannot help but wonder about the long-term consequences to current students and teachers and how these endless pivots will imprint education in the future.

That’s exactly the question UNESCO’s International Commission on the Futures of Education tried to answer when it came up with Education in a post-COVID world: Nine ideas for public action. The commission was convened in September 2019 to “focus on rethinking the role of education, learning and knowledge in light of the tremendous challenges and opportunities of predicted, possible and preferred futures.” Comprised of an impressive and diverse team of intellectuals from varied disciplines and different parts of the world, the commission has a plan that involves consultation and discussion with groups and individuals from around the world. The hope was to publish a report in November of this year to spark global discussion on the topic well into 2023 and beyond. Education is an important component of the UN’s 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, but this commission is seeking to broaden that timeline to 2050 and beyond.

But then the COVID-19 pandemic emerged, throwing into sharp relief so many inequities around the world and their consequences. When the spotlight landed on education, we could see how a lack of access to the Internet and other technologies, unstable home lives and poverty’s impact affected the ability to learn. Perhaps even more concerning, parents, educators and society in general began to question the purpose of education and its efficacy.

Julian Sefton-Green, a professor of New Media Education at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia, highlighted the many devastating repercussions of an education system transformed by the pandemic in a piece he contributed to the Futures of Education Ideas LAB.

“All of these types of responses exemplify how COVID-19 has intensified and exaggerated fault lines in contemporary societies. They reveal back to us the ways of dealing with inequality that our societies have consistently disguised and ignored.
Amidst the carnage and loss that responses to the pandemic are causing in so many people’s lives, we should value by its absence something that otherwise has been difficult to measure: the school as a place of togetherness, community, civic identity and participation in civil society. Attention to learning simply as a question of individualized capabilities as opposed to collective faith in education as a public good, shows how impoverished our societies have become when we cannot name, describe or communicate these kinds of positive social values.”
Julian Sefton-Green

So, in light of all the pandemic-induced upheaval to the education of millions of students around the world, the Commission on Education Futures paused its work to develop its nine ideas for public action, knowing that the pandemic will forever transform education. These ideas for action are the commission’s attempt to actively shape the future of education and help strengthen and enhance its power for all students, even those in developing nations.

To spark a discussion in the school library world, I reached out to several education and library thinkers for their thoughts on some of these concepts. These bright, thoughtful individuals lead busy lives, in many cases made even more busy by the pandemic. They all gave generously of their time, knowing how important it is to join the conversation. Here are some of their thoughts, provided whenever possible, through a library lens.

Commit to strengthen education as a common good. Education is a bulwark against inequalities. In education as in health, we are safe when everybody is safe; we flourish when everybody flourishes.

Wendy Newman, co-founder and advisory team member of PLLeaders, Canadian Urban Libraries Council and the University of Toronto iSchool, past president of the Canadian Library Association and former CEO of the Brantford Public Library.

“I’ve been encouraged to see the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) position libraries of all types as a fundamental strategy to achieve the UN 2030 development goals, as many governments are informed by the UN’s deliberations at a senior level and are effectively required to produce some kind of response. It also helps to extricate libraries from the “invisible, taken-for-granted” space they tend to occupy at senior government levels. Finally, the international library community is situating libraries in terms of governments’ priorities, and not in terms of libraries’ priorities.”

Stephen Hurley has been working in Canada’s education space for 35 years, serving as a classroom teacher, curriculum consultant and teacher educator. He is the chief catalyst behind voicEd Radio — a 24/7 radio station dedicated to deepening the way we talk about education in Canada.

“I believe that we stand at a type of watershed moment when it comes to decisions about public education. Seen by many governments as a burdensome cost—a yoke around their necks—attempts to privatize certain aspects of our public education system seem to be gathering strength. On the other hand, issues of equity, access, quality, and opportunity come under question when we favour the economic lens.

I see a huge shift, even within our public education systems, away from a sense that the public education system is here to serve all of us to a sense that it is here to serve me and my children. The proliferation of specialty programs, the offloading of the costs of post-secondary education on to students and families and the rhetoric around personalization (with the ed tech sector leading the charge) are just a few of the ideas that have contributed to the shift from education as something to be treasured as a benefit to all, to a commodity that is here to serve individuals.

I believe that this shift is a reflection of what is happening in our broader communities. It’s not evil. It may not even be planned. But I think that, at the very least, it needs to be recognized, if not addressed.”

Garfield Gini-Newman is a Professor with the Department of Curriculum, Teaching, and Learning at OISE. His primary areas of research involve the pedagogy of critical thinking and ways to embed critical thinking in classrooms from kindergarten to graduate school.

“The arrival of the digital age holds out both great promise and significant challenges. While the opportunity to democratize knowledge can be enhanced the danger of spread of misinformation has also risen exponentially. To ensure all children are able to share in the promise of the digital world it is essential that access to high quality education is made available to everyone. High quality education needs to be defined as an education that builds student agency through enhancing children’s desire to learn through relevance and meaning and their capacity for learning. Capacity for learning involves students having access to reliable and relevant sources of information and the intellectual tools required engage with information through a process of selection, sense-making and sharing.”

Expand the definition of the right to education so that it addresses the importance of connectivity and access to knowledge and information. The Commission calls for a global public discussion — that includes, among others, learners of all ages — on ways the right to education needs to be expanded.

“Even in 2001, when I was on the National Broadband Task Force, the task force report to the federal government of the day treated connectivity as only one leg of a three-legged stool, the other legs being content and 21st century literacies. That was my job on the task force; most of the members were CEOs of the big cable and telco companies and they were all about physical infrastructure. (And then 9/11 happened and all the money went to “security”. But I digress.) The evidence I’ve seen about kids during Covid suggests that these literacies of the 21st century are the ones we’ve not nurtured. (Voting patterns and vaccine hesitancy also show the longer-term damage. Again, I digress.)

One more thing – and it comes from my experience of creating and delivering a MOOC while at the University of Toronto – I wish librarians in the school and university environments in particular had moved upstream conspicuously, into prominent roles in instructional design. Instead, university librarians glommed onto roles like checking bibliographical references and copyright permissions. They have the professional knowledge to do so much more. Online learning, especially interactive video, is with us for any foreseeable future (OCLC’s Tipping Point report). Instructional design is a huge and neglected piece.”

“Providing high quality education to children must involve connectivity through access to reliable Internet. For students to engage with the world they need to be able to connect with others and to have access to current information. Connectivity allows students to become active contributors in knowledge building. Through the ability to access information, interact with others and share their conclusions, learning can evolve from a passive transfer of information from teacher to students to a transformative engagement in which students contribute to a deep understanding of the world and their place within it.”

Value the teaching profession and teacher collaboration. There has been remarkable innovation in the responses of educators to the COVID-19 crisis, with those systems most engaged with families and communities showing the most resilience. We must encourage conditions that give frontline educators autonomy and flexibility to act collaboratively.

Di Laycock is the Head of Information Services at The King’s School in Sydney, Australia; President of the School Library Association of New South Wales and coordinator of the International Boys’ School Coalition Action Research Program.

“Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic it seemed as though everyone who had ever set foot in a classroom knew how to be a teacher, thought teaching was easy, and felt qualified to comment on all things related to education. As frustrating as this was for those in the teaching profession it seemed we could gain little traction to convince people otherwise. And while it’s not appropriate to think or say, “thank heavens for the pandemic,” it has provided the self-appointed experts with a window into the reality of teaching and teachers have to be thankful for that. As lounge rooms became classrooms, parents and carers gained insight into the complexities of teaching – the work behind delivering differentiated content to students, the need to keep students engaged in the virtual environment, and the ability to accommodate differences in students’ access to technology and their skill in using it. Added to this, parents and carers have come to recognize the role that teachers play in meeting the well-being needs of their children.

In terms of teacher collaboration, many of my colleagues found the isolation from colleagues the most challenging aspect of engaging in the distance teaching and learning process. Teaching is contextual and teaching relies on relationships, not only with students, but with colleagues. Unable to share the physical spaces of the staff room during the pandemic, teachers lost the opportunity for the informal face-to-face conversations that so often include valuable exchanges regarding teachers’ practice. Also absent were the social interactions with colleagues that provide a pressure release on the tough days that populate every teacher’s calendar. There’s nothing like a good vent to allow you to move on! While we were lucky at my school to only be closed for two weeks over the last 12 months, our library staff had a quick meeting every day to ensure that everyone was okay. It was hard enough for two weeks; I can’t imagine what it must be like for those who have not had face-to-face interactions with their students or colleagues for months on end.

“Neuroscience has revealed four key pillars that are essential for learning: attention; cognitive engagement; error feedback; and, consolidation. Discovery learning, where students are encouraged to explore independently, has been shown to be highly ineffective at supporting these pillars. Teaching matters! What teachers do with students is essential in building their intellectual capacity for deep learning. By framing learning that inspires awe and wonder, helping to build their background knowledge and guiding students as they engage with meaningful challenges, the day-to-day work of teachers has the potential to transform the lives of children.”

Carol Koechlin is Vice-Chair of Canadian School Libraries. She was the lead writer for Leading Learning: Standards of Practice for School Library Learning Commons in Canada. Her many influential books, articles and presentations have inspired educators internationally to re-imagine the school library as a learning commons.

“During this pandemic ‘school’ has taken on many variations but the one constant is the heroic work of teachers who have continuously demonstrated their professionalism, creativity and dedication in the face of unprecedented challenges. We now know without doubt through this forced experiment with months of online learning only that the most valuable resource to learning is the expertise of professional teachers. Both face to face and virtual learning environments require the art of trained teachers to design, guide, inspire and nurture learners. Investments in training and supporting professional teachers is not an option for the future but a global priority.

Presently many teachers bear the scars of burn out and frustration because they have been thrown into work environments and issues foreign to their training. Equipping teachers with the knowledge, skills and tools needed to work in the highly fluid environments and diverse learning needs expected in future years is the challenge.

One of the noted successful interventions teachers have brought to coping with schooling challenges during this pandemic has been though collaborative approaches in virtual environments particularly. Teachers have had to figure out ways to go to and work with those students who are not physically at school. Ensuring equitable access and needed supports has been extremely difficult but often success depended on establishing collaborative virtual learning opportunities and good partnerships with families. Leading the way in these school instigated collaborations are teacher-librarians. For over a year now CSL Journal has been reporting on the impact these and other school library professionals have had on teaching and learning during these chaotic times through both physical and virtual partnerships with other teachers, students, families, and the community.

As Pandemic Partners for Learning school library professionals rolled up their sleeves and found ways to keep learners and teachers and families connected with the very best resources and learning support and information instruction through extending the Library Learning Commons mantra to the virtual world. Virtual book talks, research support, digital citizenship, wellness resources, virtual field trips, clubs, maker activities, projects and so much more continue to be available to the school community through the virtual library learning commons (VLLC), even if the physical space is temporarily closed. Although many of these innovations came about because of closed physical libraries the VLLC will ‘stick’ because it is such a logical answer to providing collaborative learning environments anywhere, anytime on any device. Anita Brooks Kirkland discusses the potential in her article, The Virtual Library Learning Commons: Leveraging the Pandemic Tipping Point for Lasting Change.

Given the success of these pandemic partnerships, school administrators and other education decision makers would be wise to ensure that school library professionals have access to cutting edge technologies, training, and time to lead collaborative design of learning and teaching for the future. The school library community have decades of research that points to the value of collaboration to improve student learning. Now we have evolving technologies and proven approaches that will allow for endless collaboration potential for students, teachers, and families to learn, share and grow together.

Dealing with the heavy responsibility of educating during a pandemic has forced a reliance on finding virtual solutions. As we return to the new normal, we should take heed of the innovations that really worked well and apply them to the future. To do that all teachers will need a freer reign and the training and support necessary to design learning for the future that will be able to take full advantage of the ability to learn with others in a more diversified and well-connected global school. School library professionals must be ready to lead.”

Promote student, youth and children’s participation and rights. Intergenerational justice and democratic principles should compel us to prioritize the participation of students and young people broadly in the co-construction of desirable change.

Diana Maliszewski is a teacher-librarian and media literacy educator in the Toronto District School Board. An AML Vice President, Diana has presented at conferences across North America on topics such as gaming in education, graphic novels, popular culture, and children’s literature. During the pandemic, she is teaching Grade 5/6.

“Educators who insist students put on their cameras during class need to consider student rights – a multi-sided dilemma. What are the students’ rights? How can we guarantee participation if the camera, voice, back channel, chat box, etc. isn’t used? Are they actually there? Isn’t this an invasion of privacy? Students’ homes are on display. Do students get the choice to say how they’d like to participate online? Yet, the mental health of educators speaking to just icons with no feedback suffer, and these educators are expected to evaluate the students with minimal to no evidence. What is the relationship to the school library learning commons? The teacher-librarian could be the second person in the room (make smaller rooms, offer options for ways to participate sans cameras), gently be an adult advocate for students who might be intimidated or bullied by their teachers to put on their cameras. I wrote a blog post about this.

Change involves some reflection as to what is working and what isn’t, as well as a willingness to dismantle some of the structures that many have benefited from in the past. School library professionals need to almost be double agents or triple agents with several “masters” or agendas simultaneously on the go because few classroom teachers would welcome the addition of someone perceived to be showing others how to question or destroy the authority the class teacher possesses. The class teacher needs to feel that the teacher-librarian is an “ally”, while the TL also should be serving the interests of the students, to help make them more powerful.

There has to be a lot of pre-teaching to introduce alternatives – possibly by the school library professional – before students and young people can get into the co-construction of desirable change because otherwise the same structures are just replicated. For example, when asked to create rules, unless the lesson structure lends itself to different kinds of critical and creative thinking, the kinds of rules created are ones that students have seen in action in past classes, with lots of “No” and “Don’t” restrictions and carrot/stick consequences.

The current pivots show that students have no agency in what happens. For example, some of my own students are devastated at the switch because they have gone on record as saying “I don’t do well with online learning”, but the potential alternatives are foundation-shaking in terms of possibilities. What if a student says “online learning is better for me”? How do we provide that in a way that can be an equivalent – if that’s even possible – for in-person learning? What does that look like for gym? Drama? Dance?

Constant pivots make us see the benefits and deficits of each model. I co-created a document with my students that helped us come to terms with the forced switch and how they identified good things in a situation they mostly didn’t like or choose.

This is also hard because in the pandemic, safety seems to trump everything. I have some students – who have since switched to virtual – who are not allowed to even approach the front door, open windows, or go in their back yards. It is a tightrope act to try and address these issues with parents who feel like they should be able to do what they think is necessary to protect their children, but might be negatively affecting their children’s mental health because the kids don’t get a say in getting to go outside.

How else do school library professionals promote student agency? Well, my Treasure Mountain Canada paper on getting students to select resources for the SLLC collection could be one part.

How can teacher-librarians and library technicians amplify student participation and rights? It’s a bit harder online because students can’t just wander into the space. Class teachers would have to invite the school library professionals into their class, maybe using social media to reach out to where they are and circumvent the online class space if needed. This is harder with elementary students.”

Jonelle St. Aubyn is a teacher-librarian at Louise Arbour Secondary School in the Peel District School Board, with 20 years of teaching experience.

“When I started at Louise Arbour I was asked in the interview what kind of students I wanted to graduate from our building. It has always been important to me that students learn about social justice issues locally and globally, and, above all, that they feel empowered to act to make change. In the library learning commons I have tried to lead by example and give students opportunities to do so. Although the LLC started the book drives for the Children’s Book Bank, in partnership with the leadership classes, this is an initiative that students have taken part in as well. Although the milk bag mat club runs out of the LLC and I am one of the teacher supervisors, the students have taken ownership of the club and do a lot of the work themselves. These mats are shipped abroad and are used locally as a place to sleep when beds are not available. We have worked to promote student involvement at Regen, the local food bank, thrift store and soup kitchen in Brampton. Through the LLC, we are hoping to start a #giftsforgood campaign, where students make and sell items in support of organizations that need our help.

Through co-constructing lesson plans with teachers, we have moved toward a hyper doc model of inquiry, and we have utilized Dr. Gholdy Mohammed’s Cultivating Genius framework to provide students with more opportunities to follow and explore areas of social justice that mean something to them, yet also allows them to come up with ways to make change. These lessons have also been designed to allow students to critically analyze what is currently being done about certain issues (i.e. people experiencing homelessness) and to identify the flaws and systemic barriers that exist.

Desirable change can only happen when students are aware of the issues and can connect to them on a personal level. The LLC plays an important role in bringing awareness to those issues in the books and resources that we provide, through our displays and announcements, through the guest speakers and authors that we host and through our connection with our public libraries and other community organizations. We seek to inspire, motivate and assist students in their goals of social justice and change.

In an era of social media, LLCs can teach students a variety of ways of getting their message out to a larger audience. Blogging, vlogging, filmmaking and podcasting are just some of the ways that students can make their voices heard. Our job is to teach them how to do it effectively and safely. We give them the tools, but they decide where to go with it.

This is the right time for deep reflection on curriculum, particularly as we struggle against the denial of scientific knowledge and actively fight misinformation.”

Trevor MacKenzie is an experienced teacher, author, keynote speaker and inquiry consultant who has worked in schools throughout Australia, Asia, North America, South Africa and Europe. He is an inquiry practitioner currently as a teacher with the Greater Victoria School District in Victoria, Canada.

“An underpinning of the inquiry model is co-designing and co-constructing with students as we share the heavy lifting of learning together. This partnership creates more of an active role in learning for the student, one in which they are a valued voice in the shaping of next steps in an authentic and tangible manner. Slowly, over time, there is a gradual release of control over learning from the teaching to the student and in this shift, students become more confident and competent in taking on more agency over their learning.

There are many structural processes, protocols, and frameworks that allow this sort of democracy over learning to occur, all of which are founded in the constructivist theory (see the Tree of Inquiry image attached). Socratic seminars, the Harkness Method, and Spider Web Discussions all come to mind as more equitable frameworks for all students to engage in the learning through a highly personalized and relevant manner.

Another structural element that promotes this participation of students in the co-designing of learning is through the power of a provocation (see attached image). This comes to mind as I reflect on how to engage students in learning the big ideas of justice, rights, and democratic principles.”

Protect the social spaces provided by schools as we transform education. The school as a physical space is indispensable. Traditional classroom organization must give way to a variety of ways of ‘doing school’ but the school as a separate space-time of collective living, specific and different from other spaces of learning must be preserved.

Alec Couros is director of the Centre for Teaching and Learning at University of Regina. He is a professor of educational technology and media at the university’s Faculty of Education.

“As we inch closer to some semblance of normalcy, governments are already signaling interest in the cost-saving potential of a future that emphasizes online education, but we as educators should urge extreme caution in this matter. Indeed, one of the most critical lessons that we have learned from the COVID-19 pandemic is that online learning is not a replacement for the rich social experience of schools. And while schools provide a number of social spaces, perhaps the one with the greatest significance is the classroom itself, and the move to digital education has made clear the many difficulties of replicating the physical classroom, particularly in K-12 contexts. Even for teachers with strong technical proficiencies and sufficient pedagogical knowledge of online instruction, it’s still difficult to move beyond teaching and learning as merely a transactional exercise and to recreate the vibrant social setting that in-person learning provides.

As we move forward, then, we must recognize the incredible privilege of being present with students, and we must not take the precious gift of shared space and time for granted. As educators, we must ensure that we remain cognizant of the aspects of school in general, and the classroom in particular, that are difficult (or impossible) to replicate via online modalities, and we must strive to make good use of the shared time and space we are given. At the same time, we should prepare for a potential increase in online programming by committing to developing a better understanding of hybrid programming. In teacher education, similarly, we have a responsibility to prepare our students for a future educational reality that incorporates online, blended, and hybrid programming in ways that are complementary and that play to the benefits and limitations of each modality. Finally, we must be prepared to fight for the idea of school that includes the physical, social spaces that are so central to the educational experience.”

Make free and open-source technologies available to teachers and students. Open educational resources and open access digital tools must be supported. Education cannot thrive with ready-made content built outside of the pedagogical space and outside of human relationships between teachers and students. Nor can education be dependent on digital platforms controlled by private companies.

Anita Brooks Kirkland is the Chair of Canadian School Libraries, and a past president of the Ontario Library Association and the Ontario School Library Association. She has a particular interest in developing the virtual library learning commons.

“Access to online resources and learning tools is a long-standing problem, even in a rich country like Canada. There has been a move to open access and forms of licensing that encourage sharing, but the fact remains that the vast majority of online databases for research and eBook collections remain commercially-licensed resources, and come with big price tags.

The exponential growth of the Internet has fostered a false belief that all information is now free. The pandemic has been a rude awakening for many in this regard. When physical books were not available because school libraries were closed, access to eBooks was restrictive to non-existent in many cases. Kids’ right to read was at stake.

Libraries buy things so that people can use them for free. This is foundational to providing equity of access for all. When it comes to digital resources, this is becoming harder and harder to do, especially in K-12 education. Ebook pricing for libraries is prohibitive, as are licensing costs for online databases. These critical resources are out of reach for many schools.

Decades of advocacy for provincial licensing for online databases and digital tools has recently taken a major hit as some provincial governments have quietly dismantled existing agreements and divested responsibility for purchasing online resources to local school districts, despite the relative cost-effectiveness of province-wide licensing. Politically this has been framed as empowering local decision-making, but, in reality, it is sacrificing equity of access to political expediency. And few have even noticed, distracted by the worldwide health crisis.

The complexities of this issue make advocating for change extremely challenging. There are some points of inspiration, like effective consortium models in other sectors, and projects such as Scholars Portal, which provides access to information resources that are collected and shared by university libraries from across Ontario. A similar model applied to K-12 education would go a long way to providing similar equity of access.

Here we are, in a rich, developed country, and access to quality learning resources is still a huge problem. Equity can only be achieved when decision-makers truly commit to UNESCO’s second priority, to include connectivity and access to knowledge and information as important parts of universal access to education.”

Pippa Davies has 30 years of experience working as a director, administrator, library specialist and teacher-librarian. For the last 15 years Pippa has loved working as the director of the Heritage Christian Online School learning commons.

“Open access to excellent quality educational resources has always been an important consideration for the new learning commons. We are called to share and disseminate information and free materials so that others can have equal access. Remixing and redistributing is what we do in our unit study kits to help support many of the goals in our British Columbia standards. Families that register with our school and do not pay funds, have the opportunity to use these for free, along with other resources. Since there is no due date, students can hold onto them forever, which removes any barriers to high quality learning materials. We deal with many authors in the digital library environment who do not want libraries to host their materials based on copyright and distribution. It can become a problem for those lower income families who cannot afford resources and need to borrow.

Librarians are extremely good at disseminating information along with curating excellent collections. Their worth is indisputable. Having an excellent learning commons website that is navigable and explains the curated collections is a gift to patrons. Offering digital resources that help support the academic needs of a community is vital. Providing cool lists and ways to access materials that are open access is part of what we do at our library learning commons.”

Ensure scientific literacy within the curriculum. This is the right time for deep reflection on curriculum, particularly as we struggle against the denial of scientific knowledge and actively fight misinformation.

Pooja Mathur is a teacher-librarian in the King’s School senior library in Sydney, Australia.

“According to Combes (2008), the current Net Generation might be tech-savvy, but it is not information literate, their online research methodology tends to be flawed and ineffective. Additionally, Combes declares that often educators themselves lack the necessary skillset to safely and responsibly negotiate through the online information landscape.

The International Federation of Library Associations (2018) states that one of the aims of libraries is to promote critical thinking (an essential skill to develop for information and media literacy). Libraries need to be future-ready to support and lead their schools (Alliance for Excellent Education, 2018) by developing innovative professional practice, programs, and library spaces. Teacher-librarians (TLs) must display leadership and ensure that students develop transferable skills, digital citizenship values and gain confidence in their research and library skills to comfortably transition to university and public libraries without encountering “library anxiety” (Foote, 2016, p. 57). TLs keep abreast of latest technological trends, developments and challenges (Becker et al., 2017), reflected in their library’s information management strategies and services.

TLs are curators – relevant digital resources for all subject areas and stage groups are collated regularly allowing educators and students to access quality educational sources. The library subscribes to and provides single log-on access to a multitude of digital tools including: an intuitive online catalogue; a bouquet of relevant digital educational databases; E-books and audio book platforms, digital citation builder; “How to…” videos on research and referencing; digital textbooks, newspapers, journals; academic integrity tools like Turnitin, digital reading, writing and tinker clubs; academic tutoring and support, and more. TLs provide just in time digital and/or hands-on support and training to staff, along with co-teaching and in-class support.

Hence, school library collections and services have evolved and embraced technology to adequately support teaching and learning needs based on pedagogy and curriculum requirements.”

Carlo Fusco is the teacher-librarian at Waterloo Collegiate Institute in Waterloo, Ontario. He has been a guidance counselor, special education teacher, technology teacher, a department head, an elementary school teacher, and a college professor. He taught high school chemistry and biology for more than 20 years.

“This is the right time for deep reflection on curriculum, particularly as we struggle against the denial of scientific knowledge and actively fight misinformation. Here are some of my thoughts on the topic:

There has never been a time more urgent for critical thinking than today.
We are passive consumers of information due to social media – no deep dives to verify validity
We need to teach the difference between opinion versus speculation and the interpretation and understanding of facts
We have forgotten that the scientific process was designed to find truth using well designed unbiased questions.
It shocks me that “boomers” have become passive consumers of Fox News. This was the generation of hippies and civil rights activists. When did they stop “questioning the man?”
Media studies should be a required course
It is often said that ‘nationalism’ leads to ‘fascism’– can’t remember where I heard the quote. It is the nationalists that are ‘spinning’ science by simply denying fact
We need to teach more about the process of how we understand our world through science and that it is a method/lens through which we examine the natural world and try to explain it. Too many science teachers see the curriculum as a checklist of things to teach and don’t connect the facts with the students’ experiences.
We need more authors like Mary Roach, Joseph A. Schwarcz, and Stephen Jay Gould who write about science in everyday language and are storytellers who warmly invite the audience into their tale without making them feel dumb.
Science needs to move from the ivory tower and be made more accessible to the masses. We also need to teach self-regulation so we can lift our heads from our phones/social media and take a genuine interest in the world and people around us.
We need to look at how propaganda works and how to recognize it. I fear we are in a ‘bread and circuses’ (Fall of Rome) time in human history, but it has been replaced by ‘fast food and football’ (fall of American empire).”

“Scientific literacy is an essential competency for all children whether or not they plan to pursue a career in the sciences. For students to make thoughtful choices that affect their physical and mental health, students need to be scientifically literate. Scientific literacy is a form of curatorial thinking that requires students be able to assess the relevance, usefulness and reliability of information; are able to use what they learn prospectively to make wise future oriented choices, and be able to choose what, with whom and how to share their learnings about the world in which they exist.”

Protect domestic and international financing of public education. The pandemic has the power to undermine several decades of advances. National governments, international organizations, and all education and development partners must recognize the need to strengthen public health and social services but simultaneously mobilize around the protection of public education and its financing.

Dianne Oberg, PhD, Professor Emerita, Faculty of Education, University of Alberta. Dianne’s research has focused on teacher-librarianship education and on the implementation and evaluation of school library programs. She continues to contribute to the work of Canadian School Libraries and the International Association of School Librarianship (IASL). Dianne was the founding editor of the peer-reviewed international journal, School Libraries Worldwide.

“How do these ideas connect to the school library learning commons?

The pandemic has brought into focus inequities in societies around the world—economic and technological inequities underpin inequities in access to social and health services and to educational opportunities as well.

Equitable access to education is foundational to the success of individuals, to communities, and to nations. This commitment to equity in education is clearly identified in the IFLA/UNESCO School Library Manifesto: The School Library in Teaching and Learning for All (1999).

The Manifesto and the IFLA School Library Guidelines (2015) describe the contributions of school librarians to education as working to achieve two purposes: a moral purpose (i.e., making a difference in the lives of young people), and an educational purpose (i.e., improving teaching and learning for all). The protection and funding of public education is critical to providing equitable access to school library services and programs.

Why is equity important? People who are treated fairly and given equal opportunities are better able to contribute socially and economically and to enhance their community’s growth and prosperity. Reducing inequities within a society helps to create a safer and healthier society. Research shows that school libraries make a positive impact on all students, but especially on the success of those students who are disadvantaged in some way (poor, immigrant, minority, and/or have disabilities).”

How can we as school library professionals support, promote, amplify these concrete actions in the post COVID19 education landscape?

School library professionals have found many innovative ways to support “teaching and learning for all” during the COVID19 pandemic, including:

Helped teachers find digital resources for teaching remotely
Developed newsletters or Facebook groups for parents highlighting new library materials
Revised library policies to make borrowing materials easier
Rearranged library facilities to support social distancing
Offered virtual book clubs for students and for parents
Provided tech support for students and parent having connectivity or device problems

In the post COVID19 education landscape, school library professionals will help teachers integrate many of the resources and strategies developed during the pandemic into their in-person teaching. In addition, they will find opportunities to:

Support the advocacy programs and equity and diversity work of their provincial and local teacher associations
Initiate and/or support anti-racist and anti-oppression programs in their schools and districts
Conduct “diversity audits” of the school library collection (and of the visual environment of the school)
Contact local decision-makers including provincial MLAs about the funding for public education K-12 and for post-secondary institutions responsible for the education of school librarians
Collect provincial data about school library services for advocacy efforts – use existing examples: BCTLA Annual Working Conditions Survey, Ontario’s People for Education survey or the OLA School Libraries Survey
Work with Census Canada to do a national school library survey every five years to enable national and international comparisons”

Chris Kennedy is the Superintendent of Schools/CEO at West Vancouver Schools. He has taught secondary English and Social Studies, and been both an elementary and secondary school principal. Before being appointed Superintendent, Chris was Deputy Superintendent in West Vancouver Schools. One of the most progressive voices in BC education, Chris has been featured by Macleans Magazine as one of the 100 Young Canadians to Watch and his work has been featured in various local and national publications.

“While there is a lot of concern that post-pandemic funding for public institutions will be very tight, when it comes to education there is another force that is at play. The pandemic has amplified the power and importance of education. We have seen leading jurisdictions around the world make difficult decisions in order to maximize learning in schools. The pandemic has also reinforced the equity challenges we have when it comes to access. Even in Canada, which is rightly seen as having one of the world’s most equitable education systems, the pandemic has highlighted differences in access to resources, technology and support. We have seen libraries and learning commons become hubs for the sharing of technology and accessing resources in new ways — continuing to address the equity challenges and this needs to continue. Governments have made many difficult decisions to prioritize education during the pandemic, and this attention to education must continue as we look to build back in new ways over the next several years.”

Advance global solidarity to end current levels of inequality. COVID-19 has shown us the extent to which our societies exploit power imbalances and our global system exploits inequalities. The Commission calls for renewed commitments to international cooperation and multilateralism, together with a revitalized global solidarity.

In their report on Education in a Post-Pandemic World, UNESCO’s International Commission on the Futures of Education highlight the many gender inequities laid bare by a virus that forced families into their homes and relied on a mainly all-female workforce to take on the essential but often poorly paid labour needed to keep society functioning. Consequently, in many parts of the world, progress made to advance education for girls and women was quickly reversed.

At the same time, the rise of nationalism in several countries has resulted in a form of isolation, a pulling back from inter-state collaboration when the world needs to come together to ensure the best education outcomes for everyone.

“The gravest levels of human-made inequalities exist between the Global North and the Global South — and COVID-19 has forced us to a moment of reckoning. Tragically, the most dire consequences of these inequities in terms of lost human lives and livelihoods will unfold in the weeks and months ahead. The time for action is now. We cannot countenance the levels of inequality that have been permitted to emerge on our planet.”
Education in a post-COVID world: Nine ideas for public action

References (Question 7: Pooja Mathur)

Adams Becker, S., Cummins, M., Davis, A., Freeman, A., Giesinger Hall, C., Ananthanarayanan, V., Langley, K., and Wolfson, N. (2017). NMC Horizon Report: 2017 Library Edition. The New Media Consortium. http://cdn.nmc.org/media/2017-nmc-horizon-report-library-EN.pdf

Alliance for Excellent Education. (2018). Unleashing the instructional leadership of librarians to foster Future Ready schools. http://futureready.org/program-overview/librarians/

Combes, B. (2008). Digital natives or digital refugees? Why we have failed Gen Y. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1661&context=ecuworks

Foote, C. (2016). Building Success beyond High School with Career- and College-Ready Literacies. Knowledge Quest, 44(5), 56-60. https://knowledgequest.aasl.org

International Federation of Library Associations. (2018). How to spot fake news. https://www.ifla.org/publications/node/11174

Caroline Freibauer is Head Librarian at St. Michael’s College School in Toronto. She is the editor of The Teaching Librarian, the Ontario School Library Association magazine, and a member of the Brantford Public Library Board. Caroline is also a member of the Canadian School Libraries Board of Directors and the CSL Journal Editorial Board.