The Research Setting

This work has taken place in a local authority run secondary school located in an inner city area. The school is a single-sex boys school from 11-16 of approximately 1445 students with an eight form entry. In addition there is a mixed-sex sixth form. It was one of the first comprehensive schools opened in 1956 and specifically recruited teachers who believed in mixed-ability teaching. As one of the forerunners of this style of education it attracted a high level of funding and opened with classrooms, laboratories and workrooms filled with state-of-the-art equipment.

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By the early nineties it was no longer a popular choice of school in the community. It was under-resourced and under-performing and it gradually lost the comprehensive nature of its intake. The intake became dominated by students with weak literacy levels, behaviour problems and the exam pass rate achieved was very low.

In the last fifteen years a whole range of factors have turned the school into an over-subscribed and once more popular community school. It sees itself at the cutting edge of developing ways of working with boys, as well as a pioneer of restorative behaviour practices and is viewed as a centre of excellence and training in these methods (Levens 2011; Margaret Thorsborne & Associates 2011). 38% of the student body have special educational needs and the school has developed a learning support department with a specialist team to work with students who are autistic. The socio-economic profile features nearly a third of the students registered for free school meals and in a recent internal survey 16% of Year 7 and 8 students do not have access to a computer at home. The pastoral care overall was rated as outstanding by Ofsted (Office for Standards in Education 2011). The school became a specialist in the performing arts nine years ago and moved into a new building four years ago, as have other schools in the surrounding area and this has made recruitment of Year 6 students, highly competitive. The school has

maintained its over-subscription which means its desired balanced comprehensive intake. In recent years more subject departments put students into sets rather than maintain mixed ability classes in response to pressures to raise attainment figures. This issue is hotly debated, as mixed-ability teaching remains a deeply rooted part of this school’s culture.

The school has always had a library run by a professionally qualified librarian, but like many parts of the school, by the nineties it was under-resourced and in need of modernization. With a newly appointed librarian there was a sufficient investment made to automate the service and introduce the school’s first internet connection. In response to the weak literacy levels of the students, reader development was a priority and over the next decade a strong reading culture was created. This is seen as a contributing factor to the slowly rising exam pass rate (Morris 2010 p.26). As the professional nature of the work increased a second member of staff was added.

The original library was circular in shape with a class set of tables and chairs in the centre for teaching and study purposes accompanied by four computers for student use. It was too small in relation to the size of the school community and the demands being made of it. In the new building the library was designed to sit at the centre of the school, it more than doubled in size, easily accommodating a hundred students at a time or two classes and additional students working independently. It is an open plan space with two class set-ups, one for study and one

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designed for the use of computers. A further additional member of staff was added at this point in recognition of the high usage made of the space by teachers and students.

There is a large book stock, 12 desktop computers, 30 laptops, 30 iPads and a small journal collection. Subject departments do not have extensive physical collections but rely on the library to supply box loans of topic material when requested. In recent years electronic resources are also sourced and shared with departments. There is a medium sized professional education collection and a current awareness service of journal articles provided for teachers.

All Year 7 and 8 students have a lesson based in the library each week and older classes are booked in on an ad hoc basis as required by their teacher’s curriculum needs. The librarian, although based in the library, also works in classrooms, laboratories and performing arts spaces as required. The Year 7 and 8 classes based in the library are from the English department and they focus on reading which is assessed termly as part of whole school assessment procedures. This is done jointly by the librarian and teacher which means knowledge of all students is gained by the librarian and this represents a unique set of relationships and overview of the school.

My experience of teaching information literacy is described in chapter one and has been studied for previous doctoral assignments and results presented both in school and externally at

conferences. My practice received national validation in 2011 (Woods 2011). I am a member of an action research group (Learning Resources Action Research Group) and this was founded in 2000 by a cohort of librarians who completed a Master of Education degree together and is chaired by Sharon Markless. It is a forum where we can discuss ideas, look at published research and critique our own work and professional practice. This research began in 2010 and has grown from those previous experiences and layers of research. In order to take my work forward at this point I needed some form of evaluative exercise to find out more about the teacher’s perspective of information literacy to inform my future process and actions.

In document Information literacy and the secondary school (Page 60-62)