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IRLS 481/581: School Library Administration and Organization
School of Information Resources and Library Science
University of Arizona

Fall 2007

Course Facilitator: Judi Moreillon


Judi Moreillon's Educational Philosophy:

Just as your beliefs will guide your teaching, my beliefs about learning and teaching through school libraries will provide a framework for our learning experiences in this course.

  1. Learning occurs in a multicultural world with many ways of knowing.
    We will read, view, listen, and respond to the content of our course studies. Our responses will reflect our unique and diverse backgrounds and our personal interactions with the ideas presented. We will express our understandings through our many intelligences and using a variety of sign systems. Students and teachers in our course will be respectful of diversity in all of its manifestations.
  2. Learning is social.
    Students learn best when engaged in dialogue and collaboration with peers, experts in the field, and the course facilitator. Collaboration will occur in online dialogues, via email exchnages, and in class projects through the use of wikis and other 21st-century tools.
  3. Learning is constructed by the learner.
    By actively engaging in the learning experiences offered in this course, the learner will construct his/her own knowledge. Active participation is essential to learning; students must take ownership of their learning process. Hands-on experiences and on-going reflection are essential components in learning. In an experiential course such as this, participation is critical.
  4. Learning implies risk-taking and change.
    Revising and adding to personal constructs involves risk-taking and change. Personal, professional, educational, and societal change are addressed in this course. Beliefs about change can facilitate or hinder the learning process.
  5. Teaching is best when it can be described as facilitation.
    The role of the teacher is to provide a framework that facilitates the student's self-directed learning.
  6. Teaching personalizes knowledge and brings it to life.
    To be meaningful, learning experiences must be relevant and relate to the learner's real-world life experience. Instruction must be individualized and include choices for the learner.
  7. Teaching is a continuous learning experience.
    The teacher is a partner in the learning process. Together, the students and teacher(s) form a learning community in which respect and caring create the context for learning together: exploring information, constructing knowledge, and creating the potential for wisdom. Classroom-library collaboration between and among educators provides the most effective learning opportunities for students and the most valuable professional development opportunities for educators. Collaboration ensures that educators will develop best practices that meet students' needs.
  8. Teacher-librarians and the library program are central to creating a dynamic learning community.
    The library program, facilitated by a professional and effective teacher-librarian, is positioned to be at the heart of the learning community. Assess to ideas and information at the point of need and during classroom-library collaborations provides students and teachers with oppportunities to learn and to practice 21st-century skills in a 21st-century environment in which the collection resources and the instruction are seamlessly integrated into the classroom curricula. In this library, knowledgeable professional educators facilitate both physical and intellectual access to ideas and information in all formats.
  9. Learning and teaching are about empowering individuals to use literacy as a tool for social justice.
    Literacy learning and teaching are vital to actualizing a just and humane world. Particularly in a democratic society, it is necessary for the citizenry to acquire a high level of critical literacy that can inform their decision-making and help them guide the country's leaders. Information literacy is a core skill for success in the global society of the 21st-century.

Works Consulted

American Association of School Librarians and the Association for Educational Communications and Technology. Information Power: Building Partnerships for Learning. Chicago: American Library Association, 1998.

Banks, James A., ed. Multicultural Education, Transformative Knowledge, and Action: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. New York: Teachers College Press, 1996.

Dewey, John. Democracy in Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education. New York: Macmillan, 1916.

Freire, Paulo. The Politics of Education: Culture, Power, and Liberation. Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey, 1985.

Fullan, Michael. Change Forces: Probing the Depths of Educational Reform. New York: Falmer, 1993.

Harris, Judi. Virtual Architecture: Designing and Directing Curriculum-based Telecomputing. Eugene, OR: International Society for Technology in Education, 1998.

Hartzell, Gary. Building Influence for the School Librarian. Worthington, OH: Linworth, 1994.

Library Research Services. Impact Studies. 14 August 2006. www.lrs.org/impact.php

Nieto, Sonia. Affirming Diversity: The Sociopolitical Context of Multicultural Education. 2nd ed. New York: Longman, 1995.

Partnership for 21st Century Skills. Statement of Principles: 21st Century Skills and the Reauthorization of NCLB/ESEA. 14 August 2006. www.21stcenturyskills.org/documents/NCLBMemoandPrinciples0630.pdf

Vygotsky, Lev S. Mind in Sociey: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978.


In this classroom, everyone is a student; everyone is a teacher.

Last updated: 27 July 2007