ISCI 761- Blog 1-AASL and ISTE Standards

The Standards: Guiding Librarians and Learners

While I was reading through this week's required reading, Knowledge Quest, Journeying with the AASL Standards Volume 47 Number 5, one idea, or common theme, that really continued to pop up was that many librarians had confusion and questions involving the new AASL standards when they were first introduced.  This was really comforting to me as a graduate student and a new school librarian because the standards are a bit overwhelming.  My personal opinion is that they are overwhelming because there are so many to learn and understand.  I think it will be easier to adopt and adapt, though, as a new librarian coming in because I do not know the old standards and the changes and additions that were made.  Having been a teacher for 17 years, I have experience implementing standards as well as adapting to new standards, so this is not a new task to me, although it is a tedious one. Additionally, in one of the articles written by Laura Hicks, Maryland's Journey Towards New State School Library Standards, the point was made that they were comparing the National School Library Standards to the College and Career Ready Standards as well as other state standards.  This brought another question to mind, what stage is South Carolina in adopting statewide School Library Standards? I know previously there have not been any state specific library standards.  Often it is left up to the individual districts to determine how and what will be taught in the school libraries.  The AASL and ISTE standards provide librarians a framework and guide as they develop curriculum and programming within the school library.

The basic framework for the AASL standards is that is focuses on the learner, the librarian, and the school library.  There are six shared foundations in the AASL Standards Framework: Inquire, Include, Collaborate, Curate, Explore, and Engage.  The ISTE Standards are also separated by student, educator, educator leader, and coach.  While these ISTE standards focus primarily on the use of technology and digital tools to facilitate learning, they contain many of the same elements as the AASL Standards such as thinking critically, collaborating, and creativity and design.  The most helpful tool I found was the crosswalk that compares the two standards side by side.  AASL and ISTE Crosswalk Courtney Lewis states in her article, Collaborating to Communicate Librarian Reading Groups and Understanding  Standards, the importance of using the crosswalk to use familiar language to other stakeholders, such as administrators, when discussing what librarians can do and the importance of what we do in our schools, "comparing and contrasting our standards to the ISTE Standards for Students as well as the ISTE Standards for Educators, can be a way of explaining the equivalencies between ISTE standards familiar to the administrator and the AASL frameworks for learners and school librarians. Comparing one or two areas of the Shared Foundations in a discussion with your administrator shows how aligned the ISTE/ AASL standards are under “Inquire” and emphasizes the importance of inquiry throughout the curriculum. The number of empty boxes on the ISTE side of the crosswalk under “Include” can demonstrate school librarians’ emphasis on issues of diversity and inclusivity in our work (AASL 2018b)." 

Image: AASL and ISTE Standards Crosswalk

As a school librarian in South Carolina, I would love to see a crosswalk that compares the National School Library Standards to the SC State Standards, specifically the new ELA standards.  I looked for something that was already created with no luck yet.  What resources have you found for implementing standards in South Carolina School Libraries?

Citations:

Hicks, L. (2019). Maryland's Journey Towards New State School Library Standards. Knowledge Quest, 

            47(5), 74-79.

Lewis, C. L. (2019). Collaborating to Communicate: Librarian Reading Groups and Understanding Standards. Knowledge Quest, 47(5), 36–43.

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