AASL and ISTE Standards

     The first thought many educators have when thinking about standards is confusion. Standards can be confusing, wordy, and often difficult to dissect. As a teacher, many of our planning periods are spent sitting in a room with other educators and administrators analyzing and discussing standards. However, when it comes to standards for the school library, who is there to help make sense of everything?

     Often school librarians work alone in their building. They do not have weekly meetings with their team to analyze standards like many grade levels. Courtney Lewis (2019) discusses this confusion and her solution of utilizing librarian reading groups in order for librarians to better understand the standards. I absolutely love this idea she discusses in her article Collaborating to Communicate: Librarian Reading Groups and Understanding the Standards. Lewis discusses how the group of librarians progressed through the standards bit by bit and in return sparked insightful conversations about the language of the standards. 

     In her article, Lewis recommends using the National School Library Standards crosswalk with ISTE Standards for Students and Educators. I found this document to be extremely helpful when comparing and contrasting the AASL and ISTE standards. I observed that the AASL and ISTE standards both can be organized into six Shared Foundations: Inquire, Include, Collaborate, Curate, Explore, and Engage. Of these six Shared Foundations, the standards mostly align under the Inquire, Collaborate, and Engage foundations. This emphasizes the importance of inquiry, collaboration, and engagement in the school library curriculum.

     When contrasting the standards, I found it surprising that there were few ISTE standards that fell into the Include and Curate foundations. This was surprising to me since diversity and inclusion are very important topics and problems in the world today.

     I believe these standards can work very well together. Many of the standards already align, which can support librarians in providing programs and learning experiences that incorporate both standards. The standards that do not align often fall in the School Librarian Competencies and the School Library Alignments domains, which can be used to show the importance of the school library and librarian's role in providing this information and these experiences.


Helpful Links:

https://standards.aasl.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/180828-aasl-standards-crosswalk-iste.pdf

https://standards.aasl.org/project/learners/

https://www.iste.org/standards

References:

Lewis, C. (2019). Collaborating to communicate: Librarian reading groups and understanding the

     standards. Knowledge Quest, 47 (5), 36-43.

National School Library Standards Crosswalk. (2018). Retrieved from https://standards.aasl.org/project/crosswalks/
Location: Mt Pleasant, SC, USA

Comments

  1. Heather JohnsonJanuary 24, 2020 at 12:04 PM

    Hi Marie!

    Courtney's article was quite popular. I used in my comparison blog as well. I think the idea of a group of librarians working together to understand and implement standards spoke to many of us. I agree whole-heartedly about your wonderings on "who is there to help make sense of everything" in the library world. Having others with whom you can collaborate, share, bounce ideas is so important and I honestly believe we can learn better together than we can alone. Thank you so much for sharing!

    ReplyDelete
  2. LaraWRussellJanuary 25, 2020 at 9:26 AM

    Hi Marie,

    Thanks for your blog post. I, too, picked up on the lack of "include" and "curate" resources in the ISTE standards, and like you, I was really surprised by that. Given the mis- and disinformation prevalent on the internet, I would have thought that these would have played a heavier part in the ISTE standards. I know that when I'm having students research online, I try to ensure that they are using diverse resources that highlight multiple perspectives. As you indicate, this is incredibly important.

    Thanks again for your post. Hope you're doing well.
    Lara Russell

    ReplyDelete
  3. Patriot Library BloggerJanuary 26, 2020 at 9:34 AM

    Hey Marie,
    Snaps to the comment about how teachers have time to work together and analyze standards, whereas librarians stand alone and are not included. I get so frustrated that I am not included in the weekly meetings about the planning for our students and how the library is just seen as a place for the students to go, since we don't give out grades. Standards are used by everyone in the school. There are history, science, reading, math and library/technology standards. We have a voice that should be heard amongst our peers and teachers. We librarians do stand alone.

    Jennifer Gibson

    ReplyDelete
  4. Brittany CobbJanuary 26, 2020 at 4:18 PM

    I always feel so very fortunate that I work on a team of 3 librarians and a clerk. Also, our district representative/leader always makes times for us to meet. In fact, this has been done recently in our school district by aligning AASL standards and new Social studies standards to collaborate and support one another. I also agree that standards always seem confusing to me....especially with all those numbers. I like the organization of the ISTE standards.

    ReplyDelete

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