Teachers and Administrators Experience the Loss of Licensed Librarians in Schools
This paper will layout the basis for a research proposal seeking to find the perceptions of teachers and administrators of the loss of licensed library teachers in Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS). It will lay out the problem, place the study within a defined paradigm, and give a brief literature review of related research. Once a context for the study had been defined, the study itself will be broken down and explained. This section will include an explanation of the general design of the study including, what will be studied, who will be interviewed, how these interviews will occur, and how these interviews will be analyzed. Finally the limitations of the study will be examined.
Problem Statement
School libraries or media centers offer a wide variety of services to schools from the basics such as providing reading materials and assistance in finding books on the shelf to complicated tasks such as teaching students how to evaluate information or how to use information once it is found. In the last two decades, at least twenty statewide studies of school libraries and their connection to school achievement have been conducted (Small and Snyder, 2010). All of these studies have shown a strong relationship between the existence within a school of a library with a strong materials collection, an unlicensed assistant, and a licensed librarian and better academic achievement. Generally this better achievement has been measured by improved scores on standardized tests correlated to the existence of the library elements mentioned above, but this achievement has also been measured in some studies through reported improvements in class work by teachers and/or students (Small et. al., 2010).
In spite of these findings, school systems like Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS) are facing budget cuts and are making hard decisions about programs and people in
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