The use of social media in public primary and secondary education (K-12) presents schools with numerous obstacles and constraints. Educators might use new media to enrich the classroom, but there are also accounts of grave student misconduct (such as cyber bullying) and legal liabilities for school districts. Education leaders and policymakers face difficult questions of how to promote access and use of technology while safeguarding children. In this paper, we present a frame analysis of several policy forces that govern technology use in K-12 schools. The paper highlights how an evolving, technology-mediated society and traditional education institutions create competing policy frames. These conflicting policy frames lead to intractable controversies that threaten student opportunities to access and learn with new media tools. Such an outcome may have negative repercussions in literacy, learning, and workforce development. This paper discusses several key policy controversies and offers suggestions for ways that K-12 institutions can set policy to facilitate technology in schools.
Library and information science education today must prepare future professionals to leverage various technologies and develop professional networks that will propel them into future careers. Increasingly, today’s information professionals need to understand how to create identities, build relationships, and engage in productive work with others in an online, digital environment. A community of practice framework may help to promote the kinds of interactions and identity work needed in an online course and work environment. Additionally, the application of a community of practice framework in an online setting may serve to mitigate the geographic and professional isolation that characterizes rural librarianship.
This paper examines the potential influence of evidence-based practice (EBP) in school libraries in affirming the role of the school librarian as leader. We begin with an examination of the most recently added role of effective school librarians, that of leader, and provide an overview of the current interpretation of this role. We then proceed with an introduction to the use of EBPs in school libraries, with an emphasis on the relationship of EBPs to student achievement. We articulate a potential relationship of EBP to building leadership credibility among school librarians by presenting examples of the use of EBP in linking student achievement to school library programs.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.