Teacher-Librarians' Perceptions of Their Roles

Abstract

This exploratory study reports how teacher-librarians perceive their roles as practitioners in school library media programs. Conducted within the framework of qualitative research, the study employed a focus group interview (Morgan 1997) with five teacher-librarians at elementary school level in Seoul. The findings suggest: (1) the roles of teacher-librarians are influenced a great deal by many factors in educational systems; (2) there is no consensus on how to define and perform their role as teachers; (3) there seems to be increasing emphasis on their program administrator's role; (4) there is no consensus on prioritizing the five roles suggested by the AASL (2009), but all the participants agreed that the leader's role is most crucial for the success of pursuing the rest of the roles, and (5) there seems to be no clear boundaries as teacher-librarians perform their roles. Putting all the results together, the researcher was able to conclude that teacher-librarians are frequently asked to be flexible and negotiable and have great burden in the affective, cognitive, and physical realm for the roles imposed and expected of them.