Assessment Task*
The assessment task is an enhanced learning task that builds on prior learning accessed through the LIB 5080 School Library Media course. The task is situated in a framework of ‘lifelong learning’ structured into three phases/stages:
SECTION 1: PORTRAYAL PHASE
Write a clearly articulated statement that outlines your identity as a school media coordinator in one particular context using the readings from the literature circles or other related readings. Support this statement with evidence from your learning portfolio, developed during completion of the LIB 5080 School Library Media course. Determine aspects of your portrayal as a media coordinator in this context that you could focus on to enhance your profile as a school media coordinator.
300-500 words
In this phase of the assessment task, you will utilize the learning portfolio, records and outcomes of your action learning project, relevant teaching and media resources, and evidence of engagement in online discussions compiled during completion of the LIB 5080 School Library Media course. This learning portfolio is to act as an ‘artefact’ that represents a ‘snapshot’ of your teaching career at a particular historical juncture.
This stage of the learning task is designed for you to construct an accurate portrayal of your identity as a school media coordinator in one specific context. You will be required to describe your professional and personal attributes as a school media coordinator in one particular context in terms of your pedagogical repertoire and philosophical understandings. You need to justify any claims made with evidence from the learning portfolio. You will conclude the portrayal by identifying areas you can build on to enhance your profile as a school media coordinator in one particular context. A portrayal of this type is descriptive rather than analytical. As an autobiography, or a narrative, it describes who you believe yourself to be, know and do as a school media coordinator in a specific context.
SECTION 2: ILLUMINATIVE PHASE
Generate an illuminative analysis of your professional practices as a school media coordinator. Document and analyze reasons why you engage in particular practices within your professional context and theorise why you engage in these practices from a socio-historical, socio-political and socio-cultural perspective.
(1500- 2000 words)
In this phase of the assessment task, you will be required to study a number of salient readings (in your literature circles) to assist in illuminating your analysis and understanding of some fundamental theoretical underpinnings of your professional practices as a school media coordinator in one particular context. In the previous section, you have described your practice and provided evidence of your work. In moving forward as a life long professional learner it is imperative that you come to understand the way you practice, why you practice in particular ways and simply, how you came to these decisions. This section invites you to deconstruct your professional practices within school librarianship, in order to better understand why you do things the way you do – to come to understand the theory and the philosophical underpinnings of your practices. In doing so you will be able to call on the literature to further articulate your reasons for doing things the way you do in this particular context. In short, you are being invited to theorise your work – or more simply - to rationalize your professional practices. This will lay the ground work for the final section – the transformative – for it is only when we fully understand why we do the things the way we do in particular ways, that we are in the best position to transform our practices. For the purposes of this section you may choose to focus on just one component of your professional practices in school librarianship in your context. For example, you may choose to focus on your repertoire of pedagogical practices, information literacy, collaboraton, curriculum alignment, or the nature of knowledge construction. This is open to your interpretation and the priorities in your professional context.
Consider each question in turn:
1. Why do you do these things in the way you do? E.g. Why do you choose to use X as the core learning process in fostering student engagement?
2. Where have you come from (what historical antecedents contribute to your current philosophy of school librarianship?)? Simply, how did it get to be this way?
3. What are the fundamental theoretical underpinnings from educational research AND your experiences that justify your current practices?
4. What evidence do you have that can ratify the existence and continuation of or the transformation of these practices? How do you document the efficacy of your work?
Use the literature circle readings or other sources to ratify and theorise your practices as you illuminate your professional positioning as a school media coordinator in one particular context. Refer also to your portfolio in citing examples of your professional illumination.
SECTION 3: TRANSFORMATIVE PHASE
Generate some possible pathways for transformation of your professional practices in school librarianship. Substantiate possibilities with empirical research or educational theory.
(1000 words)
This final phase is designed to enable media coordinators to “paint the possibilities of pursuits”. As a moment of transformation it should involve a form of “reinventing, reconstituting, and reconstructing”. Here media coordinators will need to explore possibilities (again, using the shared texts from the literature circles) for ideological and/or tangible shifts they might like to pursue in their contexts. This is the culminating phase of this assessment task where you can project how you wish to transform and/or sustain your professional practices as a school media coordinator. To this point you have engaged in the process of description or portrayal, an illuminative process or one of analysis, and now, this is the point of critique. In engaging in critique, you need to call on the lenses provided through the literature, as this will ensure that you bring rigour and depth to your writing. In projecting your dreams or desires for the transformation of your professional practices in school librarianship, it is most acceptable for you to move outside the learning zones in which you are currently working, and aspire to a differentiated set of outcomes. This is what dreams and visions are made of! However, it is important to substantiate your aspirations with some empirical research or educational rhetoric so that it remains within the realms of plausible educational practice. Further, this transformative phase of critical engagement should project the ways in which you desire to improve or enhance your work as a school media coordinator. You may like to focus on the reconstitution of your work from the perspective of your emerging identity as a professional media coordinator in new times, or you may choose to focus on an issue related to collaboration, information literacy, or another area key to school librarianship. Your portfolio may be of limited use in this phase and you may wish to project your thinking outside your current context. While in the previous sections you will have identified contextual, political, cultural and social constraints that may limit your professional work, this phase should focus more on possibilities and pathways into the future.
CONCLUSION: Planning for the future – Professional goals
In order to bring the results from the above three phases together, you are required to conclude the assessment task by considering and articulating three goals for yourself as a professional lifelong learner. You may depict this as a model for lifelong learning (see Appendix A). These goals should be expressed as three new learning insights that have emerged from your engagement with the LIB 5080 School Library Media course, the literature and the assessment task and should be strategic in assisting you to move forward as a professional school media coordinator.
(100 words)
*Adpated from Professional Learning Pathways: Engaging in Lifelong Learning - Middle Phase of Learning Online Course Assessment Task
Developed by:
Professor Tania Aspland, The University of the Sunshine Coast
Ms Leanne Crosswell, Queensland University of Technology
Dr lisahunter, Griffith University
Dr Donna Pendergast, The University of Queensland
Ms Catherine Weir, Queensland University of Technology
APPENDIX A
Lifelong Learning – Some Concepts
The following information and reference sources provide an introduction to the concept of lifelong learning, which is to be utilized by participants as the framework for their Assessment Task.
Developing the skills and aptitudes of ‘lifelong learning’ is an essential capacity for effective participation in contemporary knowledge economies and societies. It is consistently presented in the literature that there are various generic skills, attitudes and capacities essential to becoming a lifelong learner. The development of these skills begins at birth and they are honed through thoughtful and effective educational practices. Participating in the Assessment Task is an opportunity to contribute actively to the ongoing goal of formal lifelong learning.
Since the mid-1990s there has been a shift towards a concept of lifelong learning that includes all learning that enhances and contributes to knowledge and skills. In 1996 the OECD committed to the importance and relevance of lifelong learning (OECD 1996). The ‘front-loading’ view of learning linked to a narrow band of school years is being overtaken by a view of lifelong learning that encompasses ‘individual and social development of all kinds and in all settings – formally in schools and vocational, tertiary and adult education institutions; and in-formally, at home, at work and in the community’ (OECD 1996). This has meant the enfolding of foundational and compulsory education into this broader concept, and the emergence of a ‘cradle-to-grave’ stance towards lifelong learning (Istance 2003). This extension of the notion of lifelong learning has been prompted by the emergence of knowledge economies and information societies, the key features of which are well known and documented, and include:
· globalisation and increasing trade liberalism,
· ageing populations,
· changing nature of work and employment opportunities,
· increased mobility and conversely, immobility of populations,
· increasing impact of new and future information and communication technologies, and,
· a shift away from manufacturing towards knowledge and service economies.
The notion of lifelong learning, then, focuses attention on the need for continual learning and on the sets of generic skills and capacities that will equip individuals and societies to embrace this expanded notion of learning and the challenges of living and working in knowledge economies. Media coordinators, as one group of professionals, typify the changing nature of work and the challenges this presents, and also represent a large group who might benefit from a commitment to lifelong learning.
Some Lifelong Learning Frameworks:
The OECD (Selby, Smith & Ferrier 2002) identifies four key pillars of lifelong learning in contemporary societies:
1. Systemic view of learning – that learning, formal and informal, is linked to the full life-cycle rather than ‘front-loaded’ into the compulsory years of schooling;
2. Centrality of the learner – recognition of diversity of learners and a shift in priority towards an increased client focus;
3. Motivation to learn – attention to self-directed and individualised learning; and
4. Multiple objectives of educational policies – economic, social, personal.
Likewise, the UNESCO report (Watson 2003, p 6) identified four characteristics of lifelong learners that could set the parameters of a learning society:
1. learning to do (acquiring and applying skills, including life skills);
2. learning to be (promoting creativity and personal fulfilment);
3. learning to know (an approach to learning that is flexible, critical and capable); and
4. learning to live together (exercising tolerance, understanding and mutual respect)
Istance (2003, pp. 95-97) identifies a set of key competencies and abilities considered fundamental to effective participation in contemporary life:
1. Acting autonomously
· Ability to defend and assert one’s rights, interests, responsibilities, limits and needs;
· Ability to form and conduct life plans and personal projects; and
· Ability to act within the larger context.
2. Using tools interactively
· Ability to use language, symbols and texts interactively;
· Ability to use knowledge and information interactively; and
· Ability to use technology interactively.
3. Functioning in socially heterogeneous groups
· Ability to relate well to others;
· Ability to cooperate; and
· Ability to manage and resolve conflict.
The OECD (2000, p. 22) notes that the core learning processes that would lay the foundations for lifelong learning include:
1. learning and thinking techniques;
2. ways of organising knowledge;
3. forms of expression; and
4. interpersonal social relations.
The concept of lifelong learning straddles a range of often-competing policy and implementation priorities, but there is general agreement in the literature on the generic capacities, skills and knowledge required for such learning, as well as agreement that the acquisition and application of these prerequisites will enable an individual to continue to make the most of learning opportunities and to contribute to the social and economic well-being of the community.
References:
Istance, D. (2003). Schooling and lifelong learning: insights from OECD analyzes. European Journal of Education, 38 (1), 85-98.
OECD – The European Commission, Community Research, New Perspectives for Learning – Briefing Paper 20 ‘Lifelong learning: implications for Universities’. Accessed (1s December 2003) http://www.pjb.co.ul/npl/bp20.htm
OECD (1996). Lifelong learning for all. OECD, Paris.
Selby Smith, C. & Ferrier, F. (2002) Lifelong learning and the world of work: CEET’s survey for the OECD. Monash University – ACER, Centre for the Economics of Education and Training, 6th National Conference August 2002, Ascot Vale, Victoria, Australia.
Watson, L. (2003). Lifelong learning in Australia. Commonwealth of Australia: Department of Education, Science and Training.