Articles on learning to teach & school children's information seeking & transfer

Library and Information Research (Volume 34 Number 107, 2010) has two interesting articles.
Eveline Houtman: “Trying to figure it out”: Academic librarians talk about learning to teach
"This qualitative research study explores, through the experiences of eight academic librarians in Ontario, Canada, how librarians learn to teach in the classroom. It uses narrative inquiry to study and share these experiences, an approach that is in the mainstream of teacher research, although little used in the library and information literature. Areas explored include the librarians‟ expectations of librarianship; what they learned at library school; teaching as learning; support from colleagues; continuing education; teacher identity; talking about teaching." http://www.lirg.org.uk/lir/ojs/index.php/lir/article/view/246/303

James Edward Herring: School students, information retrieval and transfer.
"This study sought to examine the views of students, teachers and teacher librarians on students’ attitudes to, use of, and reflections on, information retrieval, when completing curricular assignments. A second element of the research was to investigate the views of students, teachers and teacher librarians on the extent to which students might transfer information retrieval skills across time and across subjects. The research was carried out in three rural Australian schools. ... Findings from the study indicated that a minority of students both valued and would transfer information retrieval skills; the majority of students valued information retrieval skills but were unlikely to transfer skills without prompting; and a very small minority of students could not understand the concepts of information retrieval and transfer. The study also found that the schools lacked a culture of transfer."
http://www.lirg.org.uk/lir/ojs/index.php/lir/article/view/242/301
Photo by Sheila Webber: a snowman from last week