The principal and the school library : apprehensions of the school library

The purpose of this thesis is to describe how principals apprehend the school library. In order to respond to this I formulated three questions: How was the improvement of the school libraries carried out in one municipality? Is the school library experienced as a part of the schools organization? How is the use of the school´s library experienced? To be able to answer these questions, for the purpose of this thesis, I have studied relevant literature on school libraries, the school organization and literature on qualitative methods. I have made six qualitative interviews. The objects of the interviews were three librarians and three principals. All of these persons have been working intensively, since 1999, on the improvement of the school libraries in a municipality in Sweden. I have been inspired by a qualitative method called phenomenography. I wanted to describe the variations of apprehensions of the school library. The object of phenomenography is to explore people´s different ways of experiencing a phenomena in the world. Phenomenography focus on people´s conceptions about a phenomena and not the phenomena as it really is. My conclusions are shown in chapter 7, where I answer my three questions. The results show variations of thinking about the school library. One apprehension is that the school library is integrated with the teaching and the principal feels confident in being able to influence the teachers to use the school library. Another apprehension is that the school library is not integrated in the teaching and the principal does not feel confident in being able to have any influence on the teaching.Uppsatsnivå: