Teacher and librarian a partnership that works? A phenomenographic study of how senior high school teachers apprehend the importance of the school librarian in the context of teaching.

Resource-based learning or problem-oriented learning are teaching methods that are becoming more and more common in schools today. In order to make these teaching methods work there is a demand to make students information literate. This entails that school librarians ought to play a more important role in teaching than before since they are the ones that are the most qualified when it comes to mediating information skills. The aim of this thesis is to find out how nine teachers at six senior high schools apprehend the professional role of the school librarian and how they apprehend the conception of information literacy In order to learn about these conceptions we have chosen to study to what extent collaboration exists in the schools in question and the teachers conceptions of the importance of the school librarian in this context. We have used phenomenography which is both a set of theoretical assumptions and a methodology. This means that by doing a limited number of qualitative interviews one is able to describe the variations of the conceptions that have emerged. The results of the study are presented in grouped categories of quotations that reflect various conceptions. Among the major findings in our study are that all of the teachers have a positive conception of the school librarian and of her/his qualifications and they all desire an extended collaboration. But the level of collaboration with the school librarian is due to the collaborative cultures that prevail in the particular school, confusion of roles and insufficient planning time. The conception that Swedish students have a poor knowledge of critical thinking holds for all the informants but there is no clear and agreed definition, among the teachers, of what is meant by information literacy or who is the most qualified to teach it, i.e. the teacher or the school librarian. This indicates that the teachers are rather ignorant of the school librarians knowledge of information literacy and the importance of the school librarian to teaching and learning.Uppsatsnivå: