Purpose of this site
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Current federal initiatives aim to support quality teaching in schools and universities through establishing a national curriculum and promoting national professional teacher standards and national partnerships to address disadvantage, and improve school leadership and literacy. It is the purpose of this site to highlight the role of the qualified teacher librarian in relation to these initiatives in schools.
A qualified teacher librarian has dual qualifications in teaching and in librarianship (See the Standards for Professional Excellence in Teacher Librarians). As American school administration academic, Gary Hartzell (1997), has stated "one of the major reasons why librarians are often overlooked by teachers is the lack of exposure during their teacher training programs to the types of value-added services librarians can provide. Collaboration cannot be fully realized without creating a collaborative culture in which all partners see the importance and understand the benefits of collaboration to themselves, each other and their students" (Small, Ruth V., Collaboration: Where Does It Begin? Teacher Librarian, 14811782, June 2002, Vol. 29, Issue 5). Many principals, also, have not been exposed to the standards of excellence for qualified teacher librarians and the body of research linking their role to literacy and learning. In these times of global school-based management and minimal systemic guidelines, how do principals
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