Blog Post 1: AASL and ISTE

 

The purpose of the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) is to serve as a set of guidelines for the librarians as they develop curriculum specific to the needs of their students, library, and school while ensuring that the rigor and needs of 21^st century learners is happening. The AASL Standards are formulated from Six Shared Foundations: Inquire, curate, include, explore, collaborate, and engage (AASL, 2017). With those six foundations are 4 domains that can be found within each foundation and they include: think, create, share, and grow (AASL, 2017).

With each foundation, school librarians are able to dive deeper and see how thinking, creating, sharing, and growing may happen. Before working with AASL standards within this module, I expected the AASL standard to much more specific like core content subject area standards can be. In the district I work in, they even have specific curriculum to follow quarterly to ensure that all standards are being met. AASL, however, leaves much more flexibility (and honestly, responsibility) up to the school librarians to take what they have given them as guides to ensure that students are still being held to high standards as a modern 21^st century learner, while still leaving much of the curriculum development up to the librarians themselves (Freedman & Robinson, 2019). Though I do really like how much room there is for school librarians to create the professional goals and curriculum that they desire, conversely it is a little daunting to have so much freedom. There needs to be a balance to ensure that librarians are still holding themselves to the high standards that are required by AASL, while also ensuring that they are serving their students the way they need to be served.

As I was trying to make sense of the AASL framework, I found Dr. Spiering’s article “Engaging Adolescent Literacies with the Standards” to be extremely resourceful; it helped give examples of the types of things school librarians should be challenging themselves to do with the AASL framework to ensure students are being challenged, but in a way that interacts with various literacies. For example, she gives a great argument that students often are required to analyze articles for accuracy, purpose, bias, etc., and that analyzing social media posts could be an effective way to have students practice this (Spiering, 2019). By analyzing social media posts, students would feel connected to what they are doing because they see how it applies to them, they are still practicing analysis and critical thinking, and they are interacting with various literacy platforms. While I was reading this, the perfect example came to mind because it is so relevant today. As noted in the images below, Joe Biden and Donald Trump have both been cited as saying “people are dying that have never died before.”

 

The two separate images have gone viral with thousands of shares by each party stating that the other party leader made the unintelligent statement. However, neither party leader said this. When doing more research, patrons would find that it is actually something Ernest Hemingway said decades ago (Reuters, 2020). This would be a great example of social media bias to show students to get them interacting with bias, accuracy, and purpose, while also interacting with digital forms of literacy. Overall, Dr. Spiering’s work does a great job of breaking down the purpose of the AASL framework, and how it needs to be applied to learners today who need to practice with various forms of literacy.

     Along with AASL, the International Standards for Technology Education (ISTE) is another organization meant to strengthen standards and learning for students. However, ISTE is more centered on the use of technology and how it should be used to better serve student learning. ISTE does not just have standards for librarians, it actually five different branches of standards specifically used to serve: students, educators, education leaders, coaches, and computational thinking competencies for educators. For educators, the five standards include: equity and citizenship advocate, visionary planner, empowering leader, systems designer, and connected learner. Additionally, the seven student standards include: empowered learner, digital citizen, knowledge constructor, innovative designer, computational thinker, creative communicator, and global collaborator.

The AASL And ISTE standards have many similarities. Both sets of standards believe in the importance of students being challenged to think independently by asking questions, challenging themselves, and thinking critically. The AASL Standard domain “think” is an integral part of each of their standards and “inquire” is their first standard as a foundational part of the learning process, while ISTE also encompasses the need to have “empowered learners” as a foundational standard. Additionally, the two sets of standards believe in the power of collaboration. AASL indicates that collaboration is a necessary part in the learning process to hear opposing and different view points from peers. Similarly, ISTE also indicates that being a “global collaborator” and working with peers towards a common goal is an important part of learning. Conversely, the two have some differences as well. Though AASL does communicate the value of being a 21^st century learner and working with various forms of literacies as Dr. Spiering states in “Engaging Adolescent Literacies with the Standards,” there are no standards speficially related to the sole need of computers. In the ISTE framework, computational thinking is a core standard for students to interact with. Additionally, ISTE has specific standards set for students, educators, teachers, and computational thinking competencies for educators while AASL standards are specific for school librarians.

     Through the lens of Dr. Spiering’s article “Engaging Adolescent Literacies with the Standards,” it is obvious that both sets of standards are important because they are challenging students to think and inquire, collaborate with others, and engage with their research into pursuing learning independently. Both frameworks are trying to help students engage with multiple forms of literacy and better 21^st century learners.

 

References:

 

American Association of School Libraries. (2018). National school library standards

crosswalk with ISTE standards for students and educators. Retrieved from https://standards.aasl.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/180828-aasl-standards-crosswalk-iste.pdf

 

American Association of School Libraries. (2017). AASL standards - standards

structure. [Article]. YouTube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=66&v=LwuJgX9wxgA&feature=emb_logo

 

American Association of School Libraries. (2017). American association of school

libraries image. [image] retrieved from

https://standards.aasl.org/wpcontent/uploads/2017/11/framework_all_cluster.png

 

American Association of School Libraries. (2017). AASL national school librarians

framework. [image] retrieved from

http://hersheyhslib-amackley.weebly.com/information-literacy-instruction.html

 

Boom FakeNews. (2020). Quotes attributed to Trump, Biden traced back to author

Hemingway. [Image]. Retrieved from

https://www.boomlive.in/world/coronavirus/quotes-attributed-to-trump-biden-traced-back-to-author-hemingway-7547

 

Freedman, J. & Robinson, A. (2019). School librarians level up. Knowledge Quest,

Volume 47(5). pp. 10-15..

 

International Standards for Technology Education (n.d.) International standards for

technology education standards and framework. Retrieved from  https://www.iste.org/standards

 

ISTE. (2020) ISTE framework. [Image]. Retrieved from

https://twitter.com/iste/status/1162389057680412678/photo/1

 

Rueters. (2020) Fact check: Trump said “people are dying who have never died before.”

[article]. Retrieved from

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-trump-people-dying/false-claim-trump-said-people-are-dying-who-have-never-died-before-idUSKBN21811M

 

Spiering, J. (2019). Adolescent literacies with the standards. Knowledge Quest, Volume

47(5). pp. 44-47