The role of the libraryin innovative learning environments:

challenges and opportunities

The National Library is part of the Department of Internal Affairs

Image: Student at Snells Beach School, used with permission. All rights reserved.Image: All rights reserved

Services to Schools

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ILE ≠ FLS

Innovative Learning Environment ≠ Flexible Learning Space.

It’s about the learning, first and foremost.

Be innovative – in your thinking, about how learning (and teaching) happens, and about all the things that make up the environment – it’s an entire ecosystem of stuff, not just the physical space.

How do we innovate learning?

What are all the things that go into learning?

One of them is space. So the spaces need to enable this innovative learning to happen.

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Innovative learning

Environments

It’s about this…

i.e. what is it about the entire ecosystem that enables innovative learning to happen?

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AND it’s about this…

InnovativeLearning

environments (spaces)

It is about learning environments, but sometimes we put too much emphasis on aspects of the physical space. Start with innovative learning.

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• 4 elements at the pedagogical core

• plus 3 extra dimensions

• 7 principles for learning

• learners are at the centre• learning is social• emotions are integral to

learning• recognises individual

differences• stretches all students• assessment for learning• builds horizontal

connections

Their handbook identifies

The OECD on ILEs

This is some “BIG PICTURE” stuff. The OECD Handbook has just been published in June.

NZ’s policy is influenced by this – and NZers influence OECD position by providing expertise e.g. Helen Timperley with the Spiral of Inquiry stuff.

7 principles – think about how well does your school / your library DO these things?

3 dimensions – innovating the pedagogical core; becoming ‘formative organisations’ which means that organisations build on or develop the way they work, by reflecting and learning – just the same as how we talk about “formative assessment” of students; opening up to partnerships.

4 elements of the pedagogical core – how do we think about these in innovative ways:Learners = Who is learning? innovating the profile of learners – e.g. how do we group them? How do we differentiate learners? Can they make choices about their own learning?Educators = With whom? extending the profile of educators – not just teachers but through other people too (e.g. support staff! And parents, community groups…)Content = What are they learning? rethinking knowledge, competence and values – this is about what we want students to learn – what matters, and what do they need to know or be able to do?Resources = With what? innovating learning resources and their use – including learning materials (library!!!) and appropriate technology

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• What’s happening here?ile.education.govt.nz

• Teachers are figuring out how ILEs work

• We need to work out how libraries fit

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ILEs in New Zealand schools

There are 10 NEGs and they are about:• Students realising their individual potential, without barriers, so they can be full members of our

modern, changing, NZ society. Providing support and inclusive opportunities for diverse learners’ needs.

• Balanced curriculum – literacy/numeracy/science/tech/ and physical activity – not specifically mentioning arts, btw.

• Clear learning objectives, assessments. Quals system encouraging post-school ed.• Success, respect and acknowledgement of Māori and the ToW.

When we look at the Ministry’s ILE website, what do we see?1. It’s about how schools implement the (NZ) curriculum2. It’s about approaches to teaching and learning (i.e. pedagogy)3. It’s about flexible learning spaces (really, how these support innovative learning)

There are challenges to that for teachers because for many of them, ILEs represent a massive change to the way they’re being expected to teach. How can teachers employ a range of pedagogies that make the best of use of the FLS? And also, how do they ‘manage’ all this in a different environment than what they were used to? And ILEs have given them opportunities to do things differently – teach together, work with more students, share their knowledge and experience so that everyone benefits.

Challenges for libraries – are much the same, as what we face already. How are libraries part of implementing the curriculum? How do we contribute to improving literacy? How do we incorporate the values and the KCs of the curriculum into what goes on in the library? What sort of approaches are used / enabled by / constrained by the way libraries are now? A big challenge for us is when library spaces get subsumed by other learning spaces. This isn’t just a problem with ILEs but happens often in schools for all sorts of reasons. And the problem is the same – how do we *do* library if we don’t *have* a library?Opportunities? …

Teachers and SMT might not think about the library in terms of ILE – whether they do or if they don’t, we need to be right in there figuring it out ourselves.

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MoE’s ILE assessment tool

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Advanced features of an ILE Can the library do this?

• Does the design of learning spaces support the creation of communities of learners and independent learning?

• Are classrooms grouped around shared spaces (e.g. Whānau / Awhina / commons spaces or learning streets)?

• Can the shared spaces be used for presentations or performances (music, dance, drama), general learning and student social interaction?

• Are there small quiet spaces throughout the school for small groups to gather in productive study and conversation?

• Are there areas within groupings of classrooms for project making/wet work, small focus groups, meetings for staff and students?

• Can student work be displayed throughout the school and is prominence given to specific display areas (e.g. for special displays of local art, culture, student achievement)?

• Is the cultural diversity of the school's community recognized in the design of the school or its surrounding environment?

• Is the community able to support student learning by accessing part of the school for lectures, demonstrations, presentations or working with teachers?

the library

the library

the library

the library

the library

the library

the librarythe library

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The MoE has a spreadsheet schools can use to assess their learning spaces. There’s loads in it. The section “Advanced features of an ILE” is interesting, because these are sort of the ideal/aspirational thing – if you’re going to have an ILE – aim for these! So I looked at it from a library point of view.

How well do school libraries do all these things already?

Where are there opportunities to improve what we do, so that we can

achieve them all? Not by ourselves, obviously.

But – these are things to aim for.

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Purpose

How’s it actually going?

What needs to change?

Vision

Things to figure out

So – if we are aiming at developing innovative library learning environments, what do we need to do?

Two things to keep in mind ALL THE TIME.

Purpose – what is your school library for? Not just your opinion – what does your school community think? How do you know what it is? How do you help others

know what it is? Getting others involved in this is quite a CHALLENGE – who

else is interested? Can you bring together the right people to work it out?

Vision – what are you aiming for?

Where are you at now? Self review – what’s going well? Where are things not

going so well? What are your priorities? CHALLENGES: It can be a lot of work

to undertake this sort of self assessment. Gathering evidence to help inform what you do (new EBP pages on S2S website now).

What do you need to change – thinking particularly in terms of spaces, but other

things too. OPPORTUNITIES : to do things differently, make changes you

know will have a positive impact.

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What is the purposeof your school library?

Hopefully your school has a shared idea of the library’s purpose. And it is aligned with the school’s strategic goals and priorities. Right??

Your library’s purpose might be written down:Library policyLibrary guiding documentsStrategic plans

Think about how people know what your purpose is.

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“The first step in the being of anything is the theoretic or the vision of possibilities of

things that might be”.The Rev. Dr. Moses Coady

Dr Moses Coady was a Canadian priest who transformed remote communities in Nova Scotia (in the 1930s mainly) by helping them learn and work together to plan and bring about change. Great early example of evidence-based practice!

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Essential questions

• What can people DO

• What can people FIND

• Can your library ADAPT?

What is YOUR vision for YOUR library?

What will your library need to:look like?have in it?offer your community?

Some conversations to have on another day!collection developmentservice development…

How do you figure out your vision for your library?

Where would you say you’re at, in terms of achieving your vision? What’s great? What’s not so great?And don’t forget – when you achieve this vision, how will it feel? Students will feel …? Teachers will feel …? You will feel…? Remember the OECD principle – “emotions are integral to learning”.

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Understanding pedagogy

• Pedagogy is the decisions teachers make about different teaching methods and activities they’ll use with students

• Not all pedagogies are created equal

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You see different pedagogies in play EVERY TIME you step into the classroom. And also when a teacher brings their class to the library (“silent reading!”, lectures, read-aloud time etc). Also homework – spelling drills. Maths worksheets. Collaborative writing. And sometimes a mixture of lots of pedagogies within a larger scope and sequence of learning.

Not all pedagogies are the same:Some are better in certain situations than othersSome suit particular students better than othersSome approaches work better in certain environments

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What happensin your library?

Pedagogies are increasingly active, participatory, constructivist• developing skills for working with other people• personalising learning, and allowing students greater agency• cultivating creativity and innovation• using appropriate tools and technology

What pedagogical activities do you see happening in your library (for each bullet point above)?

Which would you categorise as more active and engaging approaches? And which are passive? Which are innovative?

Are there things that happen in the classrooms that don’t or can’t happen in the library? Why is that?

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Redesigning your library means rethinking the invitation

and the experience that the space offers.

David Jakes

https://davidjakesdesigns.com/ideas/2017/4/22/redesigning-your-library.

What is it about the space and the place that encourages people to:• Enter and explore• Stay longer• Get immersed in the library ‘experience’ in order to achieve what they came to

do (or something they didn’t know they wanted to do!)• Come back again another time!• Talk about the library in a positive way to other people

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Library design + behaviours

•What activities and behaviours are enabled and encouraged?

•What spaces are there for:– formal and informal learning?– reading?– socialising?– group work?

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So having thought about what we want happening in the library, let’s move on to how the spaces can help to get things happening, or might hinder things.

When you’re thinking about, or designing spaces, you need to address HOW PEOPLE KNOW:• what they can do• how they’re expected to behave• what happens where etc.

What factors are important when it comes to learning space design?• Naturalness – light, warmth, air quality, sound. Are your library spaces well

aligned for the activities that happen there? Do the places people stay longer have natural light? Are small meeting rooms prone to be too cold or too hot?

• Individual differences – people react in their own way to different spaces. Does your library offer choices, so that people can be where they are most comfortable?

• Stimulation – libraries can be quite busy places, people coming and going, stuff everywhere. Are there lots of distractions? What do you have that adds to the experience? Is there too much going on for readers/learners to quickly settle and focus on what they are there to do?

Remember that students will always want to colonise a space and do their own thing! (if you’ve made them welcome!) ☺Do teachers and students have the freedom to use approaches they want in the library, and change things around, or are there rules to be followed?

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Library design at PNGHS

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I was given the first draft of the architect’s plans about a month after I started at PNGHS.

Big challenges:• Changing from an ugly old library space to somewhere that was really inviting –

using it as an opportunity to refresh not just the space but what people felt they could do in the library – how to make that happen?

• housing the collection – lost 12m+ of wall shelving (nearly 50 shelves!)• Getting more shelving on the floor, while still maximising space for people and

activities• Finances! The BOT / school had budgeted $20k for IT (which I only found out

VERY late in the process, when the remodelling was nearly finished!) and $0 for refitting i.e. NO MONEY for anything new at all. Principal agreed to pay for some mobile shelving (I will never know what budget that came out of!) so we had shelves in the temporary library. Luckily for me, the PTA came through with some very generous funding. Because I was able to be well prepared and persuasive!

Opportunities• Make it fresh and lovely• Better define what happens in the library – services – opportunity to work out in

the library much more instead of shut in the office• Automate or streamline library process (e.g. room bookings – too many spaces

to manage on paper; separating issues and returns work)• Incorporate new technology – saved up my Thomas Macarthy Trust grant to

spend on Chromebooks, launched those at the start of the year; got a laptop for the issues desk; chromecast / Apple TV etc

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From this

PNGHS library during pack-up – this is almost a year to the day from when I started. Construction started 6 months later than expected, and took an extra 9 weeks to complete.

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To this.

PNGHS library – 6 months later: the main area after remodeling. This was the end of our first week back so there is no signage anywhere!

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From this

PNGHS Nonfiction area before…

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To this.

PNGHS library after remodeling.

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From this

What used to be computer area (by windows) and main area before remodeling…

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To this.

After – fiction shelves. Ended up with a grand piano in the corner, actually. This is just one of several reconfigurations of the fiction collection which I tried before settling on something that felt right.

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Via this!

Our temporary library in the Y13 common room. About 2,500 books came with us – ¼ of the collection, roughly. 3 double bays of fiction, 1 of nonfiction, 1 bay each of biographies and graphic novels.

Still did a brisk business in books ☺

We were in here for the 2nd half of 2015.

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How to designyour library

These are some of the things I found really useful when thinking about the whole process of giving our library an overhaul.

You don’t need to be undergoing major changes like I did – you can still look at the fundamentals, and you can still make changes to your existing environment that are innovative, and lead to better outcomes for students’ learning.

If you are facing some CHALLENGES in your library, then you need to be

prepared with a plan of action! Even when your school lets you get on with things, you can’t make significant changes without being well prepared. EVIDENCE BASED PRACTICE. You need to be really persuasive, you’ve got to have worked through things to make sure you’re really clear about what you’re doing – what you want to achieve, what needs to change, and how to (start to) make it happen.

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designthinkingforlibraries.com

Brought to you by the people at IDEO who are famous for ‘design thinking’ approaches. A project developed for libraries.

Really useful for you to think about what you’re trying to achieve - get the big picture clear in your head, align what you’re doing with your purpose and vision.

Has some “how might we…” questions and examples to kickstart your thinking about library space, services, programmes, and systems.

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theharwoodinstitute.org/tools

The ALA have incorporated useful things from this framework for community development into their program “Libraries transforming communities”.

Has some great, quick tools you can download to get yourself in the right headspace– thinking about how to become focused on your community first, rather than your library systems and processes.

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learningspacetoolkit.org

This was AWESOMELY helpful.

The Space Types section includes Space and Neighbourhood description templates that get you to think about the purpose and goals of each space (sound familiar??? PURPOSE and VISION!!) and describe all sorts of aspects of them.

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From the “Space types” section of the website – space and neighbourhood description templates. The taxonomy is also really cool. AND – also has an extremely comprehensive section about SERVICE design.

Choose a space – what happens here? Might be “Computer area”

FIRST: Describe the purpose and goals.

Then:• What are the services you’ll provide here? E.g. research, printing, catalogue

search• Technology – what needs to be available here? Computers x 8, desks for people

to put their own laptops? Cabled in or Wifi or both?• Furniture – what will work well? standing height tables with no chairs – would

have liked adjustable height stools• Atmosphere – Formal? Casual? Quiet? Collaborative? Mostly short-term

individual use so constant stream of people, no space for people to work together!

• Size – How much do you think you’ll need? And how much do you actually have??? For me, this area was about 3 metres long, and about 2 metres deep – to fit 8 computers!

• Adjacencies – What are the things that could be located in close proximity – e.g. printer near computers? next to …? For me, was wedged into nonfiction area, close to stairs, far from the printer – so generally FAR from ideal!

• Notes – put your questions here, things you’ll need to figure out.

I found this really invaluable when thinking about what I wanted – what was my VISION for each type of space in the library.

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roomle.com

A fun tool – desktop app and iOS app – for doing floor plans. This is a minimal design I did for the library at PNGHS – a few months after we moved in, so I could play with where things might go – notice the grand piano in the corner! You can fly around inside your layout, it’s really cool ☺

We were given the floor plan by the architects, and had virtually no input into the basic design of the space so I needed to figure out how to make everything fit:

• The collection! This is something where other ILEs (classroom spaces, I mean) don’t have the same requirements (although they do have different storage needs). We’d lost a huge amount of wall shelving, too. How do we fit the collection – 000s of items – and still have LOTS of room for people?

• Making it flexible as much as possible — making it work as a teaching space – configurable by the teachers and the students for all sorts of different things – and then LET THEM change it!

• Creating different spaces for different things (campfire, mountain top etc – you might have seen those?) we ended up with the under-stairs spot being the highly contested favourite place for all ages! No mezzanine on this image, but there are 3 separate rooms upstairs.

• Where will tech stuff go? Again, had to make the computer area fit – not enough consultation with me at the early stages, this was kind of a mess. A definite lack of innovative, future-focused thought!

• What ‘other’ things happen in the space? E.g. music performance, parent/whanau meetings, visiting authors etc – will it work?

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Suppliers websites for inspiration.

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Find beautiful libraries

Search for: school library design award

Go crazy with Google Images and Pinterest ☺

Put “award” in there so you’re hopefully looking at the best of the best.

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Learn about how a library was transformed into a learning commons at Turner Valley School in Turner Valley, Alberta, using the Nureva™ Span™ classroom collaboration system.

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Tour of some Auckland school libraries.

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“The first step in the being of anything is the theoretic or the vision of possibilities of

things that might be”.The Rev. Dr. Moses Coady

The challenges for library staff are to think about how your school can develop a shared vision for the library. And then begin to work towards it.

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We are here to help!

natlib.govt.nz/schools0800 LIBLINE

schoollibraryadvice@dia.govt.nz

Miriam TuohySenior Specialist, School Library Development

miriam.tuohy@dia.govt.nz

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Resources – ILEs

• The OECD Handbook for Innovative Learning Environments

• Innovative learning environments – New Zealand

• Min. of Education – ILE Assessment Tool

• Min. of Education – School Property Guide

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Services to Schools resources

• Purpose of the school library• The pedagogy of the library• Library guiding documents

• Place and environment• School library suppliers list

• Evidence-based school library practice

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Design tools and inspiration

• Design thinking for libraries

• The Harwood Institute - tools

• Learning space toolkit

• Roomle

• SLANZA Google+ community: Virtual tours

• Redesigning your library means…

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