Call for Papers — Open Sessions

School Libraries

• 24 February 2020, 15:35

Theme: "A focus on Inquiry from the perspective of the IFLA School Library Guidelines"

The IFLA School Libraries Section invites professionals to submit proposals for the open session to be held in Dublin, Ireland from August 15-21st, 2020.

The IFLA School Library Guidelines identifies inquiry-based learning and teaching as a core pedagogical activity of the school librarian.

This creates a number of specific problems, challenges and opportunities for school librarians, especially given the staggeringly different conditions that school librarians work in, often even within the same country, region and/ or district; see, for example, Schultz-Jones, B. A., & Oberg, D. (2018). Global Action on School Library Education and Training. Berlin: De Gruyter Saur.

Chief among these is that an inquiry-based learning and teaching pedagogy is often at odds with what Gordon Wells terms a traditional transmissionary pedagogy on the Galileo Educational Network website, a prevailing pedagogy in many countries, and often even within schools in countries that are broadly oriented towards inquiry. Moreover, in countries that do not even have well-established general programmes in library and information studies, let alone specific programmes of education in school librarianship, school librarians wanting to equip themselves for this core pedagogical activity face a steep learning curve made more challenging by numerous practical difficulties, such as often being lone workers. A further source of confusion for school librarians working in these conditions is how inquiry-based learning and teaching relates to other core pedagogical activities, such as media and information literacy instruction, that appear to be both distinct from and part of an inquiry-based approach to learning and teaching.

Papers aimed at informing and developing effective practice within this broad theme will be particularly welcome, which may include but are not limited to:

• The efficacy of inquiry as a pedagogical approach to learning
• The nature of inquiry
• The process of inquiry
• Models of the inquiry process and their implementation
• Developing a continuum of inquiry and related skills progressively and systematically
• Creating and sustaining optimal conditions for inquiry
• Collaborating to design and support inquiry
• Resourcing inquiry
• Assessing learning through inquiry
• The place and role of media and information literacy within inquiry, or in relation to inquiry, as well as other literacies

Format

Given the length of the session (1 hour), the broad scope of the theme and depending on the number of proposals, summary presentations of full papers are likely to be limited to 10 minutes.

Proposal Guidelines

Proposals (in MS Word) must include:

• Name, title, institution, email of speaker(s), phone number
• Brief biographical statement about each speaker (maximum 100 words)
• Title of proposed presentation
• Abstract of paper highlighting its relevance to the theme (maximum 500 words)

Proposals should be sent by 6 April 2020 to:

Joanne Plante
Email: iflasl2020@gmail.com

Successful candidates will be notified by 20 April 2020 and must submit the full paper by 15 June 2020 along with the accurate title of the paper and author permission form so that the paper may be posted online. Details on the format and length of the final paper as well as how to request an invitation letter will be emailed to those candidates whose abstracts are accepted.

Important Dates

6 April 2020: Submission of Proposals

20 April 2020: Notification of outcome of Proposals

15 June 2020: Submission of Authors’ Permission Form

15 June 2020: Submission of Final Paper and Presentation

30 July 2020: Submission of the Powerpoint presentation

Language of the Session

The language of the session is English. However, presenters may also give their talk in any of the IFLA working languages. Simultaneous translation is not guaranteed; therefore, presenters are encouraged to provide the PowerPoint in English to facilitate the understanding of ideas presented.

Please note:

At least one of the paper’s authors must be present to deliver a summary of the paper during the program in Dublin. Abstracts should only be submitted with the understanding that the expenses of attending the conference will be the responsibility of the author(s)/presenter(s) of accepted papers.

The paper must be an original submission not presented or published elsewhere. All papers that are presented at the WLIC 2020 will be made available online via the IFLA Library under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license.

Authors of accepted papers must complete the IFLA Authors’ Permission Form.

All expenses, including registration for the conference, travel, accommodation etc., are the responsibility of the authors/presenters. No financial support can be provided by IFLA, but a special invitation letter can be issued to author(s)/presenter(s) of accepted papers.

Congress Participation Grants

List of opportunities for support is available on the Apply for Grants & Awards webpage.