Tag: causal

For just over a year, I have been part of a project with the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) and the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to dig into the empirical research proposed by the Causality: School Libraries and Student Success (CLASS) white paper.  For this second phase, the CLASS II researcher teams (from Old Dominion University, Florida State University, and the University of North Texas) are investigating possible causal relationships between the work of effective school librarians and student learning outcomes the K-12 education. Learn more about the call and upcoming webinar (4/24) we’re hosting to discuss the call for research proposals.

Much of our work has been reviewing, aggregating, and synthesizing empirical literature from 1965-present that includes school-based malleable factors that impact learning. Unlike other aggregations, the multi-team approach is examining causal relationships beyond the domain of school library research to identify interventions that may already be or could potentially be used by school librarians. To synthesize the combined corpus, we directed our evaluation of the literature to uncover evidence-based strategies, activities, and interventions identified by the U.S. Department of Education non-regulatory guidance document released in September 2016: “Using Evidence to Strengthen Educational Investments.”

The NEXT phase of this project is the opportunity to contribute to the CLASS II Research via the Request for Proposals (RFP) for CLASS II: Field Studies. We hope to fund/support proposals that seek to understand how school libraries make a difference to student learning outcomes in practice, specifically by examining evidence-based strategies, activities, and interventions for school librarians in K-12 education. Deadline to Submit: June 15, 2017

Successful applicants should advance our understanding of how school librarians contribute to one or more of the following issues and findings from the empirical literature based on our synthesis findings:

Learners Benefit From:

• Direct, explicit, and systematic instruction on new material blended with strategically timed small group reinforcement activities.
• Hands-on experiences in science and mathematics that connect learning with real-world or familiar content and experiences.
• Contextual instruction in questioning, problem-solving strategies, and other metacognitive skills.
• Formative, corrective feedback, including quizzes, that promotes and reinforces learning.
• Exposure to vocabulary through reading and listening as well as explicit vocabulary instruction and acquisition strategies.
• The frequency of instruction may be as or more important than the concentration of time particularly in mathematics.
• The amount and type of intervention or teaching are personalized to meet individual needs.
• Modifying the learning environment to decrease problem behavior, although a positive learning environment alone may not be sufficient.
• Teachers with 2-5 years of teaching experience, especially compared with first-year teachers who are generally less effective.
• Visual representations.
• Intensive and individualized interventions for struggling readers.

Please join us for a FREE informational webinar for further details about the RFP requirements, answer questions about potential proposal topics, or respond to any research methods or approaches:

If you have any questions about the CLASS II RFP for Field Studies and are unable to attend the LIVE, synchronous webinar, please do not hesitate to email us with further inquiries: class@ala.org