School Climate Factors Related to Degrees of Cooperation between Public Elementary School Teachers and School Library Media Specialists

School Climate Factors Related to Degrees of Cooperation between Public Elementary SchoolTeachers and School Library Media SpecialistsAuthor(s): Michael Bell and Herman L. TottenSource: The Library Quarterly, Vol. 61, No. 3 (Jul., 1991), pp. 293-310Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4308614 .

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SCHOOL CLIMATE FACTORS RELATED TO DEGREES OF COOPERATION BETWEEN PUBLIC ELEMENTARY

SCHOOL TEACHERS AND SCHOOL LIBRARY MEDIA SPECIALISTS

Michael Bell' and Herman L. Totten2

This study investigated relationships between the extent to which elementary classroom teachers tend to choose school library media specialists for cooperation on instructional problems and several school climate- and faculty-related characteristics: general academic effectiveness of the school, the overall cohesion (cooperativeness) of the faculty on instructional matters, and the propensity of the group and of individual faculty to seek cooperation on instructional problems. The instructional status of the school library media specialist was also studied in relation to various individual personality factors. The study included 1,079 elementary classroom teachers and school library media specialists from thirty-nine Texas elementary schools similar in wealth, size, and student demographic characteristics. Academically effective schools were found to be significantly more instructionally cohesive than ineffective schools, and classroom teachers in the academically effective schools were significantly more disposed to choose the school library media specialist to cooperate with them on instructional problems. No significant relationships were discovered between the instructional choice status of the school media specialists and their measured personality characteristics.

Introduction

During recent years school library media specialists have become in- creasingly concerned about the degree to which their library media centers contribute to the central instructional mission of the school. Writing in 1983, Olson challenged school librarians to examine their circulation records to determine if any relationship existed between the books students were taking out of the library and the school instructional pro-

1. Library/Media Coordinator, La joya Independent School District, La Joya, Texas. 2. Professor of Library and Inforniation Sciences, University of North Texas, Denton,

Texas.

[Library Quarterly, vol. 61, no. 3, pp. 293-310] ? 1991 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.

0024-2519/91/61 03-0002$0 1.00

293



294 THE LIBRARY QUARTERLY

gram. He concluded that "corralled by the textbook," students find little real need to use the library [1, p. 55].

Indeed, what three decades of research tell us is that, by and large, school library media centers continue to exist on the fringes of the instructional life of the school, perhaps relied on for information and materials, usually after teaching has already begun, but playing little, if any, role in the actual design and implementation of instruction. Begin- ning with Mullen [21 in 1966, researchers including Daniel [3], Ham- bleton [4], Stroud [5], Pfister and Alexander [6], Naylor [7], and Leung [8] have documented the isolation of the school media center in the instructional program. While in general school libraries are not employed in instruction to anywhere near their potential, school administrators are much more supportive of an instructional role for the school librarian than are classroom teachers. At the same time, the research literature fails to provide consistent support for the idea that the extent of the school librarian's involvement in the instructional life of the school can be related to his or her personal characteristics, including measured personality traits, education, and type and length of service.

Traditionally, research related to the role of the school librarian in instruction has used a straightforward survey approach to measure the perception of the school library media specialist's role from the view- points of three professional groups: principals, teachers, and school librarians. Past researchers taking such an approach have included Kerr [9], Hambleton [4], Bucher [10], Johnson [11], and Cantor [12]. Re- searchers have also employed literature-derived job description statements for the school library media specialist to measure agreement or disagreement with particular aspects of the school library media specialist's role. One notable example is Bucher's 1976 study, which used job description statements provided by the Knapp-funded School Library Manpower Project as the basis of an instrument to measure faculty and administrator expectations for the role of the school library media specialist [10]. Schulzetenberge also used the School Library Manpower Project as a basis for a check-list of duties in his study of 114 Minnesota high school librarians [13]. In addition, a number of researchers, including Schulzetenberge [13], Madaus [14], Daniel [3], Corr [15], Adams [16], Kenney and Kenney [17], and Herrin [18], have measured various personality characteristics of school library media specialists and have attempted to discover associations between these and the extent to which school library media specialists are involved in the instructional life of the school. The literature fails to show strong and consistent evidence to support the proposition that the personal characteristics of school library media specialists, including their measured personality characteristics, can be linked with the degree to which they participate in or contribute to instruction in the school.



SCHOOL CLIMATE FACTORS 295

The Problem

Even though Daniel recognized in 1974 that institutional characteristics must be affecting the degree of cooperation between school library media specialists and classroom teachers [3, pp. 327-28], to date very little research has been done in the field of school librarianship to investigate possible relationships between school climate factors and degrees of cooperation between school librarians and teachers. Broadly defined, school climate factors are the "personality" characteristics of the organization. They may include such things as overall organizational effectiveness, the goal directedness of the group, the propensity of group members to communicate with one another both socially and with respect to the goals and objectives of the organization, and overall group cooperativeness-the propensity of group members to seek, give, and accept help related to the instructional mission of the school.

The focus of this research effort, based on data collected for a more comprehensive study [19], was to test the overall proposition that school and faculty characteristics, especially group and individual cooperativeness, have a greater effect on the extent to which teachers and library media specialists in elementary schools are prepared to cooperate with each other in instruction than do the personality characteristics and status variables associated with school library media specialists alone. An effort was made to investigate any possible relationships that may exist between the instructional status of the school library media specialist and several characteristics of school and faculty, including overall school academic effectiveness, the general cohesion of the teaching faculty on instructional matters, and the desire or propensity of the group and of individual faculty to seek cooperation to solve instructional problems. Thus, an important purpose of this study was to determine if classroom teachers in academically effective public elementary schools were significantly more disposed to cooperate with the school library media specialist in the area of instruction than are classroom teachers in academically ineffective elementary schools.

While not denying the ultimate importance of the personal characteristics of school library media specialists, it is not unreasonable to hypothesize that the characteristics of the institution can have a more profound determination on the extent to which the library is able to contribute to instruction than the characteristics of a single individual, the school library media specialist. Within the sphere of school effectiveness research, researchers including Levine [20], Reitzug [21], Gall and Gall [22], Hallinger [23], and Rosenholtz [24] have identified a body of evidence indicating that a school-wide climate characterized by cooperation, collaborative planning, and collegial relationships among staff is one of the important factors that differentiates academically effective




from less effective schools. Again, it is not unreasonable to hypothesize that school organizational climates characteristic of academically effective schools could be much more conducive to teacher/librarian cooperation than climates of much less effective institutions in which communi- cation and cooperation are not the order of the day.

More specifically this study tested the following major null hypotheses:

H1: There is no significant difference in the degree to which classroom teachers choose school library media specialists for cooperation on instructional problems in academically highly effective schools and the degree to which teachers choose media specialists in academically ineffective schools.

H2: Academically effective elementary schools and academically ineffective elementary schools do not differ significantly in their degree of instructional cohesion or cooperativeness among teachers on instructional matters.

H3: There is no significant relationship between the degree to which classroom teachers choose school library media specialists for cooperation on instructional problems and the degree of cohesion, or cooperativeness, among teachers on instructional matters.

H4: Academically effective elementary schools and academically ineffective elementary schools do not differ significantly in their degree of group positive expansiveness, or desire of the faculty as a whole to associate with one another in instruction.

H5: There is no significant relationship between the degree to which classroom teachers choose school library media specialists for cooperation on instructional problems and the degree of group positive expansiveness of the faculty as a whole.

H6: There is no significant relationship between the desire of individual teachers to cooperate with other teachers on instructional problems and the number of times individual teachers choose the school library media specialist for cooperation on instructional problems.

H7: There is no significant relationship between the degree to which individual teachers are chosen by their peers for cooperation on instructional problems and the number of times those teachers




choose the school library media specialist for cooperation on instructional problems.

H8: There are no significant relationships between the degree to which classroom teachers choose school library media specialists for cooperation on instructional problems and the measured personality characteristics of school library media specialists.

H9: Classroom teachers will not, on a proportional basis, choose school library media specialists significantly more for cooperation on instructional problems than they choose other classroom teachers.

Methodology

This study used a sociometric choice approach in which respondents to a questionnaire read descriptions of instructional problems typical of public elementary schools and then were asked to select from a list of their colleagues those individuals with whom they would feel comfortable working and who they believed would have the requisite skills, knowledge, and expertise to help solve the problem. Respondents were free to select as many individuals as they wanted from a colleague list that included all teachers as well as vice-principals, counselors, librarians, speech therapists, and school nurses. The names of individuals, without position designations, were mixed randomly on the colleague lists. By casting the choices in terms of instructional activities rather than job responsibility statements, confusion with respect to terminology was avoided, and the choice item was brought closer to the reality of the school situation. In addition, by listing individuals by name without position designations, it was felt that respondents were better able to base their choices on their prior experience and view of the attributes of the person involved, rather than on stereotypical responses to a particular position. Principals and teachers were simply told that the purpose of the study was to investigate various interactions among school staff. No particular mention was made of the school librarian, and as far as the researchers can determine, the respondents, 1,079 teachers from thirty- nine Texas public elementary schools, were never aware that the role of the school library media specialist in instruction was the focus of the study.

The Sample A sample of thirty-nine Texas public elementary schools was selected from a comparison grouping of schools supplied by the Texas Educa-




tion Agency (TEA). The TEA comparison grouping categorizes schools according to important demographic and economic characteristics, allowing comparisons of achievement scores between districts and schools. All of these schools were in low-wealth, medium-size districts (3,000-9,999 student enrollment), with over 40 percent of the student body from low-income families. With the exception of two schools, one in San Antonio and one in Dallas, all were rural schools. And with the exception of one small school with a 92.6 percent Anglo enrollment, all of the schools had at least a 43 percent minority black and Hispanic enrollment. All of the districts had relatively low enrollments and only a small number of elementary schools. Given these characteristics, differences in socioeconomic factors related to residential patterns were highly unlikely to cause serious differences in school characteristics that might have an impact on the results of the study.

Of the final sample of schools agreeing to cooperate in the study, nineteen schools ranked in the top 25 percent of all Texas elementary schools on how well their students performed on the 1988 Texas Educa- tional Assessment of Minimum Skills Test (TEAMS). These schools made up the high academic group of schools. Also, twenty schools per- forming in the bottom 25 percent of all Texas elementary schools on the TEAMS test were chosen randomly from the same comparison group of schools. These schools represented the low academic campuses.

In all, 1,079 elementary classroom teachers and thirty-nine school library media specialists participated in the study. However, one media specialist did not return his personality questionnaire; therefore, for those research questions that require such data, only the thirty-eight school library media specialists who returned their instruments were considered.

Data Collection Instruments The study employed two instruments to collect data: a Sociometric Choice Questionnaire, completed by the classroom teachers involved in the study, and Cattell's Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire, completed by the school library media specialists.

The Sociometric Choice Questionnaire presented each respondent with fifteen school-related problems and asked the respondent to identify, using an enclosed list of all professional colleagues in the school, the individuals he or she would go to for help and cooperation in solving the problem. Respondents were invited to choose as many colleagues as they wanted, but to choose only those individuals that they felt would have the needed expertise and with whom the respondent would feel comfortable working. Five of the problem statements related to needs for specific information but without further cooperation necessary be-




tween the respondent and the person chosen. For the purposes of this study these problems were termed "low-level instructional problems."

Sample Low-Level Problem Description As a Thanksgiving Day observance, your class is arranging an international "feast" that will feature a typical dish from each of the major immigrant groups to the United States. Each student, with help from home, will be responsible for an item. You have neither a sufficient number nor variety of recipes available.

These low-level instructional problems require the media specialist simply to provide information (usually concerning availability of materials), but without further cooperation between the school library media specialist and the classroom teacher. These activities can be classified between levels 2 and 4 of Loertscher's eleven-level taxonomy [25, p. 418], while within Turner's taxonomy they would be categorized at the "reaction level" (the next-to-the-lowest level) of the instructional design process: "Materials, facilities, and equipment are provided; their provi- sion is the result of the teacher asking at some point for assistance" [26, p. 39].

Five problem statements represented "high-level instructional problems."

Sample High-Level Problem Description For the past two weeks you have been teaching a complicated concept to your class, and all but one of your students have now mastered the objectives involved. The student in question is neither physically nor learning disabled. After two attempts to re-teach the student, you realize that he/she just does not learn the same way as the majority of students. You feel that the problem lies in either your approach or the materials you are using (or both). You need some help in analyzing your approach to teaching the concept, the suitability of your materials, and the possibility of alternative materials in order to arrive at a more promising way to help this particular student.

These high-level instructional problems, corresponding to the highest level of Turner's taxonomy, the "action/education" level [26, p. 55], involve more than one step of the instructional design process and require the involvement of the media specialist to cooperate in some way with the teacher to design instruction. With reference to Loertscher's eleven-level taxonomy, these activities would be classified from levels 5 through 11, with most of them at level 7 and above [25, p. 418].

In addition to the five "high" and five "low" instructional problem statements, the Sociometric Choice Questionnaire also contained five distractor items that, while representing problems that do indeed arise in elementary schools, have nothing to do with instruction. They were included to reduce the chance that respondents might discern that instruction and the role of the librarian were the concerns of the questionnaire.




Cattell's Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16 PF), in use since 1949 and continuously improved since then, measures sixteen unitary, psychologically significant source traits [27]. For each source trait, or factor, the 16 PF yields a standard score ranging from one to ten. Cattell notes that one or a combination of factor scores for a particular individual will not completely predict behavior because other characteristics of the person relating to ability and motivation, as well as situational factors, will always have an impact on specific behavior [27, p. 18].

The version of the 16 PF used in this study, the 1967-68 Form A with norms updated to 1978, comes provided with separate validity scales that allow the researcher to adjust results either up or down de- pending on the extent to which the test taker has attempted to "fake" or distort his/her responses to the test items. In general, the 16 PF is a valid and reliable measure of basic personality traits of the general population where "assessment of 'normal range' personality traits is important" [28, p. 1392].

The researchers chose to gather and analyze data on the personality traits of the school library media specialists included in this study for two reasons. First, even though librarian personality traits as measured have in the past not been found to be related to the extent of cooperation between school media specialists and teachers, it was thought that because the present study measured such instructional cooperation in terms of realistic school problems, rather than job description items, a relationship might be detected. Second, a personality component was included in replication of past studies as a further check, simply because the idea of a connection between the variables involved is so logically persuasive. The 16 PF was chosen because it has been widely used in past librarian personality studies including those of Kenney and Kenney [17], Daniel [3], Herrin [18], Segal [29], and Sladen [30].

Variables There were seven variables used in the study: the academic effectiveness of the school, the instructional choice statuses of both school library media specialists and classroom teachers, the instructional cohesion of the school faculty, the number of times the school library media specialist was chosen by classroom teachers for cooperation on the instructional problems as described in the Sociometric Choice Questionnaire, the group positive expansiveness of the faculty, and the positive expansiveness of individual teachers.

The dependent variable of major interest to this study was the average number of times teachers on a school faculty chose their librarian to cooperate with them on the instructional problems described on the sociometric questionnaire. This type of measure, as Kerlinger notes, is




a choice status index typical of sociometric research and is given by the formula:

~c Cs) = J

The choice status of the individual is the average number of times a person is chosen by group members relative to the criterion given in the problem description. In the formula shown above, CSj equals the choice status of the person j; XcJ equals the sum of choices for the individual j; and n equals the number of individuals in the group [31, p. 502]. The average number of times the school library media specialist on a particular campus was chosen for all ten of the described problems yielded his or her overall instructional choice status (ICS), while the averages of the low-level problems and high-level problems, respectively, yielded a low-level ICS score and a high-level ICS score. The three levels of instructional choice status were also calculated for every classroom teacher participating in the study.

Another measure utilized in the study was the extent of mutual choice among teachers on a faculty. The researchers hypothesized that a school climate characteristic of multiple mutual linkages and cooperation among faculty would be more conducive to the involvement of the school library media specialist in instruction than would be a school atmosphere in which little cooperation among teachers was already taking place. A standard sociometric technique, again described by Ker- linger [31, p. 503], was used to measure this facet of faculty cooperation. A count was made of the number of mutual choices (one faculty member choosing another and then in return being chosen by that same person for the same instructional problem) made by the faculty. This count was then divided by the mathematically determined number of possible mutual choices, and the resulting index was termed "faculty instructional cohesion," which represents a measure of group cooperativeness in instructional matters. Thus, faculty instructional cohesion is given by the formula:

Co (i j) n(n - 1)/2

The instructional cohesiveness, or cooperativeness, of the faculty as a whole is based on the ratio of observed mutual choices in a group to the possible number of mutual choices. In the formula above, Co equals the cohesion of the group, 2 (i + j) equals the sum of mutual choices made by members, and n(n - 1)/2 represents the total number of possible multiple choices.




This measure of group instructional cohesion and cooperation is par- ticularly important in light of the literature, which, as reported in an extensive review of effective schools research by Purkey and Smith [32], supports the view that academically effective schools, perhaps because of their organization and leadership, are demonstrably more collegial and cooperative than less effective schools. And it is perhaps in part to cooperative relationships among staff that such schools owe a degree of their academic effectiveness.

Group positive expansiveness, defined as a measure of the desire of group members to associate with one another with respect to a stated criterion, is another measure of the extent of group cooperativeness and, as described by Evans [33], is mathematically derived by dividing the total number of choices a group makes by the total number of group members available to be chosen. Similarly, the positive expansiveness of the individual (PEi) is defined by Evans [33, p. 34] as a measure of an individual's desire to associate with other persons with respect to a stated criterion, and is found by dividing the number of choices the individual makes by the total number of colleagues available to be chosen.

The degree of academic effectiveness of the schools was determined empirically by selecting schools from the same state-formed comparison grouping that either scored very high or very low on the TEAMS test.

Because sociometrically derived data, such as the data gathered during this research, are not normally distributed [33, p. 31], the researchers used nonparametric procedures for statistical analysis. The Mann- Whitney U, the nonparametric equivalent to the t-test for noncorrelated samples, was employed to analyze hypotheses 1, 2, and 4, while the Spearman Rank Order Correlation was used to test hypotheses 3, 5, 6, 7, and 8. The x2 test of goodness-of-fit was used to analyze the data for hypothesis 9.

Findings

The most important question of interest to this study, stated in null form as hypothesis 1, was whether, as a group, the school library media specialists serving the high academic elementary schools would have a significantly higher instructional choice status than those working in the less effective group of schools. Mann-Whitney U tests were employed to assess differences in school library media specialist instructional choice status between the two groups of schools for each of the three ICS levels: low-level, high-level, and overall score. Statistically significant differences (P < .01) were found for each ICS level, indicating that the




instructional choice status of the school library media specialists serving the high academic schools was higher than those of media specialists working in the low academic schools. Therefore, HI was rejected.

The second hypothesis tested in the study was whether the high academic and low academic schools would differ significantly on faculty instructional cohesion. Again the Mann-Whitney U test discovered differences in instructional cohesion in favor of the high academic schools. The test revealed a mean cohesion ranking of 458.5 for the high academic schools compared to a 321.5 mean ranking for the low academic schools. The difference was significant at the .05 level, allowing the researchers to reject H2.

A somewhat puzzling and disappointing result of the investigation was that, while the high academic schools were statistically higher than the low academic schools on the group instructional cohesion measure, the instructional status levels of the school library media specialists were not significantly correlated to the degree to which their campuses were instructionally cohesive. Using the Spearman Rank Order Correlation to test for possible relationships between each of the three ICS levels and instructional cohesion, the researchers calculated Spearman correlation coefficients of .17, .17, and .19 for overall ICS, low-level ICS, and high- level ICS, respectively; however, none of these apparent relationships was statistically significant. Therefore, H3 could not be rejected.

Similarly, neither hypothesis 4 nor 5 could be rejected. The Mann- Whitney U test revealed no significant differences between the high academic and low academic schools on the group positive expansiveness measure, and there were no significant correlations between the positive expansiveness of the group and the instructional choice status levels of the school library media specialists. The positive expansiveness of the individual teacher was weakly correlated (p = .26, P < .01) with the number of times individual teachers chose the school library media specialist for cooperation on instructional problems. Thus, it was possible for the researchers to reject hypothesis 6.

The researchers were unable to reject hypothesis 7, as no relationship was found between the instructional choice status of the individual teachers and the number of times teachers elected to cooperate with the school library media specialist. As in the case of the school library media specialists, three levels of instructional choice status were calculated for each of the 1,079 classroom teachers who participated in the study. The instructional choice status of a person is a measure of the degree of esteem in which his or her colleagues hold that person in regard to instructional matters. It would indeed have been an important finding for the school library profession if it had been determined that teachers




enjoying a higher peer-determined instructional status tended to work more closely with the school library media specialist. However, again no significant relationships were observed between these variables.

No evidence was found in support of a relationship between the measured personality characteristics of school library media specialists and the extent that they are chosen by classroom teachers for cooperation in instruction, and, therefore, it was not possible to reject H8. Analysis of the 16 PF questionnaires indicated that, as a group, the thirty-eight school library media specialists differ in no important ways from the general population. In a slight sense, not statistically significant, they were found to be more careful, prudent, serious, practical, and conser- vative (less fond of innovation) than the general population, while at the same time slightly higher in intelligence, perseverance, sensitivity, and questioning (skepticism) than the norm. However, eight of the thirty-eight media specialists did have significantly low scores on assert- iveness, a trait mentioned in the literature as important for the school library media specialist, while seven scored significantly above the general population on this characteristic. Eleven of the thirty-eight scored low on enthusiasm, and only five scored significantly higher than people in general. However, their lack of tolerance to innovation differentiated school librarians from the general population more than any other measure. Twelve media specialists, or approximately one-third, scored significantly low in this area, while only four scored significantly higher than people in general. However, as revealed by the Spearman Rank Order Correlation technique, none of the sixteen personality traits measured had statistically significant relationships with the measures of the instructional choice status of the school library media specialist.

However, school library media specialists rate very well indeed when their levels of cooperation in instruction is compared with the levels of cooperation presently in effect among teachers in the schools in which they serve. For each campus, the expected number of choices for the school library media specialist and the expected number of choices for classroom teachers were calculated for each ICS level. For instance, if the school library media specialist served a faculty of, say, nineteen teachers, then the expected number of choices for the school library media specialist would be one-twentieth of the total number of choices made by the teachers on that campus for each ICS level. The teachers, as a group, would be assigned the remaining nineteen-twentieths as their expected number of choices. By comparing expected and observed instances of choice among the teachers themselves and among the teachers and the school library media specialists, x2 tests of goodness-of-fit determined that, proportional to their numbers, all the school library media specialists participating in this study were chosen at least equally




along with the teachers for all levels of the instructional problems stated. Therefore, the researchers were able to reject Hg. Thirty-six out of thirty-nine media specialists were, proportionately, chosen more by teachers for all of the problems taken together and for the low-level problems than the teachers were chosen by one another. More important, however, was the fact that on nine out of nineteen academically effective campuses and on seven out of twenty low academic campuses, that is, in more than 40 percent of the schools studied, teachers more often chose the school library media specialist than their classroom colleagues to cooperate with them on the high-level instructional problems.

A comparison of how each school library media specialist ranked on his or her campus on the overall instructional choice measure lent further support to the view that the teachers rated the school library media specialists very highly among their peers in the area of instruction. The school library media specialist was ranked first on 53.8 percent (twenty- one out of the thirty-nine) campuses studied. Another five school library media specialists were ranked either second or third on their campuses on the overall instructional choice status measure. All but two of the school librarians ranked well above the median, and none ranked in the bottom quartile.

Conclusions and Discussion

The conclusions that can be drawn from this study are mixed. On the one hand, the data definitely support the idea that academically highly effective public elementary schools, as opposed to academically ineffective schools, are more instructionally cohesive. In such schools, the data also indicate that school library media specialists are more likely to be chosen by teachers for cooperation on instructional problems than they would be in the ineffective schools. Likewise, when compared with the degree of avowed cooperation among teachers themselves, school media specialists are likely to enjoy an amount of cooperation in instruction at least equal to, and in many cases greater than, that in effect among classroom teachers themselves.

On the other hand, the two major school climate factors investigated, instructional cohesion and group positive expansiveness, do not account for the observed differences in instructional choice status between school library media specialists serving highly effective schools and those associated with much less effective institutions. Therefore, we have strong indications that the climates of these two groups of schools are different in important ways and that school media specialists are likely to be more involved in instruction in the more effective schools; how-




ever, we are unable to explain these differences, nor are we, as a result of this study, able to establish a direct link between specific school climate factors and degrees of involvement of school media specialists in instruction.

No relationships were discovered between the measured personality characteristics of school library media specialists and their instructional choice status. While logic makes it difficult to accept that personality traits are irrelevant to the success of instructional cooperation between teachers and school library media specialists, we should consider that the measured personality characteristics of school librarians may not always be observable in the work setting. Herrin used Cattell's 16 PF, the same instrument employed in this present study, to assess the personality characteristics of a small group of model school library media specialists, as nominated by peers and professional and state library agencies. As tested, Herrin et al. found her media specialists to be intro- verted, shy, and reserved; however, subsequent on-site observations by the researcher determined that such characteristics were not displayed in the day-to-day work environment. Those media specialists who tested as "cool and detached" actually made more extensive use of attention- getting techniques such as the use of student and faculty names, eye contact, active listening, smiles, encouraging expressions, and touching than those who tested warm and out-going on the 16 PF [18, p. 73].

The fact is that we are not fully aware of how school professionals, including the school library media specialist, adapt and adjust their behavior in response to the workplace. It is very possible that the dynamics, requirements, and characteristics of the school as an organization exert such a powerful effect on interpersonal and work relationships that they may hide the relatively small contribution made by basic personality characteristics.

While no direct link was established between specific school climate factors and cooperation between teachers and school library media specialists in instruction, the fact that classroom teachers in the academically effective schools chose the school librarian significantly more than in the academically ineffective schools lends support to the argument that school characteristics may indeed have an effect on teacher/school librarian interaction and cooperation.

These findings contain two important implications for practicing school library media specialists. First and foremost they strongly suggest to us that in order to increase the involvement of school media specialists in the school instructional program we must address such problems more vigorously than we have in the past at an institutional, organizational level, rather than continue to rely solely on our traditional efforts to "sell" the library and its services to individual teachers. As suggested




by this study, not all of the important factors affecting teacher/librarian cooperation can be influenced or overcome by librarians working alone on their campuses; therefore, we must increase our efforts to seek help at higher levels of administration to help create and bring about the kinds of conditions in schools that will facilitate greater cooperation between classroom teachers and school library media specialists. Armed with the results of this study and, one hopes, with the results of similar future research, we must approach our principals, superintendents, and school boards and point out the relationship indicated here between school academic success and the higher potential involvement of the school library media center in the instructional program. Then we must ask those administrators and trustees, How may we work with you to bring about a more complete integration of the media center into the school instructional program and better assure a more reasonable return on our considerable investment in school library media center personnel, collections, equipment, and facilities?

For too long we school library media specialists have behaved as if the development and perfection of our programs depended entirely on our individual efforts to relate to our immediate public, the students and teachers in our schools. This focus has, of course, been reflected in the numerous studies over the years that have investigated the curricular involvement of the school library media center solely in terms of the personality and other personal factors associated with the media center staff. While very important in their own right, such concerns do not take into account other important variables, such as institutional characteristics, that cannot fail to impinge on the quantity and quality of relationships, instructional and otherwise, in effect among school library media specialists, students, and classroom teachers.

The results of this study suggest that institutional characteristics such as overall academic effectiveness (and surely others) do indeed affect the potential of school library media specialists to cooperate with classroom teachers in the area of instruction. Therefore, while vigorously continu- ing to "sell" the library to teachers, we must increase our efforts at higher administrative levels to identify means of greater organic integration of the school library media center into the structure of the school before we can hope to observe higher levels of actual cooperation in instruction among school librarians and the teaching staff.

In addition, the results of this study help us as library professionals to obtain a better perspective on the real success we have had in our efforts to bring about greater cooperation in instruction between school library media specialists and classroom teachers. The present study is much different from past studies in that it measured both cooperation among teachers and cooperation between teachers and school library




media specialists, allowing the researchers to study the interaction among media specialists and teachers in the context of on-going cooperation among the teachers themselves. Past research has tended to study teacher/school librarian cooperation in isolation, rating the involvement of the school library in instruction with reference to job description statements or "areas of responsibility." Such investigations have been very useful because they have provided an external standard for evaluat- ing library involvement in instruction against a desired professional goal. However, for school library professionals to obtain a realistic assessment of their relationships with teachers, they must continue to consider their cooperative endeavors with teachers from the perspective of the real day-to-day work environment.

Almost three decades of research in the area of the instructional involvement of the school library media specialist, as discussed earlier, have shown little cooperation existing between school media specialists and teachers in the instructional program. However, as far as we can determine, none of the previous studies has compared cooperation between the school library media specialist and classroom teachers with the extent of cooperation in instruction among teachers themselves. As this study shows, school library media specialists rate very well indeed when their levels of cooperation with classroom teachers are compared with on-going levels of cooperation among the teachers they serve. The researchers feel that this benchmark, that of current levels of cooperation in instruction among the teachers of a particular institution, should be considered when assessing progress toward the more complete integration of the school library media center into the instructional program.

It is also important to note that, as compared to the extent that they chose their own classroom colleagues, teachers assigned a high level of choice to the school library media specialist for both the low-level, strictly information-oriented, problems and the high-level instructional problems involving some degree of the design or redesign of instruction. While actual instances of cooperation in instructional design among school colleagues (be they classroom teachers or school library media specialists) in particular schools may actually be few, the message from this study is that teachers invite our involvement as much, if not more, than they do their own classroom colleagues. Even though actual levels of cooperation among all school professionals may be low, this should not deter us in our efforts to cooperate actively with teachers at the higher levels of the instructional design process.

Through our experience with this study, we are firmly convinced that, in order to shed further light on factors affecting the instructional involvement of school library media specialists, more research is neces-




sary that takes into account the climate and organizational characteristics of schools and the attributes of the classroom teacher as aspects of the total cooperative environment in which the school librarian must oper- ate. One fruitful approach might be to measure the leadership styles of principals and their personality characteristics, as well as the personal traits of both teachers and school media specialists, to determine differences, if any, in a mix of these variables as they relate to the instructional integration of the school library media specialist.

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Documents

School Climate Factors Related to Degrees of Cooperation between Public Elementary School Teachers and School Library Media Specialists