Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2011

Publication Title

School Library Research

Volume

14

Pages

133-152

Abstract

The question of why school librarians still struggle to fully enact the roles defined in "Information Power" and "Empowering Learners" may be viewed as a struggle to gain recognition from others that this is what a "real school librarian" does. Discourse Analysis offers school library research a new theoretical and analytical tool to explore how these roles or identities are created or contested in interactions with others by examining the moment-to-moment talk for the presence of larger meanings, or "discourses." Applying a discourse analysis to an exchange that occurred near the end of an ethnographic study of collaborative discourse between a school librarian and a team of second-grade teachers, this study uncovered the presence of several alternative meanings of "school librarian" in the talk, or "discourse," of the participants, including the stereotypical "shhhh librarian" or "story lady." Discourse analysis foregrounds the ongoing struggle by school librarians to implement new roles and new standards.

ORCID

0000-0002-4341-3679 (Kimmel)

Original Publication Citation

Kimmel, S. C. (2011). "Consider with whom you are working": Discourse models of school librarianship in collaboration. School Library Research, 14, 133-152.

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