International School Library Studies

 Five recent studies on school libraries, four from Australia and one global one, examine copyright, collection development, information literacy, reading, staffing and services. 

1. Discovering a good read: Exploring book discovery and reading for pleasure among Australian teens 
   
   
2. ‘Being a Global Citizen’: Australian Secondary Teacher Librarians in the Changing Information Landscape 
   
   
3. Curate, advocate, collaborate: Updating a school library collection to promote sustainability and counter eco-anxiety 
   
   
4. Academic integrity and copyright literacy policy and instruction in K-12 schools: A global study from the perspective of school library professionals 
   
   
5. The 2023 Softlink Australian School Library Survey Report

Broadley, A., & Manuell, R. (2024, May 24). Researching education: 5 further readings on school libraries. Teacher Magazine.

https://www.teachermagazine.com/au_en/articles/researching-education-5-further-readings-on-school-libraries 

Global Digital Reading Report

Sora, the student reading platform from OverDrive, published “its first annual reading report of worldwide student digital reading data for the 2022-2023 school year.” “The State of K-12 Digital Reading,” which is available to download for free after registering, “reveals compelling regional differences, double digit growth in Comics and Graphic Novels and a surprising insight on which months tracked the most time spent reading.”

Key findings include the following:

Digital reading in K-12 schools has increased significantly over the past few years. Since 2019, total usage (based on digital book checkouts) has grown 286 percent as the number of schools using the Sora platform more than doubled. In 2022-23, usage continued the trend with 12% growth.

Reading sessions on the Sora reading app were up more than 8 percent compared to the previous school year (2021-2022), with total books read per student increasing by 3 percent.

The ebook format accounted for 84 percent of titles opened during the ’22-’23 school year, while audiobooks remain popular with 14 percent. Comics and graphic novels have contributed to the strong ebook usage, more than quadrupling in checkouts and jumping from 31 to 42% of total ebook checkouts since 2019.

For more information, read the press release at https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/student-ebook-usage-breaks-records-302105186.html.

Print resources and reading study

 Teenagers who say they most often read paper books scored higher on reading tests than their peers who rarely or never read, according to a study of students in about 30 countries by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Findings showed that students who read physical books also outpaced students who read digital books. 

OECD. (2022). Does the digital world open up an increasing divide in access to print books? (2022). OECD. https://doi.org/10.1787/22260919

Academic success factors study

Curiosity and persistence are the strongest predictors of academic success in math and reading, according to a study of students in 11 countries, including the US. The study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is the first major global assessment of students' social and emotional skills.

Schleicher, A. (2021). Beyond academic learning. OECD.

https://www.oecd.org/education/ceri/social-emotional-skills-study/beyond-academic-learning-92a11084-en.htm

https://oecdedutoday.com/new-approach-social-emotional-skills/

Post-COVID action for public education report

The International Commission on Education Futures developed nine ideas for public action, knowing that the pandemic will forever transform education. These ideas for action are the commission’s attempt to actively shape the future of education and help strengthen and enhance its power for all students, including those in developing nations.

• Commit to strengthen education as a common good.
• Value the teaching profession and teacher collaboration. 
• Promote youth participation and rights.
• Address the importance of connectivity and access to knowledge and information.
• Make free and open-source technologies available to teachers and students. 
• Ensure scientific literacy within the curriculum.
• Protect domestic and international financing of public education.
• Advance global solidarity to end current levels of inequality.
• Protect school's social spaces.

Education in a post-COVID world. (2021). UNESCO. 

https://journal.canadianschoollibraries.ca/unescos-nine-ideas-for-education/

World Reading Habits in 2020

 A lengthy infographic shows reading habits around the world in 2020. Aspects include reading formats, gender and generation trends, habits by continent -- and the US. 

Cabrera, I. (2020, Nov. 6). World reading habits in 2020. Global English Editing. https://geediting.com/world-reading-habits-2020/

Computer literacy report

     The average score among students in 12 countries on a computer and information literacy exam was 496, on a scale from 100 to 700, according to a recent study. The US students' average score was 519, but data shows that while students grow up as digital natives they may lack sophisticated digital literacy.  US students are less skilled at creating algorithms or debugging them when problems arise. Seventy percent of students across countries attended schools where digital resources connected to textbooks was available, but 32% of teachers reported using such content. 
     Gender differences were apparent for both computer and information literacy and for computational thinking, but they varied. In the computer and information literacy section, females outscored males on average and in most of the countries. But in computational thinking, males consistently scored higher than females.
     “Confidence, and crucially, competence, in the use of digital devices is of vital importance globally,” Dirk Hastedt, IEA executive director, said in a statement. “It is essential that young people are taught these skills at schools, and that their teachers are well supported in delivering this bedrock of modern education.” The findings confirm other recent studies in the U.S. showing students can be easily misled by digital media messages.
Fraillon, J. (2019). International Computer and Information Literacy Study. Amsterdam: International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement.
https://www.iea.nl/studies/iea/icils

Digital literacy and computational thinking survey

The United States participated in the 2018 International Computer and Information Literacy Study (ICILS), which assesses 8th-grade students in two domains: computer and information literacy (CIL) and computational thinking (CT). It also compares U.S. students’ skills and experience using technology to that of students in other education systems and provides information on factors such as teachers’ experiences and school resources that may influence students’ CIL and CT skills. This information is especially relevant today, since building strong foundations for STEM literacy, including CT, has been identified as one of the three goals in the White House’s 5-year STEM education strategic plan, “Charting a Course for Success: America’s Strategy for STEM Education.”

As the results show, U.S. 8th-grade students’ average score in CIL was higher than the ICILS 2018 average, while the U.S. average score in CT was not significantly different from the ICILS 2018 average. In the United States, female 8th-grade students outperformed their male peers in CIL, but male 8th-grade students outperformed female students in CT. Also, U.S. 8th-grade students with 2 or more computers at home performed better in both CIL and CT than their U.S. peers with fewer computers. Among U.S. 8th-grade students, 72 percent reported using the Internet to do research every school day or at least once a week, and 65 percent reported teaching themselves how to find information on the Internet.

About half of U.S. 8th-grade teachers reported using information and communications technologies (ICT) in teaching. Eighty-six percent of U.S. 8th-grade teachers strongly agreed or agreed that ICT was considered a priority for use in teaching at their schools. Compared with the ICILS 2018 averages, higher percentages of U.S. 8th-grade teachers reported participating in eight out of nine professional learning activities related to ICT.

Click on the questions below for more details. The technical notes for the 2018 ICILS, additional information, the questionnaires, FAQs and the full international report, International Computer and Information Literacy Study, are also available.

Information-Seeking Behavior Study

Children are more likely to look for answers to their questions online than to ask their parents, according to a survey of 15,226 people in 10 countries by Lenovo. Many parents also said they look online to help their children with homework assignments, most often in math. Globally, three-quarters of parents said their children would turn to the internet first. That was highest in India (89 percent) and China (85 percent) and lowest in Germany (54 percent).
https://news.lenovo.com/pressroom/press-releases/parents-no-longer-needed-for-homework-modern-generations-empowered-by-smart-devices/

Principals on Student Learning

This section of the Brown Center Report offered an international perspective on the role of the school principal as an instructional leader. Principals’ responses to TIMSS surveys were examined at the national level, along with test scores in mathematics. Principals in three consistently high achieving countries—Finland, Hong Kong, and Japan—are especially reluctant to give advice. Principals in Korea, on the other hand, another perennially high achieving country, are more activist in this regard. U.S. principals of schools with a fourth grade (typically an elementary school) are about average in terms of giving instructional advice but register above the international average on activities related to school goals. American principals of schools with an eighth grade (typically a middle school) appear about average on all four surveyed activities.

Loveless, T. (2016). The 2016 Brown Center Report on American education: How well are American students learning?: With sections on reading and math in the Common Core era, tracking and advanced placement (AP), and principals as instructional leaders. Brown Center Report, 3(5), 1-36. https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Brown-Center-Report-2016.pdf

Student Collaborative Problem Solving – Compared by Nationality

Results from a PISA 2015 survey reported in a 2017 report by PISA, also known as the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment, assessed students’ abilities to work with two or more people to try to solve a problem. The study provides the rationale for assessing this particular skill and describes performance within and across countries. The volume also explores the role of education in building young people’s collaborative problem solving skills.

Key findings:

-       American teenagers performed above the international average in a new test of collaborative problem-solving.

-       Across 52 countries and economies that participated, only a small number of students scored at the highest level of collaborative problem solving, which requires them to not only identify paths and monitor progress towards solving a problem, but also staying aware of group dynamics, ensuring they and other team members fulfill their roles, and settle disagreements during the process. 

-       On average, U.S. teenagers could volunteer information and ask for clarification from team members, and sometimes suggest the next logical step to solve a problem, but they were less likely to be able to handle complex teamwork, group conflicts, or to evaluate the quality of information from different team members.

-       Across all countries, girls significantly outperformed boys on collaborative problem-solving.

-       These results may back up prior research which has shown students are rarely taught explicit collaboration strategies when they are paired up in school, and that without such instruction, they often don't really collaborate. 

OECD (2017). PISA 2015 results (Volume V): Collaborative problem solving. Paris, France: OECD.