School Libraries and Careers of Future Students

This report by littleBits was able to delve more deeply into the types of programs that are offered as part of maker and STEAM education, the challenges librarians face as they start and scale these programs, and some of the best practices to ensure an effective and engaging implementation for all students. This report highlights the importance of three initiatives to further enable librarians and media specialists:

1. PROVIDING PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT RESOURCES to librarians and media specialists so they can more successfully be the leading force of innovation in their schools.

2. DESIGNING STAFF MEETINGS AND A SCHOOL CALENDAR THAT ALLOW LIBRARIANS TO INTERACT MORE FREQUENTLY WITH TEACHERS in their school so they can better integrate maker activities with curriculum and scale these activities beyond the library space.

3. RETHINKING THE DESIGN OF SCHOOL LIBRARIES to allow integration of STEM and maker tools, collaboration between students, and opportunities to share knowledge in the community.

Jamalian, A. (2018). The role of school libraries in the 21^st century maker movement. New York, NY: littleBits. https://fs24.formsite.com/edweek/images/wp-littlebits-Research_Shows_School_Libraries_in_New_Light.pdf

Praise can Boost Student Success

A new review of research in the journal Child Development suggests just praising the effort of middle and high school students to boost their "growth mindset" can have the opposite effect, with those adolescents praised becoming less likely to believe their work can improve their intelligence or skills. In this article, the researchers explain these findings developmentally. The researchers suggest that effort praise can communicate that effort is a path to improving ability, but can also imply that the student needs to work hard because of low innate ability. The researchers propose that adolescents are at greater risk for interpreting the praise in the second way because secondary schools often value innate ability more than effort and adolescents are conscious of ability stereotypes.

Amemiya, J., & Wang, M. (2018). Why effort praise can backfire in adolescence. Child Development Perspectives, 12(3), 199-203. https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/cdep.12284

Analytics on Learning

This paper argues that there are five crucial questions about student privacy that one must address in order to ensure that whatever the laudable goals and gains of learning analytics, they are commensurate with respecting students' privacy and associated rights, including (but not limited to) autonomy interests. The study address information access concerns, the intrusive nature of information-gathering practices, whether or not learning analytics is justified given the potential distribution of consequences and benefits, and issues related to student autonomy. Finally, the report questions whether learning analytics advances the aims of higher education or runs counter to those goals.

Rubel, A., & Jones, K. M. L. (2016). Student privacy in learning analytics: An information ethics perspective. The Information Society, 32(2), 143-159. https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01972243.2016.1130502