Theory Building for the Profession of Teacher Librarianship: An Application of Meta-Ethnography

Abstract

The lack of theoretical foundations for research in the field of library and information science is well documented and leads researchers to borrow from other fields. In the case of school library research, the tendency is to borrow from the field of education. While many theories from education and other disciplines are applicable to school library research, there needs to be development of theory among school library researchers in order to give practitioners understanding of the complex relationships involved in school libraries and guide future research efforts. Meta-ethnography uses findings reported in previous studies as building blocks for gaining deeper understanding of a particular phenomenon and is highly applicable for the initial stages of theory development. This paper provides a thorough description of the meta-ethnography method and an example of how meta-ethnography can be applied for theory building in school library research.