Attitudes and Self-Perceptions of School Librarians in Relations to their Professional Practices

A Comparison Study between Hong Kong, Shanghai, Korea, Taipei, and Japan

Abstract

School librarians are not only managers of the school libraries, they are also educators, administrators, teaching consultants, information specialists, and information literacy teachers, etc. Unfortunately, in many countries, especially in Asia, there has always been a lack of understanding on the parts of the classroom teachers and school administration about the role of the school librarians in the public school system. Meanwhile, many novice school librarians do not have a clear understanding of the potential contributions of the school library programmes to students’ overall development process and their achievement, as well as their contributions to students’ overall enquiry-based learning as a whole. Furthermore, very little research is available on the attitudes and self-perceptions of the school librarians regarding their teaching role, in relation to enquiry-based learning for comparison. The study is designed to examine, explore and compare how school librarians in function between Hong Kong, Japan, Shanghai, South Korea, and Taipei, as well as how perceive their own status within the school community, by looking at their relationships with their principals and other classroom teachers.