UC San Diego

Collaboration between teachers and teacher librarians (TLs) faces fundamental challenges in the high school setting. Studies of professional library organizations have suggested that collaborations between teachers and TLs are effective in improving student learning, encouraging personal reading, and raising digital citizenship awareness. The conceptual framework and structure of the teacher and librarian collaboration model (TLC-III) is based on the notion that robust collaboration efforts involving groups of teachers have positive effects on students. Researchers have validated the TLC-III model in studies with various groups of teachers and TLs as instructional partners, but have not done so at the high school level. The aim of this study was accordingly to validate the TLC-III model at this level with various high school teachers across disciplines and to determine why some choose to collaborate with TLs while others do not and the factors that influence the formation of a collaborative environment at a large, comprehensive high school. This mixed-method study relied on 62 anonymous surveys and 22 face-to-face interviews to assess what is needed to improve collaboration as part of the learning environment at this school.