Considering school library and technology integration standards

In this post, I take a deep dive into the national standards for school libraries and technology integration. Both sets of standards are currently well established, guiding educators’ practices throughout the US.

AASL standards framework

The American Association of School Librarians ([AASL], 2018b) standards framework identifies six categories of shared foundations (i.e., curriculum standards) for K-12 learners:

1. Inquire
2. Include
3. Collaborate
4. Curate
5. Explore
6. Engage

In addition to the shared foundations, there are four domains —Think, Create, Share, and Grow — with two to four specific competencies for each domain. 

As Ehler-Hansen and O’Meara (2019) note, the four domains reflect increasing levels of complexity for learning, similar to Bloom’s Taxonomy or Webb’s Depth of Knowledge levels, and the four domains overlap with cognitive, psychomotor, and affective domains of learning. With multiple experiences in each domain of a shared foundation, learners become more proficient. For example, the Slate Valley School District created “I can…” statements as performance indicators for each shared foundation, then anchored four levels of proficiency from “Getting Started” through “Going Beyond” (Ehler-Hansen & O’Meara, 2019).

It's interesting to note that because of the breadth of the AASL standards, they overlap with other content area standards, such as Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts (ELA) and the Next Generation Science Standards. For example, Freedman and Robinson (2019) describe collaboration with a middle school ELA teacher on a sources and plagiarism unit, and the Next Generation Science Standards and the AASL standards include the engineering design process and maker education goals (e.g., Martin, 2015).

ISTE standards for students

Similarly, the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) standards identify seven characteristics of digitally-competent learners:

1. Empowered Learner
2. Digital Citizen
3. Knowledge Constructor
4. Innovative Designer
5. Computational Thinker
6. Creative Communicator
7. Global Collaborator

Photo by Santi Vedrí on Unsplash

Having worked, studied, researched, and practiced in educational/instructional technology for over 20 years in K-12 (and higher education), I am quite familiar with the ISTE standards. I taught and used the previous National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) for Students and transitioned to the new standards when they were introduced in 2016. 

The 2016 ISTE standards are broader in topic than their predecessors, and they have less emphasis on technology operations and concepts, which was Standard 6 (International Society for Technology in Education, 2017). In addition, the inclusion of computational thinking (i.e., Standard 5) was somewhat ahead of its time. While computational thinking had been studied, described, and proposed (cf. Grover & Pea, 2013; Johnson et al., 2014), the ISTE standard was still quite broad and undefined, and many K-12 educators and STEM scholars struggled with identifying computational thinking tasks. Wing’s (2006) seminal article laid the foundation for computational thinking with few distinct concepts or boundaries beyond computer programming and coding. However, ISTE’s standards (or competencies) for computational thinking for educators — in addition to a number of educator resources — made understanding computational thinking less abstract.

Comparing both sets of standards

The AASL standards and the ISTE standards have significant overlaps regarding topics and learning goals. Using the AASL crosswalk document (American Association of School Librarians, 2018a), all of the ISTE standards align to National School Library Standards except for two standards (i.e., Standards 5(a) and 5(d)) — both of which are related to computational thinking. In addition, two other computational thinking standards (i.e., 5(b) and 5(c)) only align with school library standards once.
Other ISTE standards align with multiple school library standards, including:

• Empowered Learner 1(c) three times
• Digital Citizen 2(c) four times
• Creative Communicator 6(a) three times
• Creative Communicator 6(d) three times
• Global Collaborator 7(b) five times
• Global Collaborator 7(c) four times
• Global Collaborator 7(d) five times

It is also worthwhile to note that the AASL standards and the ISTE standards both contain learning goals similar to Partnership for 21st Century Learners’ (2009) four Cs skills, information literacy skills, and media literacy skills.

What about you?

What are your thoughts about the AASL standards and the ISTE standards? What have you noticed about them, or maybe, what have you noticed implementing them in practice? I know that many of the folks in our class have extensive experience working in school libraries, so I'm interested to know how the standards are working for you. 

Leave a comment below, and I will respond.

References

American Association of School Librarians. (2018a). National school library standards crosswalk with ISTE standards for students and educators. American Association of School Librarians. https://standards.aasl.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/180828-aasl-standards-crosswalk-iste.pdf

American Association of School Librarians. (2018b). National school library standards for learners, school librarians, and school libraries. ALA.

Ehler-Hansen, D., & O’Meara, C. (2019). Portrait of a graduate and the National School Library Standards. Knowledge Quest, 47(5), 22–29.

Freedman, J. L., & Robinson, A. (2019). School librarians level up! Knowledge Quest, 47(5), 10–15.

Grover, S., & Pea, R. (2013). Computational thinking in K–12: A review of the state of the field. Educational Researcher, 42(1), 38–43. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X12463051

International Society for Technology in Education. (2017). ISTE standards for students: A practical guide for learning with technology. ISTE. https://portal.ct.gov/-/media/DAS/CTEdTech/publications/2018/ISTE_Student_Standards_eBook.pdf

Johnson, L., Becker, S. A., Estrada, V., & Freeman, A. (2014). NMC Horizon Report: 2014 K-12 Edition (pp. 1–52). The New Media Consortium. https://www.learntechlib.org/p/147472/

Martin, L. (2015). The promise of the maker movement for education. Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research (J-PEER), 5(1). https://doi.org/10.7771/2157-9288.1099

Partnership for 21st Century Skills. (2009). P21 framework definitions. Batelle for Kids. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED519462.pdf

Wing, J. M. (2006). Computational thinking. Communications of the ACM, 49(3), 33–35. https://doi.org/10.1145/1118178.1118215