Teachers' perceptions of teacher and librarian collaboration: Instrumentation development and validation

Teacher and librarian collaboration is recommended in professional library and information science guidelines for school librarians. The guidelines suggest that when school librarians become an integral part of instruction, student learning improves. A proposed model of teacher and librarian collaboration identifies four facets of collaborative practices that are involved in teacher and librarian collaboration. The teacher and librarian collaboration model suggests that high level collaborative endeavors are most likely to have an effect on student learning. Exploratory factor analysis procedures were used to examine the structure of the Teacher and Librarian Collaboration (TLC-II) survey, an instrument developed using previously described collaborative endeavors between teachers and librarians. The analysis used responses from a sample of teachers from two school districts in the United States. Exploratory factor analysis was carried out on teacher scores (N = 194) for each of two sets of 16 questions regarding frequency of collaborative endeavors and importance to student learning. Cronbach's alpha was used to determine internal consistency reliability of the survey. Four factors emerged: Integrated Instruction, Integrated Curriculum, Coordination, and traditional cooperative roles between teacher and librarian. The factorial validity needs to be assessed with confirmatory factor analysis.