The effect of professional development on teacher and librarian collaboration: Preliminary findings using a revised instrument, TLC-III

This study describes preliminary results of a study with elementary school teachers and librarians. Professional-development intervention workshops were conducted to improve teacher and school librarian collaboration to integrate library and subject content. A revised 24-item teacher and school librarian collaboration instrument (TLC-III) was used as a pre- and post- workshop measure to evaluate teachers' and librarians' perceptions of their collaborative endeavors. The instrument was used with intervention and control teachers and school librarians to assess their perceptions about how frequently they collaborated and how important their collaboration was to student learning. Participants included librarians from six elementary schools, and third-grade and fourth-grade teachers attending intervention workshops, and a control group who did not attend the workshops. Findings indicate that professional- development workshops can significantly change teachers' perceptions about collaborating with school librarians. Of particular interest are changed perceptions in the intervention group regarding high-end collaborative endeavors involving integrated jointly planned and taught lessons.