School Libraries and Science Achievement: A View from Michigan's Middle Schools

Abstract

If strong school library media centers (SLMCs) positively impact middle school student reading achievement, as measured on standardized tests, are they also beneficial for middle school science achievement? To answer this question, the researcher built upon the statistical analyses used in previous school library impact studies with qualitative measures in an attempt to discover relationships between science education and school library media programs. Taking into account major external predictors of student achievement, the researcher examined usage, staffing, collection, technology, and budgetary school library media program variables. She found that 2002 eighth-grade Michigan Educational Assessment Program (MEAP) science test scores had a significant positive relationship only with the size of the SLMC video collection. In subsequent qualitative follow-up activity, participants emphasized the importance of providing video in their services to science educators, as well as their challenges in providing high-quality, current science collections. Participants also pointed to teacher collaboration as a primary but underutilized way of improving their link with science teachers. The results of this study imply that while school library media specialists ably furnish science teachers and students with multimedia resources, due to systemic and professional factors, they are not yet consistently and confidently poised to be science collaborators.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 21 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.