SLIS 761 Post #1 - AASL and ISTE Standards

This week, we have been looking at the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) and International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Standards. Briefly, the AASL Standards cover three areas: Learners, the School Library, and the School Librarian. The standards for each are broken down into the same six key areas: Inquire, Include, Collaborate, Curate, Explore, and Engage. Each of those areas is further broken down into four domains: Think, Create, Share, and Grow (AASL, 2018a). The ISTE Standards seek to create, “high-impact, sustainable, scalable and equitable learning experiences for all learners,” through the use of technology (“The ISTE Standards,” n.d., para. 1). The ISTE Standards have five sections (Students, Educators, Education Leaders, Coaches, and ISTE Computational Thinking Competencies), but the two that I am going to be focusing on are Students and Educators. The standards for Students are: Empowered Learner, Digital Citizen, Knowledge Constructor, Innovative Designer, Computational Thinker, Creative Communicator, Global Collaborator (“ISTE Standards: Students,” n.d.). The standards for Educators are: Learner, Leader, Citizen, Collaborator, Designer, Facilitator, Analyst (“ISTE Standards: Educators,” n.d.). Below are some helpful videos that give a short explanation of these two sets of standards.

As I was reading through Knowledge Quest Volume 47, an article that stood out to me was Courtney L. Lewis’ (2019) “Collaborating to Communicate: Librarian Reading Groups and Understanding Standards.” At the beginning of the article, Lewis expresses her concerns about how to best implement AASL Standards while working within a curriculum that could change without a moment’s notice and how best to explain the importance of those standards to administrators who might not be knowledgeable about all that the library profession entails. Lewis then proceeds to explain how she created an AASL reading group that could share their understanding and ideas about the standards with one another.

What struck me as interesting about Lewis’ (2019) article was that I felt like her journey through this process utilized all six of the key areas covered by the AASL Standards. At the beginning, thought critically about the standards, identified a problem as mentioned above, and developed a strategy for solving the problem, which would be the reading group (Inquire). After developing the idea for the reading group, she included her peers in the process and created a network so that she could gather different viewpoints (Include). She then worked with the group to try to better understand the standards and find new ways to implement and advocate for them (Collaborate). The group members found and shared related articles with one another (Curate). They tried new strategies and reported back to the group about what worked (Explore). In the end, Lewis used what she had learned to introduce the school library framework to her administrator, so that she could provide them with a better perspective on the program (Engage).

American Association of School Librarians. (2018a). AASL Standards framework for learners [Infographic]. American Library Association. https://standards.aasl.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/AASL-Standards-Framework-for-Learners-pamphlet.pdf

The article ends with a section that addresses the relationship between the AASL and ISTE Standards. Lewis’ (2019) conclusion being that they share many things in common, but that the AASL Standards might have more to do with inclusion than the ISTE Standards (p. 42). I think I agree with her assessment. Her conclusion is based on the excellent AASL crosswalk with ISTE provided by the AASL. One aspect of the crosswalk that she does not mention thought is that there is an equally small amount of overlap between the two when it comes to curation (AASL, 2018b). This could just be the result of the specificity with which the AASL Standards are written, or the highly specialized nature of the ISTE Standards, as they are tied inextricably to technology.

When comparing the two sets of standards, it is not a one to one comparison. For instance, the ISTE “empowered learner” standard for students matches well with the educator “learner” standard, but they do not fit exactly within one of the AASL Standards. An example of can be found in section 2.1 of the ISTE Standards for educators (n.d.), which states that educators should, “Pursue professional interests by creating and actively participating in local and global learning networks.” I would argue that this standard includes elements of both the AASL Standards of “explore” and “collaborate.” Because there are many ways in which these two sets of standards overlap, I think that the best strategy for integrating them would be to look at the ways in which they do not overlap and figuring out ways in which they can work together to benefit the students.

References

American Association of School Librarians. (2018a). AASL Standards framework for learners [Pamphlet]. American Library Association. https://standards.aasl.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/AASL-Standards-Framework-for-Learners-pamphlet.pdf

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

The ISTE Standards. (n.d.). ISTE. Retrieved January 21, 2022, from https://www.iste.org/iste-standards

ISTE Standards: Educators. (n.d.). ISTE. Retrieved January 21, 2022, from https://www.iste.org/standards/iste-standards-for-teachers

ISTE Standards: Students. (n.d.). ISTE. Retrieved January 21, 2022, from https://www.iste.org/standards/iste-standards-for-students

Lewis, C. L. (2019). Collaborating to communicate: Librarian reading groups and understanding standards. Knowledge Quest, 47(5), 36-43.