Supporting Education Students and Faculty
with Curriculum Resources

Discussion Document

 

Karen Hunt, University of Winnipeg
April 2006

Introduction

The Library at the University of Winnipeg currently supports the Faculty of Education programs with a print collection of monographs, print and online journals, and subscriptions to indexing and article databases. This material is aimed at helping to prepare pre-service teachers and support faculty research. At this time we do not have a systematic collection of material to support the K-12 curriculum in Manitoba.

Curriculum Libraries in the Area

Instructional Resources Unit

Located at 1181 Portage Avenue (about a 15 minute bus ride from University of Winnipeg), the Instructional Resources Unit is available to University of Winnipeg students. IRU is open a few evenings a week and is open on Saturday.

Winnipeg School Division: Library Media Services

Located at 1075 Wellington Avenue (about a 30 minute bus ride from University of Winnipeg), the Library Media Services collection includes over 4000 videos and kits as well as a Reference Library. It is only open during the day, and UW students are allowed to use material in the Library only.

School and Divisional Libraries

Staffing and budgets for libraries in schools varies. Students have access to school libraries during their practicum blocks.

Current Collection

Material is purchased in support of programs in early, middle, and senior years streams, specifically:

 

ERIC Database

ERIC Fulltext Education

 

Collection Description

The budget for material to purchase print material to support the education program is approximately $13,700. This amount was recently increased from $6,039 (in FY 2003/2004) to reflect the current size of the program.

 

LB 3 to LB 2278 (Theory and Practice of Education - K - 12)

 

Number of books

Missing from analysis (because date of publication was missing)

3200

132

Mode

1971

Percentiles 25

1971

50

1983

75

1993

 

An analysis of part of the book collection shows that the majority of books (75 percent) are more than a decade old.

Recommended Curriculum Resources

Some provinces provide lists of recommended resources for the entire curriculum. Universities located within those jurisdictions collect all material that is recommended. For example,

Ontario's Ministry of Education operates the Trillium list of approved textbooks and the non-profit Curriculum Services Canada provides a catalogue of evaluated and recommended resources.

 

The closest Manitoba equivalent is the Manitoba Textbook Bureau and Curriculum Navigator. The Curriculum Navigator only lists approved curriculum-matched websites from K-8. Current bibliographies on some topics are available from Learning Resources Reviews.

Selected Survey of other Canadian Universities

Based on a scan of institutional websites and discussion with Education librarians, the following is a sample of how universities in Canada support pre-service teachers with curriculum materials.

 

Basic models:

  1. No curriculum resources (University of Regina)
  2. Integrated into regular collection (Simon Fraser University)
  3. Separate curriculum library within main library (UNBC, Lethbridge)
  4. Separate curriculum library in Education faculty location (University of Victoria, University of Calgary)
  5. Partnerships with school districts (Queen's University)
University of Victoria

The Curriculum Lab is located in the MacLaurin Building (which houses UVic's education faculty). The Lab offers resources and services to support the K-12 curriculum: Integrated Resource Packages (IRPs), textbooks, children's literature, educational software, and videos, as well as audio-visual equipment, computer labs and technical support to students and faculty. The Lab is staffed by one Librarian and support staff. The concept behind the Curriculum lab when it was developed several decades ago was to simulate a typical school library at that time. For material to support theory and research in education students and faculty use the University's main library.

Simon Fraser University

SFU maintains a "Curriculum Collection" that is separate but located between the "L's" and "M's" in the main library. They collect all books, CD's and videos listed in the ministry bibliographies (IRPs). SFU does not collect manipulatives (for example kits and models).

University of Northern British Columbia

UNBC's support for the Bachelor of Education has been developed in the last 5 years. They decided to locate the Education Resources Centre (ERC) within the main library. While the program is smaller than the University of Winnipeg's (UNBC has about 140 undergraduates and 13 full-time tenure/tenure-track faculty) they have an Education Librarian and a Library Assistant - Education. The ERC not only has curriculum resources but has space for students to work in groups: "it is not a quiet area - it designed not to be" (interview with Education Librarian). UNBC Library received startup funds to build the collection.

University of Lethbridge

At the University of Lethbridge the "Curriculum Laboratory" is located in the main library.

"The Curriculum Laboratory is located on Level 11 of the Library. It is a learning resource centre designed to support the Faculty of Education's teacher education program. It may help to think of the Curriculum Laboratory as a support for the practice of teaching, and the Main Library education collection as a support for the theory of education. Multi-format materials relevant to the Alberta school curriculum are available for loan and/or preview. Equipment, including a paper cutter, hole punch, video machines, opaque and overhead projectors, a scanner, and a light table are provided to assist users in the preparation of A/V materials."
http://www.uleth.ca/edu/currlab/info.cfm

University of Calgary

The Douette Library of Teaching Resources is funded by and located in the Faculty of Education. The Doucette collection has all of the teaching materials, textbooks for schools and reading material for young students. The main library, supports the graduate research collection and does not contain school-appropriate material.

University of Regina

University of Regina had a curriculum library, but it was disbanded a few years ago and the material is housed with the Faculty of Education and is available to faculty only.

 

University of Manitoba

The D.S. Woods Library is located with the Faculty of Education at University of Manitoba. They collect curriculum guides, resources from the Manitoba Textbook Bureau (recommended textbooks and supplementary resources), material from the bibliographies published by Manitoba Education, children's and young adult literature, current periodicals and thesis. The Elizabeth Dafoe Library has material to support educational theory and research. They find that students are mainly looking for textbooks and videos and not manipulatives.

Queen's University

Queen's University and school divisions in the region have partnered to develop the Teacher Resource Centre:

"The Teacher Resource Centre is a unique partnership created in 1996 by the Limestone District School Board, the Algonquin and Lakeshore Catholic District School Board and Queen's University. These three organizations, dedicated to the provision of education, share resources to improve access to information for area elementary and secondary students. The TRC acquires, processes and circulates a wide variety of resources for JK to grade 12. The collection includes thousands of videos, DVDs, class sets of novels, kits and hands on classroom material as well as fiction and non-fiction books."
http://library.queensu.ca/webtrc/aboutus.htm

TRC is located on Queen's University campus.

University of Windsor

The Curriculum Resource Centre is located within the main library and includes a separate help desk and also includes a circulating collection of books "on all kinds of topics in the education field such as, teaching methods, learning theory, etc."

Conclusion

Should pre-service teachers at the University of Winnipeg be exposed to curriculum resources as they would find in a typical school library in Manitoba? Since resource-based learning is cited by Manitoba Education as an element that should be integrated into curriculum and given the evidence of the importance of strong school library programs (see Why Should Principals Support School Libraries? for example) it would seem important to expose pre-service teachers to a rich curriculum resource library.

 

Space

Where should a curriculum library be located? University of Winnipeg students arguably have access to the Instructional Resources Unit at Manitoba Education and the curriculum resources at practicum locations. However access is not convenient and those locations may be under-resourced and staffed. A location within the University that would give students the highest level of access and service would be a separate area within the Library, possibly adjacent to the Reference area or on the 5th floor (for example where current periodicals are now located).

 

Staffing

At universities with Curriculum Resource Libraries located within the Library there is at least a dedicated Education Librarian (and often support staff).

Funding

The current collection budget is adequate to start re-building the collection to support the theory and practice of education, but is inadequate to build a rich curriculum library.

Where to start

One option is to start building a collection to support the new social studies curriculum with a special emphasis on aboriginal resources. An aboriginal perspective is built into the entire Manitoba curriculum and this perspective would also build on the current strengths of the University and the Library's collection.

 

Potential Partnerships

A partnership with the IRU and nearby school divisions has potential, and could potentially benefit not only University of Winnipeg students.

 

Thanks

Many people spoke and emailed with me in preparation of this document, and I would like to thank them for their time, comments and advice: