State library conferences as professional development venues: Unbalanced support for the AASL-defined roles of the school Librarian

The American Association of School Librarians (AASL) released new guidelines for school library programs in the summer of 2009. Empowering Learners: Guidelines for School Library Programs (AASL 2009a), hereafter referred to as EL, spells out the five roles that school librarians must practice to empower library users. The purpose of this content-analysis study was to investigate the professional-development offerings available to school librarians through state-level conferences and determine the degree to which these sessions promote the five roles for school librarians as identified in EL. Using a stratified random sample, the researchers selected conferences held in the 2010-2011 academic year and sponsored or cosponsored by state-level school-library associations. The researchers developed and tested a domain matrix based on four of the five roles described in EL as topic domains (the leader role is embedded in the other four roles), and developed subcategories in each domain using the descriptors in EL. Using the matrix, they analyzed the titles and descriptions of twelve conference-program offerings. The results of the study show unbalanced conference-sponsored professional development in terms of the EL-defined roles for school librarians.