An action research on use of big books with children at the foundational education stage suggests the need for intersection of Library and Information Science (LIS) with Educational Science (ES) to convert the school and classroom libraries into learning resources. .
A one-day National Conference on "Ranganathan’s Ideas in the Present Context" is being organised at DEPARTMENT OF LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SCIENCE of Kurukuketra University, Kururkshetra (KUK) on 16 March, 2024.
"Every human endeavour with research and knowledge construction becomes a seperate or specialised academic knowledge area leading to teaching and certification for its further growth. First intersection of any knowledge area is with science of teaching-and-learning or Educational Science (ES) - at times called pedagogy. Thus, there is a relation between LIS and ES. Many vistas of LIS have been incorporated in institutionalized education even at the school level such as project based learning, topic research, self-learning, etc., which require access to information which makes the school library as resource of learning. For school teachers, the best way for this intersection is doing the 'intervention cum action research' as shows the present case," said Dr Lalit Kishore, alumnus of Kurukukshetra University, who has retired as Deputy Commissioner from Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan and currently associated with a few NGOs working in the area of alternative education, whose paper co-authored with Subhash Chauhan, Director Som Gurukul at Kurukshetra has been accepted for the conference.
The joint paper of Dr Kishore and Chauhan "Experimenting with User-Centred Big Books and Classroom String Library Development for School Kids: Intervention cum Action Research At Foundational Stage" will be presented at the conference> The abstract of the paper is as follows.
Inspired by the Dr. SR Ranganathan's two of the five library science laws 'Every reader his/her book' and 'Every book its reader' along with directives of the National Education Policy-2020, it was thought to undertake an intervention cum action research to contextualise the class library for the school entrants. For this the creation of dual-code big-books and string classroom libraries becomes necessary. For designing the intervention, a group of three teachers teaching KG classes and library expert (N-1=4) with the following objectives:(i) Designing and standardising dual-code A-4 size five big books; (ii) Production of spiral-bound laminated ten copies of each of five big books; (iii) Piloting the project on kids (N-2=20, 3-4 years, mixed gender) by setting up string library and issue register for systematic use of books by kids and their care-givers; and (iv) studying the reactions of care-givers (N-3=20) to the project on a non-parametric tool. The intervention of two months duration resulted in children book reading habit, attentiveness, library etiquettes and significantly positive reaction of care-givers (p ≤.01, DF=2, chi-squared test).
Keywords: Big books, classroom library, library etiquettes, school developed books, string library
The Publication Committee of the conference informed the paper submitted under the subtheme "User Centered Approaches and Information Literacy." The paper accommodates the suggestion of NEP-2020 that the schools should treat libraries as a learning resource even at early education level and extend Dr SR Ranganathan's ideas to early education teachers and fundamental education stage
Comments