Loh, Chin Ee

The school library is the untapped potential for amplifying equitable 21st century learning and more knowledge is required to understand how school libraries continue to be relevant and vital for 21st century learning. A review of the literature (between 2005 and 2015) was conducted on the role of school libraries for 21st century learning as preparation for the Building a Reading Culture study and resulted in the 21st Century School Library Framework to guide our work on school libraries. The five key roles of a 21st century school library are to support reading, research, collaboration, studying and doing. The report details how a future-ready school library can support these different ways of learning.

This report updates the literature review with project findings and current research from 2016 to 2018. For more details about the study, please refer to our project website (https://www.readingculturesg.org/).

In a constantly shifting world of increasing literacy expectations, technological advancements and global flows, school libraries as learning hubs are crucial to support students’ reading and learning. Following an earlier study documenting the positive impact of well-designed and stocked school libraries on students’ reading, the research team, with the support of CPDD, MOE and the three schools in the study, embarked on a library redesign project from 2019 to 2020. An ERPF grant, DEV02-20 Designing School Libraries of the Future, awarded to the research team, allowed the team to document the redesign process and study the impact of library redesign at the three Library of the Future (LOTF) prototype schools for one full year each between 2022 and 2023.

In this study, we seek to understand how the presence of a trained or professional librarian (PL)1 contributes to the learning within Singapore school libraries by examining principals, library coordinators and teachers' perspectives of their school libraries.
The research questions for the study are: 1. What are the perspectives of school leaders and teachers about their school library?
2. What differences are there in perspectives between the perspectives of school leaders and teachers in schools with trained librarians and without trained librarians?

Leisure reading has been consistently shown to be closely related to children's success during school years and beyond (Iyengar & Ball, 2007; Sullivan & Brown, 2015). Research has also shown that good reading habits can lead to better reading achievement (Clark & De Zoysa, 2011, PIRLS, 2006, 2011, 2016). In light of the proven benefits of leisure reading, language curricula in many education systems, including Singapore, are paying increasing attention to nurture children's love for reading, and large-scale national surveys have been carried out to understand how children practise and perceive reading. The bulk of extant research, however, fail to take account of the potential heterogeneity of participants' language backgrounds, instead focusing exclusively on English or on the schooling language of the research setting (e.g., Loh & Sun, 2018a; National Endowment for the Arts, 2007; Rutherford, Merga, & Singleton, 2018; Zasacka, 2014). Relatively little research has taken a holistic approach to examine bilingual children's reading habits and preferences in their two languages concurrently. Building on an ongoing SUG project, the proposed study aims to conduct a mixed methods study to better understand Singaporean bilingual children's reading habits and preferences in English and their respective Mother Tongue languages. Results from the survey will not only provide important and timely understanding of how bilingual children in Singapore practise leisure reading in their two languages, but also contribute to the knowledge base for designing and evaluating reading programmes as well as tracking down changes in bilingual children's reading habits and preferences.

To date, several computerized diagnostic systems have been developed. These systems are limited in their feedback delivery and assessment scopes as well as in the delivery of remedial programs. For example, the Diagnostic English Language Needs Assessment (DELNA) developed by the University of Auckland and the Diagnostic English Language Assessment (DELA) designed by the University of Melbourne function primarily like placement tests where feedback is delivered to the learners but the tests aim to place students in different language learning programs (of course, one could argue that this is the treatment that follows the diagnosis, albeit not highly differentiated at the individual level.). Similarly, the Diagnostic English Language Tracking Assessment (DELTA) designed by Hong Kong Polytechnic University and the Diagnostic Language Assessment (DIALANG) produced by Lancaster University provide feedback to learners but without specifying skill mastery profiles, differentiated remedial programs, or actionable plans (Harding, Alderson, & Brunfaut, 2015). These systems are also limited by their inability to provide fine-grained information on learners’ growth over time.

The Building a Reading Culture Study: A Nationwide Study of Reading and School Libraries (BRC) study was conducted with the twin goals of contributing to reading and school library research. This publication provides a preliminary analysis of the kinds of design patterns that have emerged from the data collected from the study and from various study trips made to government, independent and international school libraries in Singapore, Australia, the United States and the Netherlands between 2016 to 2019.