Utah State Law: How school librarians become responsible for
teaching digital citizenship
Article Synthesis 2
Utah passed a state law in 2015 requiring public schools to
mandate digital citizenship instruction. That law led to school librarians in
the state becoming responsible for teaching digital citizenship. While the bill required that a school
community council of parents, students and teachers in each school district be
charged with ensuring the digital citizenship curriculum was offered, the bill
did not identify who should lead the instruction, or how it should be provided.
In the study, “WhoseResponsibility Is It? A Statewide Survey of School Librarians on Responsibilitiesand Resources for Teaching Digital Citizenship,” the authors surveyed a number of school librarians in Utah public schools to find out how implementing the new law is going. The study found that implicit expectation among district leaders in Utah was for school librarians to deliver the digital citizenship instruction because the librarians were responsible for information literacy instruction, and because the Web was increasingly becoming a default information source for research.
What the authors found was that these school librarians need help in teaching digital citizenship. “It takes a village,” as one might say when it comes to teaching students of all ages how to be safe and good online. While the state has made digital citizenship in schools a priority, the study points to failures in giving school librarians clear instruction as to how that law should be implemented. As the study found, the school librarians were lost at times and needed help to teach the digital citizenship lessons. There was also no defined curriculum for them to use, and the librarians stated they needed more time to teach the students. The study also said that many of the school librarians were paraprofessionals for their school districts, that means they had other duties on top of their library duties. In order for the law to truly be carried out, there needs to be a collaboration of teachers, librarians, and administrators, as the study suggests. This study is eye-opening in that if other states try to pass such laws regarding implementing digital citizenship curriculum, the law needs to be specific as to who will handle the instruction.
Today many students are now one-on-one with technology as school districts have added iPads and Google Chromebooks for students to use. This study was done in 2019, before Covid. When Covid hit in 2020, school districts implemented the one-on-one technology devices due to school shutdowns. So, for schools to implement digital citizenship curriculum, it can’t be solely left to just the school librarians as this study shows. It has to be a school-wide effort.
REFERENCE
Phillips, A. L., & Lee, V. R. (2019). Whose Responsibility Is It? A
Statewide Survey of School
Librarians on Responsibilities and Resources for Teaching Digital Citizenship. School
Library Research, 22. <http://www.ala.org/aasl/slr/volume22/phillips-lee>
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