The role of the school library media specialist in Michigan: Statewide survey of practices and perceptions

School library media advocates have long struggled to integrate school library media programs into schools' instructional process. The literature suggests that they have been slow to adopt those responsibilities. This study was conducted to determine the extent to which Michigan school library media specialists have implemented the Information Power teaching and instructional partnering responsibilities, which variables might predict the implementation of those responsibilities, and which variables might prevent school library media specialists from teaching and partnering more. The results of previous research regarding the extent to which the two responsibilities has been implemented are inconsistent, and no research has been found that studied the ability of variables to predict school library media specialists' teaching and instructional partnering practice.; A mixed-methods approach consisting of a survey and interviews was used to collect the data needed to answer five research questions. The survey consisted of a questionnaire designed following Dillman's Tailored Design Method around the four Information Power responsibilities of school library media specialists and participants' demographic information. Response items consisted of specific activities following Information Power and Loertscher's school library media specialist taxonomy. The questionnaire was mailed to a stratified random sample of Michigan schools. Nine participants were selected randomly from the tails and center of the response distribution based on their Rasch-scaled responses. Those participants were interviewed to validate the survey data and to supplement the study with qualitative data.; The Rasch-scaled responses to the survey were analyzed using multiple regression analysis. The data indicated that 69.7 percent of participants reported at least some teaching, and 71.6 percent reported at least some instructional partnering. Variables that predicted the extent of participants' teaching were whether or not participants were certified as school library media specialists, the extent to which they served as program administrator and as instructional partner, and whether or not they held a bachelor's degree in a field other than library and information science or educational media. Participants' preferred level of involvement as information specialist and instructional partner, as well as their actual extent as program administrator and teacher, and certification as school library media specialists predicted increased levels of instructional partnering. Lack of funding for materials and serving as an elementary school library media specialist were associated with lower levels of instructional partnering. The study results support previous research indicating that certification is correlated with more school library media specialist teaching and instructional partnering. None of the other predictors have been studied previously.