TEACHING LIBRARY MEDIA SKILLS TO FIFTH GRADERS: A PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION (INFORMATION, ETHNOGRAPHY)

Emphasizing professional relationships between classroom teacher and library media specialist, a library media skills program was studied in depth through the methodology of participant observation. The researcher spent one academic year as observer in an elementary school located in a rural setting. An explanation was sought as to how classroom teacher interacted with library media specialist as they instructed fifth graders in the library media skill of information retrieval.;Defining instruction as an arrangement of human, material, temporal and spatial resources with the intention of facilitating learning of one's self or another allowed for development of a theory of information retrieval skills instruction. Theoretical constructs were organized according to arrangers, arrangements, intentions and facilitations of the skills necessary for information retrieval in each setting.;Interaction between classroom teacher and library media specialist did not prove to be substantial, though opportunities for retrieving information abounded in classroom and library media center. Student internalization of instructional outcomes from both classroom and library media center did allow the two professionals to interact indirectly. Investigating information retrieval opportunities was necessary for an understanding of the instruction in their use. Strategies such as selecting the most important terms of a classroom lesson and using them for searching in the card catalog in the library media center found their genesis in the various opportunities for retrieving information. Key to successful interaction between instruction in both environments was the translation of the dialect of the one setting into that of the other.;Qualitative modes of data collection were used to gather evidence. Classroom and library media center were viewed from the perspectives of classroom teacher, library media specialist, student and researcher. Conceptual categories and properties were generated from the data. A constant comparative method of qualitative analysis promoted the progression from observing events to developing grounded theory.