An exploration of the impact of scheduling on public secondary school library use

This study explored the amount of purposeful use of the school library for secondary English and Social Studies class sections (N = 175) from two comparable secondary schools in North Central Texas, one traditionally scheduled school (N = 82) and one A/B block scheduled school (N = 93). Teacher lesson plans were used to calculate the number of library visits for English and Social Studies class sections. Independent t-tests were used to compare mean differences in library use. The hypothesis, there is a significant difference in the amount of purposeful use of the school library during the school day for a traditionally scheduled and for an A/B block scheduled school, was not supported. The results of the overall independent t-test indicated that there was no significant difference in overall library use between the traditionally scheduled and the block scheduled English and Social Studies class sections (p = .710) at the .05 level. To further explore purposeful library use, individual independent t-tests were conducted for each subject area, revealing that traditionally scheduled English I, II, and U.S. History class sections made significantly more library visits (p = .040; p = .034; p = .035) and A/B block scheduled English III, IV, and Geography class sections (p = .033; p = .012; p = .003) made a significantly greater number of library visits. World History class sections (p = .121) showed no significant difference at the .05 level. The lack of pattern of use as shown in the individual independent t-tests supported the correctness of the overall independent t-test.; This study examined teacher lesson plans for purposes of library visits. Sufficient data were available to conduct an independent t-test for two purposes: library orientation and research. Results of the independent t-tests indicated a significantly greater number of library visits for research and for library orientation for the A/B block scheduled class sections. However, data were not able to indicate whether these library visits were due to the variable of scheduling any more than some other variable, listed or not listed.