School Librarians Fully Online: Preparing the Twenty-First Century Professional

Online learning, already an essential component of the higher-education and professional landscape, has now developed a more ubiquitous presence in K–12 learning due to educational trends such as flipped education and use of tools such as Google Classroom. Despite the increasingly important role of online learning in K–12 education, little evidence indicates that graduates of school library preparation programs enter the profession with the knowledge, skills, and dispositions required to design and deliver online learning experiences for K–12 students, experiences that take advantage of available resources and platforms. A mixed-method national survey of programs in the United States was conducted to examine the ways that school library preparation programs prepare candidates to design digital learning spaces that include fully online courses for K–12 students. Results indicate that preparation of future school librarians for the design and delivery of online instruction to K–12 students is not yet seen as an integral component of these graduate programs.