ABSTRACT
School librarianship has a strong foundation of correlational research that suggests that school librarians play a significant role in student outcomes; however, several federal education policy initiatives demand a reconceptualization. In response, we have proposed and begun to enact a research agenda through which researchers can probe causal relationships between what school librarians do and what learners gain through school libraries. In this chapter, we report the first phase of our ongoing work in which we have used mixed research synthesis (MRS), a rigorous systematic review method adapted from the fields of nursing and social work, to conduct three independent aggregations and evaluations of published peer-reviewed research to identify key cognitive, interpersonal, and intrapersonal competencies related to learning in formal and informal educational environments. Our analysis of this corpus resulted in themes of effective educator practices relating to fostering systematic problem-solving skills; blending direct, peer-led, and self-guided instruction; engaging in professional collaboration; and providing reading support and access. We have distilled these themes into hypotheses that will be tested in small-scale researcher–practitioner partnership studies utilizing causal research designs.
