Summary: | The main purpose of this study was to investigate in what manner librarians and pedagogues can cooperate in order to help students with reading and writing problems and consequently enhance their information literacy. I aimed to investigate why cooperation between these professions is necessary. Also, I wanted to find out how the general support is on the schools regarding students with reading and writing difficulties, and if the school librarian knows what the special educator can contribute with and vice versa. Lastly, I focused on what knowledge the performers of these professions have about reading and writing difficulties and to what degree their knowledge is based on scientifically proven methods. The two theoretical points of departure are 1) theory of cooperation built upon Louise Limberg’s and Lena Folkesson’s three categories of cooperation 2) and Aidan Chambers’s reading promoting model named the circle of reading. I have used a qualitative method based on semi-structured interviews with both school librarians and pedagogues, who are active at five upper secondary schools. The major findings are that it would be possible to develop the cooperation between these two professions. For example: Research shows that working in teams promotes student learning. Another result is that the informants have a limited knowledge of whether the technical compensatory devices are based on approved research. In conclusion, it was also found that particularly school librarians feel an anxiety about to target aid efforts, directly to students with reading and writing difficulties/dyslexia, because they believe that the students would feel singled out. Such thinking puts in my opinion too much responsibility on the students themselves, to ask for help. The study also revealed that, easy to read literature has a quite small part in supporting these students. The research was undertaken for a two-year master’s thesis in Library and Information Science.
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