The education of teacher-librarians in the Islamic Republic of Iran: a competency approach

Education has a vital role in the cultural and socio-economic development of a country and the success of an educational system depends partly on the information infrastructure of the society. The school library, as the first link in the hierarchical chain of the information infrastructure and an integral component of the school's instructional information system, supports the school's educational goals and objectives. The main key to the successful achievement of a school library programme is its librarian. At present, the majority of Iranian school libraries are run by teacher-librarians who rarely possess any formal library education. These librarians should be well equipped with the competencies needed to perform their jobs effectively. The intention of this survey is, therefore, to suggest a library programme for the education of teacher-librarians. Included is an overview of the educational system of Iran, the information infrastructure, situation of school libraries and different methods of curricular design, in order to define an appropriate approach to education for the purpose of planning a library programme for teacher-librarians in Iran. In examining library programmes, several standards and studies published in a range of developing and developed countries were analysed, and a data gathering instrument was constructed. This was administered and analysed to determine the competencies required of teacherlibrarians in Iran. The resulting competencies are compared to the competencies considered essential for school librarians in three comparative international surveys and the school librarian's job description, as provided by the Iranian Ministry of Education.