Teacher-Librarian Collaboration in Developing Favourable Reading Culture in Nigerian Primary Schools

Abstract

Thispaper is an off-shoot from class discussion on the issue of poor reading ability and habit of primary school pupils. This discussion was in a course titled "School InformationSystems and Services" taken by undergraduate students of Library and InformationScience, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. Two sets of students were used for thisstudy. Fifty (50) students from the regular programme and seventy (70) from the part-timeprogramme who are mostly teachers in their various schools were used for the study. These students were from different localities in the country; hence, they were a representationof all the geopolitical zones of Nigeria. The research was guided by three (3) questions which assisted in eliciting information that can be used to encourage the useof school media centres to develop a reading culture in Nigerian schools. Before a reading culture can be inculcated in children, books have to be made available. Suggestions were made on how teachers and librarians can collaborate in developing readingculture in school children. Prominent among them is that teachers should send children to the library for specific assignments and librarians should make resources availablefor the specific assignments. Parents were also found out to be vehicles through which reading in school children can be accelerated. At the end of this paper, a suggested list of supplementary readers was made for use in primary and secondary schoolsto develop reading culture in children.

Keywords: Reading ability, Reading culture, Collaboration