Policies

Approved by Coordinating Council, Feb, 24, 2011

Introduction

This Curriculum Collection Development Policy shall serve as a supplemental guide for selecting materials for the College Libraries' curriculum collections; the criteria and policy outlined in the College Libraries' Collection Development Policy apply unless otherwise noted in this supplement.

The College Libraries' collection of curriculum materials serves to make sample instructional materials available for study, for evaluation, and for use with children from preschool through secondary school. Following the guidelines set out in the College Libraries Collection Development Policy, the curriculum materials primarily support the educational programs of the School of Education and Professional Studies and serve the needs of the students and faculty of those programs.

Selection Responsibility

The Collection Development Coordinator and the library liaison(s) to the teacher education department(s) of the School of Education and Professional Studies are responsible for selection of curriculum materials. Suggestions and recommendations shall be sought on a regular basis from faculty representing the teacher education programs to help develop the collection and keep them relevant to current course offerings.

Scope of Collection

The Curriculum Collection encompasses two types of materials:

• Textbooks typically adopted by school districts for use in K-12 classrooms that are the foundational element of curricular programs developed by standard publishers (e.g. Harcourt, Glencoe, Key Curriculum, etc.)
• Discipline-specific, topical, or theme-based titles that provide structured units of work or daily activities for use in elementary or secondary school classrooms, including appropriate documentary materials received through depository programs.

Selection Criteria

The Curriculum Collection contains media and resources appropriate for preschool through secondary education which meet the following parameters:

General

• Materials collected contain content that is current in the context of State of New York and Province of Ontario learning standards and curriculum;
• Materials collected are designed for K-12 classrooms only, except for those that may apply to older students who are developmentally disabled;
• Materials collected include all subject areas in which the College offers teacher certification programs.
• Materials collected are in English, with the exception of materials for use in foreign language instruction;
• Materials collected reflect educational methods and approaches used in the United States (primary) and Canada (secondary).
• Materials collected do not duplicate those in the Sheard Literacy Center;
• Online-available documents generally are not collected; however, links to online content of high value through the library web site and/or the library catalog may be appropriate.
• Materials that are more technique and strategy-based or focused on classroom management and/or student assessment (as opposed to activity-based or units of work) are more appropriate for the general collection.
• Materials that include teaching materials (e.g. reproducible activities, flash cards, etc.) are appropriate for the Curriculum Collection.

Textbooks ¹

• Textbooks are representative rather than comprehensive; ²
• Teachers' editions only are included; ³
• Each grade level (elementary) or subject (secondary) is represented by at least one title;
• Multiple publishers are represented for each subject area across the grade levels; ⁴
• Multiple curricular approaches are represented as appropriate. ⁵

Weeding

Weeding of the Curriculum Collection shall be governed by the weeding criteria in the College Libraries Collection Development Policy. Additional weeding criteria for curriculum materials include the following:

• Multiple copies of an item (exceptions will be made on a case-by-case basis depending on demand for the item)
• Materials that pre-date the current New York State learning standards or Ontario core curriculum. Older materials may be retained if:
  • Materials are appropriate for use by students for current assignments;
  • Materials display evidence of use.

¹ Textbooks remain an important component for the Curriculum Collection. School districts continue to purchase them for the major subject areas (literacy, mathematics, science, and social studies). Therefore students preparing to be teachers should have access to examples of the kinds of materials which they may be expected to use in K- 12 classrooms. Textbooks also assist students in understanding how learning standards are incorporated into a curriculum in terms of scope, sequence, and assessment.

² Textbooks are marketed as one component of a curricular "program" that also includes an array of supplementary materials. Given the cost of textbooks and supplementary materials, the number of publishers in the market, and the resources of the College Libraries, it is not possible to have a comprehensive collection.

³ Teachers' editions provide the broadest view of a particular program in a single volume, and therefore, the most cost-effective way to provide the type of information of likely use to Teacher Education students.

⁴ There is no simple mechanism for choosing between publishers as New York State allows each school district to choose their own textbooks, neither prescribing nor recommending particular publishers. Selecting 2-3 different publishers for each subject at different grades in the three levels (elementary, middle, and secondary) provides an opportunity for comparison among the publishers.

⁵ For example, in Mathematics, there are both "traditional" and "alternative" approaches to teaching K-12 mathematics. Typically a publisher offers either one or the other. It is important, however, to have both approaches represented in the collection. Each subject area has a Coordinator—a faculty member in the School of Education and Professional Studies—who can serve as a resource for recommending specific publishers and describing any special considerations in the subject area.