Role of school libraries in promoting a reading culture in four high schools in Chinhoyi, Mashonaland West Province, Zimbabwe

Abstract

A school library is essential to any school's learning and teaching activities since it serves as an information and innovation hub (Shonhe 2019). School libraries can play a crucial part in developing a reading culture (Adkins and Brendler 2015) by providing free and equitable access to reading materials to learners. According to IFLA (2015), Danladi and Soko (2018), Shonhe (2019), a school library's objectives and purposes include creating reading habits and improving information literacy abilities, as well as providing a space for collaborative learning, creativity, and independent study. This study sought to ascertain the role performed by school libraries in promoting a reading culture in the high schools of Chinhoyi in the province of Mashonaland West in Zimbabwe. Chinhoyi is the provincial capital of one of the ten administrative provinces in Zimbabwe, Mashonaland West Province. The town has four (4) high schools, of which three are government-funded high schools and one private school. The study was qualitative and adopted an interpretive research paradigm, with focus group interviews as well as face-to-face interviews. Primary informants were learners, teachers, headmasters and librarians. ATLAS.ti 9 software was used for content analysis. ATLAS.ti is a qualitative research tool for coding and analysing transcripts and field notes, writing literature reviews, producing network diagrams, and visualising data. The research established that although some schools have libraries, learners are not using the libraries since the resources in these libraries are irrelevant to their studies and some libraries are not functional because they have no seating space and do not have librarians to run these libraries. Lastly, challenges were noted regarding the reason why reading culture is declining in Chinhoyi high schools. Amongst the main challenges were lack of resources, lack of qualified personnel to manage the library, and lack of funds to buy resources for the school libraries. Based on this study’s findings, the following recommendations were made: schools should employ qualified personnel, schools should be given funds to purchase library resources, introduce library hours on the school timetable to allow learners to read, storytelling sessions should be introduced.