Transforming Academic Library Instruction

Shifting Teaching Practices to Reflect Changed Perspectives

Amanda Nichols Hess

Academic librarians working in instruction are at the crux of professional, higher educational, and societal change. While they work with disciplinary faculty to ensure learners are critical information consumers and producers in 21st century ways, how do academic librarians develop a sense of their own identities as post-secondary instructors? Using both broad and in-depth data from practicing instruction librarians, this book identifies the catalysts and influences in academic librarians’ perspective development process. From these factors, then, instruction librarians and librarians-to-be can hone their own instructional identities and transform their teaching practices.

This focus on understanding this perspective transformation process around instructional identities offers both working academic librarians and LIS graduate students an innovative way to think about their roles as educators. While many books explore the practical or how-to aspects of teaching in libraries, Transforming Academic Librarianship: How to Hone Your Instructional Identity and Adopt Best Teaching Practice takes a step up and examines how academic librarians think about or approach instruction as a part of their work. Through explicating this metacognitive process, this book helps both academic librarians and librarians-to-be to more intentionally consider their teaching practices and professional identities.

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Pages: 218 • Trim: 6½ x 9⅛

978-1-5381-1052-2 • Hardback • September 2018 • $104.00 • (£80.00)

978-1-5381-1053-9 • Paperback • September 2018 • $52.00 • (£40.00)

978-1-5381-1054-6 • eBook • September 2018 • $49.00 • (£38.00)

Series: Innovations in Information Literacy

Subjects: Language Arts & Disciplines / Library & Information Science / Administration & Management

Transforming Academic Library Instruction

Shifting Teaching Practices to Reflect Changed Perspectives

Hardback

Paperback

eBook

Summary

Academic librarians working in instruction are at the crux of professional, higher educational, and societal change. While they work with disciplinary faculty to ensure learners are critical information consumers and producers in 21st century ways, how do academic librarians develop a sense of their own identities as post-secondary instructors? Using both broad and in-depth data from practicing instruction librarians, this book identifies the catalysts and influences in academic librarians’ perspective development process. From these factors, then, instruction librarians and librarians-to-be can hone their own instructional identities and transform their teaching practices.

This focus on understanding this perspective transformation process around instructional identities offers both working academic librarians and LIS graduate students an innovative way to think about their roles as educators. While many books explore the practical or how-to aspects of teaching in libraries, Transforming Academic Librarianship: How to Hone Your Instructional Identity and Adopt Best Teaching Practice takes a step up and examines how academic librarians think about or approach instruction as a part of their work. Through explicating this metacognitive process, this book helps both academic librarians and librarians-to-be to more intentionally consider their teaching practices and professional identities.

Details

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Pages: 218 • Trim: 6½ x 9⅛

978-1-5381-1052-2 • Hardback • September 2018 • $104.00 • (£80.00)

978-1-5381-1053-9 • Paperback • September 2018 • $52.00 • (£40.00)

978-1-5381-1054-6 • eBook • September 2018 • $49.00 • (£38.00)

Series: Innovations in Information Literacy

Subjects: Language Arts & Disciplines / Library & Information Science / Administration & Management

Author

Amanda Nichols Hess, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor and e-Learning, Instructional Technology, and Education Librarian at Oakland University Libraries in Rochester, Michigan. In this role, she works with her colleagues to develop the Libraries’ diverse and user-focused online learning offerings; she is also responsible for delivering professional learning offerings aimed at building librarians’ capacity to integrate instructional design and technology into information literacy instruction. Dr. Nichols Hess is also the liaison librarian to OU’s School of Education and Human Services, where she maintains an active teaching presence. In addition to her library and instructional work, Dr. Nichols Hess has served as a Faculty Fellow at OU’s Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning. In this capacity, she provided a diverse set of face-to-face and online professional learning opportunities to faculty university-wide.
Dr. Nichols Hess’s scholarship focuses on information literacy instruction, instructional design/technology, and the intersection of these practices in faculty development. She has shared practically-focused articles on professional development in a number of influential library journals, including Behavioral and Social Sciences Librarian, College and Research Libraries, Communications in Information Literacy, The Journal of Academic Librarianship, portal: Libraries and the Academy as well as chapters ina number of books. In addition to these publications, Ms. Nichols Hess has also shared her work on librarians’ professional learning and development at the Association of College and Research Libraries’ conferences, LOEX conferences/forums, regional professional conferences, and through webinars.

Table of Contents

Dedication
Table of Contents
List of Figures and Tables
Preface
Acknowledgements

Part 1: Academic Librarians, Transformation, and Information Literacy Instruction
Chapter 1: Academic librarians, Instruction, and Teaching Identities
Chapter 2: Transformative Learning Theory: A Primer

Part 2: Catalysts and Factors in Perspective Transformation
Chapter 3: How Teaching Transformation Begins: Catalysts and Disorienting Dilemmas
Chapter 4: How Teaching Transformation Develops: Overarching Personal Inputs
Chapter 5: How Teaching Transformation Develops: Relational Components
Chapter 6: How Teaching Transformation Develops: Professional Components
Chapter 7: How Teaching Transformation Develops: Underlying External Influences

Part 3: Transformative Outcomes in Teaching
Chapter 8: Teaching Transformation in Practice: Resulting Teaching Identities
Chapter 9: Transforming Teaching in the Future: Key Conclusions and Research Directions

Appendix A: Survey Questions
Appendix B: Interview Questions
Bibliography
Index
About the Author

Reviews

Dr. Nichols Hess has a uniquely broad view of the ways in which our expectations of academic librarian instruction are changing as long-held standards are rejected in favor of frameworks and the rigors of traditional standards and practices are exchanged in favor of more fluid information literacy–based learning objectives. . . . Amanda Nichols Hess’s work with transformative learning theory reveals a more dynamic and diverse landscape of transformation taking place in the journeys of those same librarians that is far more likely to be initiated by a change in leadership or classroom experience than by the adoption of a theory or implementation of a framework.
— College & Research Libraries

At a time when it is crucial that librarians see themselves as educators, Hess has enhanced our capacity to improve professional development with this unique and ground-breaking study of how academic librarians’ perceptions of their identity as teachers can be transformed. Illuminating interviews and concise takeaways are designed to be put to good use by librarians, library leaders, and educators.

— Sharon Mader, Dean Emeritus, University of New Orleans Library

Grounded in theory and mixed methods research, Transforming Academic Library Instruction includes practical advice for academic librarians, at all stages of their career, who are reflecting on their roles as educators. Library leaders and educators will also gain insight into how they can encourage librarians’ professional development and transformation growth.

— Nancy Fawley, Director of Information & Instruction Services, University of Vermont