Transforming Academic Library Instruction

Shifting Teaching Practices to Reflect Changed Perspectives

Amanda Nichols Hess author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Published:25th Sep '18

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

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Transforming Academic Library Instruction cover

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.

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

ISBN: 9781538110539

Dimensions: 220mm x 152mm x 17mm

Weight: 449g

218 pages