Expertise and educators: Teachers make a difference

If you care about teaching, stop what you're doing and read Joshua Beatty's CAPAL 2015 paper, "Reading Freire for first world librarians." I had seen others tweeting about how great this paper was but hadn't had a chance to read it until now.

I can't really even count the amount of exclamation points I wrote all over my printed-out copy. There are a lot! We talk about a few things regarding critical pedagogy that have had me feeling conflicted. I wasn't sure how to put my uncertainty into words. Conversations regarding teacher authority, students-as-teachers, and borderline disdain for outcomes have had me feeling like "hmmm no" but not entirely sure how to express my hesitation clearly. And when I say "we," I mean librarians, teachers, and higher ed faculty who engage in discourse about critical pedagogy, but also sometimes those more informal discussions in our #critlib chats. And this is certainly not uncommon, a hashtag to talk about umbrella topics does not automatically imply there is monolithic agreement and a shared politics/approach/philosophy. This is why these conversations are great, because it's a safe space to talk about these things. I just haven't been able to fully articulate my disagreement about these issues until reading this paper.

So without repeating everything he says, essentially, the point is that first world librarians have been interpreting Freire incorrectly. Most of us--myself included--have only read Pedagogy of the Oppressed, which was written with a very specific time period and population in mind and does not apply to Western classrooms (especially in the U.S. education system). Beatty points out how "Freire believed that North American teachers had conflated the concept of authority with the concept of authoritarianism. For Freire, the difference was essential. Authoritarianism was opposed to the existence of freedom, and is illegitimate. Authority, in contrast, was not opposed to freedom, but necessary to it" (p. 6).

The teacher's authority comes from their knowledge of the subject matter; but as Beatty explains, Freire realized in our misreading of his work that in rejecting authoritarianism, we wind up rejecting the teacher's authority... the thing that is actually needed for reaching freedom. And when we reject the teacher's authority and focus on this idea of teacher as just a guide or facilitator and not an expert with authority, we are actually causing harm to both the students and the teacher.

How this causes harm to students: Teacher authority is thinly veiled behind this idea of a classroom of shared power, which is just not in existence. Problem-posing in truth would be to acknowledge the authority of the teacher, to discuss it and be aware of it, instead of pretending it doesn't exist or making it seem like it can go away. I have never fully abdicated my authority as a teacher when I am doing instruction, feeling that I would come across as insincere. I wrote a blog post previously about TMI and student retention, and how trying to appear as if on the same level as your students is not helpful to teaching. I had included a couple YouTube clip examples in the post that have seemed to disappear, but this one can illustrate the idea here from Kids in the Hall, He's Hip. He's Cool. He's 45! The dad is trying to act like his authority is invisible by being "cool" and imposing no limitations on his son. He "doesn't care" about restrictions such as curfew and even goes to offer his son a joint with his cool man stance on the couch armrest. But the son clearly sees through this facade, not taking his dad seriously, as if he's a joke (well, he literally is):

This is obviously an exaggerated example, but I think it is disingenuous to frame a classroom as hey we're all the same, teacher, students.... even though I have the authority to grade. Also, there really are right and wrong answers in a number of cases. Dialogue is important, though. Facilitating is also important, but not at the expense of denying the expertise of being a teacher.

How this causes harm to teachers: I have written about the identity of librarians, the identity of librarians specifically as educators, and presented on how incorporating critical pedagogy into information literacy education can help transform our image. What Beatty is saying in his paper ties directly to this issue inherent in women's work and female-dominated professions having an expectation for service work and caregiving. Caregiving and warmth is essential to a degree in successful teaching, as we recognize the human component necessary for learning (affect), but positioning teachers--and librarian teachers, a double-whammy--as simply guides or facilitators or helpers, we are reinforcing a renunciation of authority, respect, and the need for individuals (mostly women) in these roles. We can have authority without being authoritarians. We can be experts and strategic educators who use learning outcomes (especially as formative assessment) while also working with students to realize their own knowledge and interests via dialogue and bigger picture learning.

I have found somewhat of a clash between educational psychology / instructional design principles and critical pedagogy when considering design, outcomes, and the role of the educator. I was so glad to read Beatty's paper to help me realize exactly where I felt uncomfortable with this conflict and why it existed. He talks about a lot of other great things like the idea of neutrality, the importance of collaboration with faculty, and neoliberalism + educational technology... you should really read.

And so, if anyone really can be a facilitator or a guide or a helper, then who needs us? Freire's notion of laissez-faire education would be realized. Teachers make a difference, and we can use our authority to help students learn. 

Zines fests, neutrality, and tie ins to library work

photo by Jen Collins/ Flickr Creative Commons

Today I was reading here and here about how the Brooklyn Zine Fest silenced People of Color (POC), through removing a panel about #BlackLivesMatter under the guise of keeping the fest "apolitical." This is appalling and additionally depressing to hear about considering that this essentially is a space for activists and those who are endeavoring to express alternative points of view. We have to remember, sadly, that the erasing or silencing of POC can happen anywhere, not just in spaces that have a more hostile agenda.

Also, an 'apolitical' zine fest??? I would say that's a definite oxymoron.

I really want to tie this in to library work. In Jordan Alam's blog post about this, she says:

"Our bodies and lives do not have the privilege to claim that they are ‘apolitical.’ By our basic existence, we must contend with the very politicized assumptions placed upon us, black people most of all. Shutting us out from programming is a choice to align with the dominant racist and anti-black culture."


This is relevant to the argument that we say "we're neutral!" in libraries and that we are aware of and represent "all" points of view. In our collections, in our instruction, in how we organize and describe our materials, and all the work we do. Because this blanket of neutrality supposedly covers the whole library, I would imagine, when making this argument.

But just like at this zine fest, when a point of view was silenced to stay 'apolitical,' it's like turning the conversation around #BlackLivesMatter to #AllLivesMatter. White people have the luxury of being viewed as "normal" and "apolitical" and "neutral." #AllLivesMatter is the point of view that is always front and center. And this point of view tends to take the perspective of whiteness. POC are always silenced or marginalized or othered. Actually showing "all" points of view would be to put more focus on these perspectives that are not always in the spotlight, as whiteness is the lens we tend to see everything through.

I made this argument with my colleague, Niamh Wallace, in our recent article for C&RL News, "Black Lives Matter! Shedding library neutrality rhetoric for social justice." But I think the point can still be missed by those who might not be seeing past what the true meaning of neutrality in library work means.

Librarians have been talking about this for some time, I have never implied I am the first to discuss this, but I think there is an extra focus or interest in these topics again currently. We should be talking about this as a profession, as being critical involves dialogue. We're not going to always agree, and it's not going to always be in binary terms of right or wrong, but that's not a reason to not engage. And if we are representing diverse communities with different perspectives than ~85% white librarianship, this idea of "we'll just show all points of view" but remain "neutral" misses the point and further marginalizes our users.

I really hope Brooklyn Zine Fest will engage in productive discussion (and apology) about this with their community, particularly zinesters of color, and add an extra event focusing on these issues during the fest.

More on ALA Instructional Design Essentials ecourse

image via infed.org

Since it's a ways off and we've had people asking about when it will be offered again, I just wanted to make a quick post that our next 4-week session of ALA Instructional Design Essentials will be offered in May 2015. Instructors are myself and Erica DeFrain. We decided to wait until May since it's a slightly less busy time for academic library instruction and thought it would work better with people's schedules. Registration will open up sometime later in spring.

We are reflecting and revising from the first session of the course in September/October 2014, but here is the gist:

What you will get out of this course:

• How to use backward design and instructional design models to create your own teaching, while being critical of the limitations of ID
• How to leverage learning theories and knowledge of student motivation to create more compelling instruction
• How to integrate assessment holistically into your curriculum, lesson, or learning object so that you can help students reflect on their own progress, while you reflect on your teaching
• How to critically select and position technology within your instruction to enhance student learning
• How to develop an awareness for critical pedagogical practices to create inclusive classroom atmospheres or learning objects 

We use a connected model of learning where participants interact and create content. Everyone is learning from everyone, and a number of students had said they made great connections to peers during the course. We had an amazing group of librarians enrolled in the fall and we really enjoyed being able to teach and learn from them!

Some feedback from students:

"This instructional design course has given me the holistic, systematic, and results-focused approach that I was hoping to cultivate towards instruction, and I look forward to further developing my teaching along these lines. My coursemates were a wonderful resource, and I found several posts helpful in thinking about measurable and contextually anchored assessment, the feedback loop, motivation and the affective domain, and the potential contexts for our teaching. Thanks in particular to [student], whose thoughtful comments were so helpful for assessment and technology applications, and to our instructors, Nicole Pagowsky and Erica DeFrain. This was my first experience in online asynchronus learning, and it has been a very positive one that I’m happy to recommend to others!"

"I thoroughly enjoyed the course and learned so much. My biggest take away was to start from the end and work my way backwards when planning for a course and developing curriculum. I have learned that it is not what I want to teach but what I want students to learn. I will never look at instruction the same, and that is a really great thing!"

"I think the thing I found most useful was how the course was structured, i.e. that we applied these Instructional Design principles to a real-life scenario. Going into this course, I had some familiarity with ID concepts, but I had never applied them to my own work. Having an end goal in mind made it easier to explore ID concepts in a practical way. I think the concept that will stick with me most is backward design; it has made me reconsider how I approach instruction, by making sure that I think first of the goals for the course, workshop, etc. before proceeding to how the material will be presented. I struggled most with learning theories, in this class. I think that I have a decent handle on them now, but I’m still not entirely sure of the intricacies of each theory."

"I already want to say thank you to Nicole and Erica for the great course. I learned a lot out of the reading! + the peer-endorsement activity was an eye-opening experience (thx to the blog technology :)"

"What struck me the most was how much my initial class design changed from week 1 to week 4. Without realizing it, I had done an about-face! When I pulled my old posts together and tried to write up this final project post, it became clear just how much the readings and the other participants’ blogs had changed my views."

If you're interested in registering for the course, feel free to contact me or Erica with questions; or get in touch with ALA for any logistical concerns.

#connectedcourse intro post

I signed up to take an open online course through Connected Courses on active co-learning in higher ed that starts next month. As part of getting set up to do the work in the course, which I'll be using my blog for, I needed to create a first post using the hashtag, so here we go!

A short post on #critlib outcomes and assessment

As #critlib is wrapping up for this week, the topic of assessment being prohibitive came up in regards to libraries contributing to social justice initiatives in communities when tragedies like Ferguson happen. I mentioned in the chat that I needed to develop a rubric for a campus committee, where we are working on our equivalent of AAC&U's High Impact Practices. I was able to include critical pedagogy components, and even the new ACRL framework to design it, so I am sharing by request. This is certainly not finalized or widely distributed, so just sharing my work so far:

(^ Click to fully view)

Regarding the evil assessment talk, outcomes and assessment definitely can have #critlib components and work for "good" (vs "evil"). There are also affective learning outcomes (#feelings) that can tie in especially to feminist and critical pedagogy. Lisa Hinchliffe made some great points:

Although we do have institutional constraints in many cases and need to work with/around those, there are still a lot of opportunities to use assessment for more than just measuring required quantification. Perhaps this is a topic that could use more discussion in future #critlib chats!

Instructional design for librarians

image via edtechdojo.com

Instructional design (ID) is an important component of good instruction to understand, but because most librarians (myself included) were not trained in this in library school or afterward, it is something that we should catch up on to close the gap in our knowledge and skills. ID helps an instructor connect learning goals/outcomes with instructional practices and assessment in order to create a learning experience that could be more efficient and effective for learners. I'm sure most would agree that initial instruction experiences for librarians are trial-by-fire. 

ALA invited me to teach a course on an instruction-related topic for these reasons and so I thought instructional design would a good way to cover principles for both face-to-face and online teaching in any type of library. I asked Erica DeFrain to join me in teaching since she has some serious skills, as well as degrees in Instructional Design and (finishing up) her PhD in Educational Psychology. If this interests you, more information follows!

Instructional Design Essentials - with ALA

Course Instructors: Nicole Pagowsky & Erica DeFrain
September 15 - October 15, 2014

This four week, online course will allow you to work at your own pace while receiving feedback on projects and having conversations with your instructors and coursemates. Upon completion of the course you’ll have a fully developed lesson plan that includes pedagogically sound instructional strategies and a meaningful assessment plan.

What you will get out of this course:

• How to use an instructional design (ID) model to create your own teaching, while being critical of the limitations of ID
  
• How to leverage learning theories and knowledge of student motivation to create more compelling instruction
• How to integrate assessment holistically into your curriculum, lesson, or learning object so that you can help students reflect on their own progress, while you reflect on your teaching
  
• How to critically select and position technology within your instruction to enhance student learning
• How to develop an awareness for critical pedagogical practices to create inclusive classroom atmospheres or learning objects
    

Erica is fancy - here is her instructor bio if you aren't familiar with her work:

Erica DeFrain is a librarian with over ten years of professional experience developing and designing instruction. In April of 2014 she joined the Research and Instructional Services department at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln as an Assistant Professor and Social Sciences Librarian. A doctoral candidate in Educational Psychology, she has an MLIS and MS in Educational Technology from the University of Arizona. A huge fan of the Guide on the Side, one of her Guides was featured as an ACRL PRIMO Site of the Month in April.

Nicole Pagowsky is a Research & Learning Librarian at the University of Arizona, and is the liaison for online learning, student retention and success initiatives, general education, and the College of Architecture and Planning. Both her MLIS and MS in Instructional Design & Technology degrees are from the University of Arizona. Nicole's research focuses on game-based learning, student motivation, and critical pedagogy. 

Hope anyone interested will join us, feel free to contact either Erica or myself if you have questions.

Hiring and retaining diverse talent by supporting risk

Image via http://fvckthemedia.com/issue25/the-end-of

We are hiring (soon)! Let me preface this post with the fact that I have little power: by way of not being a supervisor, not being a hiring committee member, and furthermore, not yet having tenure. However, the UA Libraries is a collaborative atmosphere, and since we are going to be hiring a number of new positions (including 2 positions on my team, the Research and Instruction Department, name subject to change), we are all invited to contribute content for the position description and our wording on diversity. My library does have a commitment to diversity and we do have current wording we typically use in our job posts--diversity meaning both underrepresented groups including POC, and also diversity relating to mindset and lived experience. Likewise, I have felt through being interviewed myself for my job and participating in others' interviews more recently that we do seek out risk takers and creative thinkers. But as I think more about what hiring for diversity means at my institution, I wanted to work my thoughts out on how we as a profession overall could improve our efforts because clearly we need to do more.

The book I just finished editing with Miriam Rigby, The Librarian Stereotype: Deconstructing Perceptions and Presentations of Information Work with ACRL Press (read chapter 1 and the foreword as an OA PDF here) discusses implications of our stereotypes and how they negatively impact the collective profession, by way of lower status, pay, and diversity. The more our stereotypes stick around, the more negatively they impact efforts to increase diversity; and the more difficulty we have in increasing diversity, the more our stereotypes are perpetuated. A lack of diversity in librarianship harms everyone. Isabel Gonzalez-Smith, Juleah Swanson, and Azusa Tanaka examine this in greater depth for librarians of color in chapter 7 of the book; and Annie Pho and Turner Masland reflect on diversity and activism pertaining to all underrepresented groups in chapter 12. The authors, as well as many of us, question: why have so few efforts made an impact?

A couple ALA sessions inspired greater thinking for me. As there are many dimensions to increasing diversity within librarianship, I'm going to take a narrow focus to the issue at large. I attended Nicole Cooke, Robin Fogle Kurz, and Safiya Noble's amazing #alaac14 session, Power, Privilege, and Positionality: Applying a Critical Lens to LIS Education. The panelists described the struggle they have faced with their scholarship, as it has been viewed as controversial, where they have dealt with roadblocks in support, tenure, and even the ability to present at ALA conferences. Although this session discussed what needs to be done in library schools to encourage greater diversity in the field and greater diversity of thought/more radical thought in the classroom, points can be applied to hiring from the institution's perspective. Some snippets from Twitter:

.@LibraryNicole RT @cmcaffre "be comfortable with the idea of being uncomfortable" - Nicole Cooke on her social justice LIS course #alaac14
— Sujei =) (@sujeilugo) June 29, 2014

“@roselovec: Diversity #s place the focus on the worst aspect of race: the biological. Instead of the focus on the social says @safiyanoble
— Safiya Noble PhD (@safiyanoble) June 30, 2014

“@edrabinski: Diversity can't mean, we need more dog people! It needs to be about power. #alaac14” says @safiyanoble
— Safiya Noble PhD (@safiyanoble) June 30, 2014

“@roselovec: Diversity in LIS is a trendy topic. Make it consistent by having FT LIS fac who focus on these issues. says @LibraryNicole
— Safiya Noble PhD (@safiyanoble) June 30, 2014

We're value-free, non-coercive, neutral helpers. @safiyanoble asks, does anybody believe that? #bananas #alaac14
— Emily Drabinski (@edrabinski) June 29, 2014

The expectation for this research and action should not fall solely on LIS professors, but all of us. It should be an expectation for practicing professionals as well. One thing that might attract and keep more diverse talent is encouragement to research, teach, and implement more critical approaches to librarianship that the presenters discussed.

In also attending another session at ALA, Introduction to Women's Issues: The Staff Potluck, organized by the Committee on the Status of Women in Librarianship (COSWL), Social Responsibilities Round Table Feminist Task Force (SRRT/FTF), and ACRL's Women and Gender Studies Section (ACRL/WGSS), the question arose of why did only 15(ish) of us show up? Of course it's a big conference with a lot going on at once, but it's always such a small group at these discussions. TBH, I haven't attended one in awhile, myself. But I made the point that it's a risk to attend. This type of work is not always valued at institutions, and it would be more plausible for people to attend a session on assessment or discovery systems, for example, than these types of sessions. Until our institutions explicitly value this type of thinking, talk, and action, we will continue to have a small number of individuals able to commit to these issues.

I live in a questionable state--AZ--when it comes to taking a more radical stance on issues. Our campus is generally liberal-leaning, even recently expanding the transgender studies program, but we are still funded by the state. I'm even a little nervous about writing this post since I'm still just assistant faculty. And I know much of the research I have done recently related to the book (linked above) sort of counts toward tenure, but not really. Where one chooses to devote their efforts is a risk in itself.

So this brings me to how hiring could change for libraries to attract and retain diverse talent. I think explicitly stating in the job ad that not only is the library committed to seeking out and hiring diversity, but also that the library is committed to retaining diverse talent by supporting (or even advocating) the risks these individuals may take would make an impact. Will the library step up if these new hires engage in potentially controversial research? Will the library encourage new hires to take risks and integrate critical pedagogy into library instruction (for example)? Will the library overall agree that these sorts of activities are positive things that will improve campus, student learning, and the field as a whole?

We as librarians are certainly not neutral as the presenters, and others writing about critical librarianship, have expressed, so instead of supporting the status quo by remaining silent (silence = consent), we should make a concerted effort to change the power structures within libraries and our campuses. Of course this goes for all--not only new hires. For those of us hiring in locations where more diverse individuals might not have instant attraction, if we could demonstrate an even higher level of support for actions and thought comprised of what we say the profession needs, we can better support those we seek to recruit.

(And if these sorts of topics interest you, please join us for #critlib chats on Twitter where we discuss critical discourse and action in libraries typically within critical pedagogy, but expanding to the library as a whole.)

Thanks to colleagues for reading over this post before I published! If anyone out there is at an institution with diversity hiring language along the lines of support for scholarship and service within more critical topics, I would love to see a copy as we solidify our position descriptions. Or please post here as a comment and share with everyone.

Introducing #critlib chats!

Tuesday night marked the first #critlib chat we had on Twitter to talk about critical pedagogy in libraries. Myself and the awesome @barnlib, @catladylib, @edrabinski, and @kellymce  organized the chat, and I served as moderator for this week. I'm really excited that these are happening, because not only is it important to talk about this stuff, but selfishly, I've been really wanting there to be something like this for awhile.

We created a cheat sheet for the chats to provide information about upcoming topics, how the chats work, and then to post the questions in real time as a reference point beyond the constantly updating Twitter hashtag feed. It's pretty fast paced to do these Twitter chats, and can make having in-depth conversations difficult, but it is a good entry point, is fairly accessible, and open to all. We had a good amount of people participating and some excellent conversations going. It's helpful to have 3 tabs open for this: the cheat sheet, the hashtag feed on Twitter, and then your own notifications feed to make it easy to reply to people without losing #critlib. Thanks to @aszingarelli, we also now have a Storify you can check out to see how the conversation went.

For this first meeting, we mostly talked about definitions. What is critical pedagogy, and what is critical library pedagogy? How do you incorporate critical pedagogy in your library instruction and in other aspects of library work? It was a good first meeting to establish a somewhat common understanding, and provide more context for those who are interested but don't feel comfortable participating yet. Some people mentioned they were just going to lurk, and I think that's great there is so much interest. I hope the chat will make everyone more comfortable sharing their thoughts, it's not meant to be a judgmental place or where anyone assumes they're an expert.

We posted Gregory & Higgins' intro to Information Literacy and Social Justice as supplemental reading since they introduce the concept very well. I was reading Toni Samek's foreword to the book as well, and thought what she said about risk was important:

We should not underestimate the collective will of projects like this one. Each contributor should be thanked for the risk they take on the page. I have, on a number of occasions, said publicly that information literacy is far too often realized in service of the state. This is rarely a popular observation. (And so I have been told.) But for almost twenty full years I have worked under the protection of my right and responsibility of academic freedom. The same cannot be said for all of the seventeen chapter contributors to this work. I admire them for their conviction (2013, vii).

This is important to think about, as these might not be popular opinions. It is somewhat of a risk to discuss these things, particularly for those who are not in tenured positions. So it's great to have a place to chat to support others with these similar convictions. We hope more will join us next time. Tuesday, April 7th will be the second #critlib, and then we will be moving to every other week after that.

Also see our Zotero group with further resources and readings (some of these might wind up being readings for future chats).