Changing Signature Pedagogies for IL, LILAC Talk part 2

Continuing on from part 1, the next thing I asked participants in my talk was how the "things they are trying to achieve" actually manifested in their teaching - what "acts of teaching" linked to those aims.

This was really interesting to me - I didn't know what to expect as they didn't have long to think about this stuff, or articulate themselves, just a couple of minutes to write down what came to mind first of all.

There was a real mix of things came back! 

Some were really clearly linked "acts of teaching" with their underlying aims of teaching, e.g. "interactive / fun" with "games, quizzes, group work", or "engagement / enjoyment" with "Activities / jokes and humour", or a very self-critical one of "interesting / fun" with "Rambling but disguised as interesting"!

Others had minimal connection between the two or were so vague they could be seen as just saying the same thing again! Comments like "they are implicit in all our learning outcomes and methods" (are they really?), or "positive, equal attitude with learners", "Trying to understand needs" - quite a few people left this section blank too.

 

I know I didn't give people much time, but I found it fascinating how few could quickly link their acts of teaching with what they were trying to achieve, but I think that matches what I found talking to librarians in general about teaching - people pick up those surface level acts of teaching from each other, from colleagues (including re-using each others materials), from staff development / conferences (e.g. a few years ago it felt like the whole profession started using the same polling software over a period of a few months!), without those links to more fundamental reflection on whether or not those acts of teaching worked with their beliefs, values, aims, etc., of their teaching. Some could clearly make those links (e.g. I want fun / interactivity, so I'll use games and quizzes), but they were the minority and it was challenging for most to even articulate how they teach, let alone link that to any underlying beliefs, aims, etc. 

It's reinforced my suspicion that perhaps reflective practice is slowly sneaking into librarianship, but what we could do with is something more like reflexive practice? Getting people to clearly articulate what their underlying values and assumptions are (what they are trying to achieve in my quick and dirty question) then reflect upon how well their teaching meets that, rather than how a particular session went - sort of a level deeper, including values / broader things?