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Key Elements of the Teacher Librarian’s Role 2014, Alison Young
Young, A (2014) The Role of the Teacher Librarian in Schools Available from: http://thinkspace.csu.edu.au/alisonyoung/2014/08/06/the-role-of-the-teacher-librarian-in-schools-etl401-blog-task-1/ [Accessed 6th November 2017]

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How I want to develop my teaching practice further 

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How I want to develop my teaching practice further 

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As previously mentioned, I want to change my teaching approach to put  student learning at the centre of what I do, when designing teaching sessions, while deciding on supplementary material, when planning the layout of a room or choosing learning technologies to assist me in a session. I want to understand more about the learning process – which I’m hoping to do throughout this course, as a student myself – and discover which theoretical methodologies have been used in the past, and which of those I could apply to my own teaching.

I would like to improve the design of my teaching sessions, from the very beginning of the teaching process. Simple things such as thinking about learning outcomes and what I want the students to achieve in the session, have already changed the way I deliver sessions, but I feel there is more I could be doing. A lot of the time I feel that what I do is train students – I show them a process and get them to copy what I did. I feel a greater understanding of the knowledge transfer process would improve the way I teach, in that, as always, the student would learn more deeply.

I would like to harness those aspects that I feel are an advantage in teaching – my knowledge of the topic, my enthusiasm and my communication skills – and use them in a more productive way. I would welcome feedback on my current teaching approach, especially those habits that may have overstayed their welcome from previous teaching jobs, which may be outdated or inappropriate for university teaching and learning.

My ultimate goal from this course of study is twofold. Firstly, I would like a theoretical understanding of different teaching and learning styles, understanding the history of pedagogical theory. This would allow me to take a fresh look at my own teaching, and perhaps adapt a new overall philosophy. Secondly, more practical expertise on how to approach my teaching would be very welcome. I feel the teaching observations would be extremely helpful in achieving this goal, as not only would I be able to get feedback on my own teaching practice, but I will have the opportunity to watch someone else teach, which is a fairly rare occurrence.

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Preparations for a completely new way of introducing students to the library - induction session

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Used to welcome new Maths students to their first library lecture.

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Teaching in practice

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Are my teaching approaches effective and are students learning?

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Are my teaching approaches effective and are students learning?

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This is an area I struggle with. Part of the problem is that I do a lot of one-off teaching, due to my role. I don’t always get to follow-up with students and when I do see a particular cohort, it may be months after the previous session. I feel that the above question is tautologous – my teaching approaches can only be effective if students are learning. I could be using well-tested methods and styles but if I have a group of students for whom those tactics don’t work, and who can’t learn – my approach has not been effective!

My colleagues tend to use surveys and feedback forms at the end of a teaching session but I really dislike asking students straight away – a lot of what I teach needs to be practiced by the student to see if they’ve understood it. I feel that in their current format, the forms are asking about how well I taught (or even how well I came across), rather than how well the student learned. Ideally I would send out a feedback request a week or two after the session, but I still feel that I need to rephrase the questions so that I can check on what the students learned rather than what they thought of my teaching. There is a place for this – I have certainly changed some of my teaching methods based on spontaneous feedback from students – but it is not measuring student learning. This is something I want to focus on during the following year, and it’s something that the Education Development Unit workshops have inspired in me – putting the learner at the centre of my teaching.

Nevertheless, there are some informal ways I have of getting evidence that students have learned something during my sessions. I am always gratified when students ask questions – it usually shows they have understood something but that there is maybe a gap in their knowledge (I may be wrong, but if someone hasn’t learned anything, I’m not sure they would ask specific questions); it shows that they feel comfortable speaking out loud in the session (I do try and encourage questions); and it contributes to team working, as often other students nod and ask follow-up questions. I am lucky in that one regular cohort has a public display of their assignment, so that I can see for myself if they have taken on board what I was teaching (in this case, citing and referencing). Feedback from the department and teaching support staff is also valuable; for example, if they’ve noticed an increase in use of scholarly articles as opposed to web pages and commercial material.

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Developing my existing teaching practice

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Developing my existing teaching practice

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I have had a number of different teaching roles before I came to my current position, and my teaching practice has changed over the last 20 years, although I believe that all my previous teaching experience has affected how I now teach.

I taught English to school age students while living abroad. I had taken a TEFL course beforehand, which emphasised not only learning to teach, but had a module on teaching the TEFL candidates how to learn – we all had to start a short language course as part of the course. This was invaluable, as it put us in the same position as our future students. However, while I believed I was an expert in my field (the English language) I don’t think I made a particularly good teacher. My teaching practice was basic, I didn’t appreciate that students have different learning styles, and unlike most university teaching, I was often spending teaching time ensuring classroom discipline. The syllabus was pre-set, which as a new teacher, I found incredibly helpful, but meant that it was difficult to let the classroom discussions flow off-topic. Where possible, I would try to introduce real-life examples into the classroom, but again, due to the age of my students, this was restricted. My teaching philosophy at this point was totally focused on what I was teaching, and not on what the students were learning.

I also taught adults at this time, doing 6 hours of conversational classes as a local adult education facility. I was warned during my TEFL course that these were a bad idea, as all teaching should have learning outcomes and a focus for each lesson. However, as I was being brought in as a guest lecturer, again I did not have the freedom to set my syllabus. Whilst I think having a native language teacher did give my adult students more confidence, looking back I realise that I never measured how my students were learning – with no learning outcomes other than ‘improve students’ pronunciation’, it was difficult to see if students were improving their language skills.

When I moved countries, I started teaching English on a one-to-one basis, and incorporated some of the lessons I myself had learned in my previous teaching jobs. I focused on improving student confidence and spoken skills, I brought in more real-life examples, I asked the students what they were interested in learning about (song lyrics were particularly popular) and sometimes I would flip the teaching, and ask them questions about their own language so that they could see how English grammar, for example, worked in comparison to their own.

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Since then, I have focused on teaching information literacy (I am a librarian) mainly to professionals in the workplace, and HE students. I am comfortable with not being an expert, but balancing that with trying to make my teaching more effective. My overall teaching goal is to get students comfortable with the skills I’m teaching, and appreciating that information literacy is not a be-all and end-all, but that it will further improve their own learning in their specialist topic (e.g. I taught cancer information nurses how to search databases, making their own research more topical and effective). This philosophy is one that I find most comfortable in my current role, and I try to ensure that students think of my sessions as an investment in their own learning – for example, by spending one hour learning about how to use Google Scholar effectively, they will get better results for their assignments in future, and waste less time on unsuitable websites.

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Students need to be prepared to learn – by which I mean they must understand that they have a responsibility for their own learning. They cannot expect the tutor to spoon-feed all the knowledge students need to pass their assignments. Students must be prepared for their lectures and tutorials. They must read around the subject. They should ask questions, of the lecturer and each other. They should identify which way they learn best and use that method if possible, but be prepared to understand that sometimes information will come to them in another way. The most important thing for students in HE, in our current climate, is to recognise when learning is not taking place, identify why (with assistance from support staff if necessary) and then ask for help. At the very least, students coming to HE must be warned that the approach to learning and teaching may be very different to what they are used to.

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The roles of teachers and students in higher education

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The roles of teachers and students in higher education

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In Higher Education (HE) teachers are experts in the field and want to pass their knowledge on, but this is often because they want students themselves to add to the existing knowledge base (as in the case of research universities, where students often continue studying past their first course). HE tutors are incredibly knowledgeable about their topic but must also become good teachers, in that they need not just the knowledge, but a way of passing that knowledge on. HE teaching is not just about a block of knowledge that has to be passed down but also to encourage practices and methods that enable students to learn what may not have formally been taught (e.g. case studies, new vocabulary, understanding how to link previous knowledge to newly-gained information).

Teachers in HE have to create an environment where students learn by discussion, problem-solving, working with others and taking responsibility for some of their own learning – through methods such as pre-reading, flipped learning – as well as the more traditional chalk-and-talk lecture means.

Teachers have to ensure that students know how to learn, which is a newer concept than one would assume – study skills seem to be lacking for some HE students, but teachers cannot brush this aside. It may not be the teacher who teaches the study skills to the students but they must be aware of available assistance and offer it to their students. This requires more work on the part of lecturers and tutors than previously, but without the ability to learn in this new way, students will struggle to take in the information presented.