STUDENT EMPLOYMENT AS PEDAGOGY: TOWARD A HOLISTIC LIBRARY PRACTICE

Jeremy McGinniss, Summit University of Pennsylvania @jmymcginniss

RILA 2016 Warwick, RI #RILA20165/26/16 CC BY-NC

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Where are we going?

Role of Critical Pedagogy

Student Employment & Learning

Four Areas of Application

Why Does It Matter?

“Many university departments could not

survive without students to provide assistance in

the daily operation offacilities, programs,

services and projects.” Scrogham & McGuire, Enhancing Student Learning through

College Employment

What is Critical

Pedagogy?

“Critical pedagogy…affords students the opportunity

to read, write and learn from a position of agency-to engage in

a culture of questions…imagining literacy

as a mode of intervention, a way of learning

about the word as a basis for intervening in the world….”

Henry A. Giroux, On Critical Pedagogy

Three Reasons

for Critical

Pedagogy

“…whole human beings in

search of meaning.”

Liston and Garrison, Teaching, Learning, and Loving

“…the experience of the learning self is invented in and through

its engagement with pedagogy’s force.”

Elizabeth Ellsworth, Places of Learning

Critical pedagogy provides a meaningful tradition

in which to develop and participate

with students in their search for meaning.

How do we deliberately

integrate experience

and reflection into the

student staff process?

“To learn meaningfully, student employees must be challenged by activities, tasks and projects

that are authentic to their position and involve a certain

amount of reflection.”

Brett Perozzi, Enhancing Student Learning through College

Employment

“…a transitional object becomes pedagogical when we

use it to discover and creatively work and play at our own limits

as participants in the world.”

Elizabeth Ellsworth, Places of Learning

Can library

employment serve as a

transitional object?

“Students need a general, critical education that

teaches them to learn, how to learn, to question,

to do research, to work alone and in groups,

and to act from reflective knowledge.”Ira Shor, Empowering Education

Four Areas of

Application

Recruitment

Training

Development

Reflection/Assessment

Recruitment

“Recruitment consists of advertising, identifying

employees for consideration,

and interviewing the prospective employees.”

Scrogham & McGuire, Enhancing Student Learning through College Employment

Training

Training “…as the education or

instruction that occurs during a

worker’s introductory or

transitional period.”

Scrogham & McGuire, Enhancing Student Learning through College Employment

Initiate Observant

Apprentice

Guided Practice Expert

peripheral participation- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - core membership

McMichael and Dimmitt LOEX 2016

Development

Training as ongoing process

Interacting in a community of practice

“…the focus ultimately should be on the well-being of the group of people working together, so that common interests and goals can emerge.”

Scrogham & McGuire, Enhancing Student Learning through College Employment

Reflection&

Assessment

Informal

Formal

Recognition & Reward

Learning Objectives

• To practice and apply critical thinking and problem solving.

• To understand and utilize library services and tools.

• To strive for patron satisfaction.• To value dependability and

reliability.• To practice effective

communication skills. • To realize and apply

administrative and organizational skills.

• To embrace a team dynamic and contribute to it.

Why Does It Matter?

“Supervising student staff is an amazing, exhausting, and exhilarating experience.”

Scrogham & McGuire, Enhancing Student Learning through College Employment

References

• Ariew, Susan. “How We Got Here: A Historical Look at the Academic Teaching Library and the Role of the Teaching Librarian.” Communications in Information Literacy 8.2 (2014): 208–224.

• Blum, Susan. “I Love Learning; I Hate School” : An Anthropology of College. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016.

• Day, Mark Tyler. “Transformational Discourse: Ideologies of Organizational Change in the Academic Library and Information Science Literature.” Library Trends 46.4 (1998): 635–667.

• Drabinski, Emily. “Becoming Librarians, Becoming Teachers: Kairos and Professional Identity.” Canadian Journal of Information and Library Science 40.1 (2016): 27–36. [paywalled]

• ---. “Information Literacy Summit.” Blog. Emily Drabinski. N.p., 3 May 2016. Web. 18 May 2016.

• Ellsworth, Elizabeth. Places of Learning: Media, Architecture, Pedagogy. New York: RoutledgeFalmer, 2005.

References, cont.

• Giroux, Henry A. On Critical Pedagogy. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2011. Print.

• Hicks, Alison. “Drinking on the Job: Integrating Workplace Information Literacy into the Curriculum.” LOEX Quarterly (2015): 9–15.

• Liston, Daniel Patrick, and James W Garrison. Teaching, Learning, and Loving: Reclaiming Passion in Educational Practice. New York: RoutledgeFalmer, 2004.

• Nicholson, Karen P. “The McDonaldization of Academic Libraries and the Values of Transformational Change.” College & Research Libraries 76.3 (2015): 328–338. crl.acrl.org.

• Perozzi, Brett. Enhancing Student Learning through College Employment. Indianapolis, IN: Dog Ear, 2009.

• Shor, Ira. Empowering Education: Critical Teaching for Social Change. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.

• Warner, John. “Just Visiting.” Blog. Inside Higher Ed. N.p., 31 Mar. 2016. Web. 8 Apr. 2016.