Becoming a Reflective Librarian and Teacher

Strategies for Mindful Academic Practice

Michelle Reale

• Publisher: ALA Editions
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9780838915295
• eBook ISBN:
  9780838915394
• Topic: Filología
• Subtopic: Biblioteconomía y ciencia de la información

1

Becoming Reflective

We do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience.

—JOHN DEWEY

There is no end to the debate on the nature, usefulness, ethics, and the ever-present standards and rigor of “measurable outcomes” that surrounds the discussion of reflection as both a subject and a practice. This book, I suppose, adds to the debate, though I don’t care to get caught up in the controversy. Reflection as a practice and a pedagogical tool is one that I believe in, and have seen the results of, as well.

I am not certain that I particularly sought to write about reflection, but rather, at the risk of sounding clichéd, I feel as though the subject chose me. I have been a reflective practitioner for as long as I can remember, and it is something that I have tried to share over the years with many friends and colleagues at the risk of sounding too “New Age” or “precious.” But the idea of reflection is not “new” in the strict sense of the word.

Many professionals, at first blush, may misunderstand reflection as a tool, either because in our over-mechanized and rote practices we rely heavily on theories as prescriptions to follow, negating our own experiences, or because we simply do not think that our own reflections hold any value for our overall learning and teaching experience. I reject these notions outright. And while I have immersed myself for a long time in a plethora of books and articles on every aspect of reflection, I have learned to be an insightful reflective practitioner by just practicing, by doing reflection. I did not wait for permission, I did not wait for a proclamation by whoever in academia deems a practice wholesome and worthwhile, and I did not wait until I was told to do it. I certainly did not believe the naysayers who persist in viewing the act of deep reflection on our professional practice as, at best, self-indulgent navel-gazing and, at worst, a process that metrics or other validations cannot legitimize as a practice.

WHAT IS REFLECTION?

Reflection is a natural process that most people engage in on a regular basis. At its very base it is thinking, plain and simple. In the course of our everyday lives we reflect on any number of things, such as the impatient response we may have given to a student, the cold pizza we had for breakfast that is not sitting well in our stomachs, whether to meet friends for dinner when it might be best to stay in and get some work done, and so on. The list goes on and on. We think about the past and worry about the future—a lot. This is a cognitive process that helps us to make sense of the world and our place in it. So if thinking is something that everyone does, without being wholly conscious of it, then how is reflection different? Reflection is deliberate and intentional. It is a process that we consciously undertake, in the professional sense, in order to take stock of our practice by interpreting, analyzing, and questioning the way we work. It is the first step in the process of looking at ourselves critically, questioning all of the assumptions that we have been operating on, and refashioning, reformulating, and reinventing the way we do things.

Many of us can think of instances in our lives when we were jolted from our reverie by someone who confronted us with advice, constructive or otherwise, on how to do something better. Do you remember the shock and indignation you might have felt because all along you’d been going through the paces of your practice, no one ever seemed to complain, and whatever you were doing seemed to be working? It can be a startling experience that, before it can galvanize us, usually seriously undermines our confidence first. When we initiate reflection of our own volition, we take the first step to act in concert with ourselves. We begin in the place where we are. What propels us into what should, ideally, be a daily practice is the deep desire to unite our potential with the increasing imperative to enact our best selves. Reflection requires honesty, a letting down of defenses, and a willingness to remain open to whatever the practice of reflection may bring to light. I would venture to say that if reflection does not make you squirm, you might not be doing it right.

The discomfort that is often felt upon embarking on the practice of reflection is very much rooted in our own selective thinking: what we allow ourselves to see and believe about our practice, to the exclusion of other aspects that are lacking. Many of us may delude ourselves out of habit, mental fatigue, or lack of time—keeping us in patterns that no longer work, have never worked, and may have been detrimental both to ourselves and to our students all along. Argyris called this the “reflexive loop,” which is a roughly circular process that is based on how we both choose our focus while justifying this focus, all the while avoiding others.1 We become self-selective in what and how we focus on some things over others. But one interesting aspect of reflective practice is the process itself, so that, at least in the short term, the goal is not for the rock-solid solution of a particular problem or way of being, but the slow and circumspect examination of a problem or a belief system. Reflection is a highly conceptualized practice, something many librarians may feel uncomfortable with, since it appears to inhabit a realm of practice that does not seem very “down to earth.” But without it, the way in which we teach, do reference, and collaborate with colleagues suffers from remaining unexamined.

MY EXPERIENCE

When I became a librarian, I considered my colleagues to be some of my best teachers. While in library school, I felt very intuitively that most of what I could reasonably expect to learn was, paradoxically, not in the classroom, but instead on the job. I engaged in a fair amount of observation. I would make a list of where and when my colleagues were teaching information literacy sessions and I would go and make copious notes. On the one hand, it helped me immeasurably to witness how a librarian enacts practice in the classroom and how information literacy material is handled. On the other hand, I found it quite intimidating. I despaired of ever having the lighthearted humor of one colleague who seemed to “liven up” relatively dry material, or the colleague who could dig into a database and make it seem sexy. I found, not surprisingly, that each librarian had his or her own style and points of interest that they focused on to the exclusion of others. I thought that a composite of all of them would have made the perfect professor librarian.

The first session I ever taught was rough. I was nervous and the students seemed to sense this. I found myself nearly mimicking the lessons I’d seen others do. I began to feel as though my voice was not even really my voice. I persisted in the imitation, because I had yet to find my “sea legs” in the classroom. I was (and still am) passionate about librarianship and information literacy, but it took me some time to express myself in the classroom. Still, I would teach a variety of information sessions to classes of students who seemed to look right through me. I reasoned to myself that it couldn’t be me—not at all. I had an entire list of reasons why what I was doing was precisely what students needed—in retrospect, I realize that I put up those defenses in order to get by, otherwise I might have questioned myself to a point where I would have become entirely immobilized by self-doubt and fear.

Predictably, before a year was up, I became very dissatisfied with what I perceived as very bleak results from the sessions I was teaching. I had built up enough confidence to take my hands off of my eyes and take a good, hard look at my sessions. While I was still engaged in reflection mostly related to other aspects of my new career, I’d not been reflecting on my sessions. When I began, I will admit to having a bit of a crisis. I began to think that at its very base, what I had been trying to do was meaningless—that traditionally students disliked any kind of library instruction and to be honest, most professors did not seem too keen on it either. I often felt like a placeholder—doing sessions for professors who would be out for conferences (resulting in very poor attendance of students) or new professors feeling as though whatever information I could give them was important, though they honestly could not articulate why.

In my work journal, what began as whining and complaining turned into a very constructive look at myself. Ouch! It was not easy. I began to slowly question everything about my practice in the classroom, which, up until then, contained precious little of the real me. I’d been teaching what other librarians were teaching, which suited their liaison departments, but not mine. Also, like so many librarians before me, I realized that I felt I was short-changing students by agreeing to teach just one hour-long session—in fact, often I was limited to a 45-minute session—which in and of itself is not bad, except that it was the only time in the semester when I would be seeing that particular class. I also found that I tried to focus on too many things at once, assuming that a one-shot session with any given class would have to contain a lot in order to be helpful. In fact, it was counterproductive to student learning. Writing about a particular session shortly after it was over was revealing, to say the least:

I am feeling a disturbing lack of agency and I am not even sure if I am entitled to feel that way. Feeling very uncomfortable. Embarrassed, even. I felt as though I was a waste of time today. The professor, an adjunct, had me come to her class—actually insisted upon it, despite my protestations that I felt uncomfortable doing so because there was not yet an assignment attached to the session. She told me to just come in and show them “Databases and stuff,” which, against my better judgment, I did. In the lab the students talked to each other, trolled Facebook, looked bored and zoned out while I stuttered and sputtered a bit, trying to go through the library web page and other info. I had nothing to teach to, though. It was a “lesson” with no discernible reason for it, except that the adjunct thought doing so would be helpful. Or not. I’m really not even sure. True, down the line students will have assignments, but I don’t think I will be asked back, because she clearly does not understand the potential of such a session. If I am asked to demonstrate my expertise to a class of students, I would think that I could have enough agency to say, “No, that won’t work. Let’s wait until you give them their first assignment.” I mean, I am not even sure that I can say that at this point. That one class just isn’t going to cut it. Somehow, I feel as though the students could sense that. (Michelle Reale, personal reflective journal, September 23, 2009)

I have a vivid memory of how I felt after that particular class, which was a freshman English composition class. I was feeling a lot of things that I would go on to explore in great depth. I had to face things about myself, in particular the lack of agency I felt. Feeling this lack of agency was, in retrospect, less about me and more about how it affected the students in the class whom I would not be able to “reach” in the way that I felt then (and still feel now) they needed me to. I felt disappointed in myself, particularly the way in which I both consciously and subconsciously justified my practice. In my mind it “worked” simply because I convinced myself that it did. I had a lot of fear of looking too closely, a fear of what that look would reveal. In this way, I understood that this type of reflection takes a true commitment in time. It can be, in many ways, time-consuming, and time is something most librarians seem to have less and less of. But this type of reflection is so essential that I almost cannot conceive of functioning as a professional without its many benefits.

In the above journal excerpt, I mention two aspects of my teaching practice that I would focus greatly on in the future to the extent that they would change my practice in very distinct and fundamental ways: my personal agency as a professional who knows how to best deliver lessons in her own field, and my conclusion about the severe limits of one-shot instruction sessions. I was clearly entrenched in what Brookfield called the “stance and dance.”2 In the stance, librarians as teachers have a sort of beginner’s mind that is open to a spirit of inquiry—a constant and persistent questioning, in which one realizes that this questioning is perpetual, that one is always, in one way or another, an “apprentice.” This does not mean to imply that we are forever “amateurs” in our professions, that we will never truly progress—but rather that we will experience the depth and breadth of our immense capabilities because our practice, like ourselves, will be in constant evolution, improving all the time. The “dance” is the proverbial “going out on a limb.” The dance entails risk, taking chances, and being willing to change things, sometimes in a radical way. When I wrote in my journal that I felt as though I had no agency as a professional, it was not enough to simply state the fact and then move on. Once you know, once you understand, the old way no longer works. I had to move forward, to take the chance of saying, the next time I was asked to do a one-shot instruction session, “Can we talk about this? In my experience, one session does not seem to work …” Taking this kind of action helps us to act in concert with the new information that is revealed to us, and act on what we believe to be a better and more enlightened practice. This entails, among other things, examining our core beliefs. Is this an intimidating process? To be sure, it is. But recognizing that the old way no longer works is half the battle.

THREE PROCESSES OF REFLECTIVE PRACTICE

Larrivee describes the three practices that she deems essential for reflective practice.3 While reflection is a highly individualized and personal process in addition to being cyclical rather than linear, these three practices form a basis for solid and sound practice: making the time for reflection, becoming a perpetual problem-solver, and questioning the status quo.

As with anything we want to become good at, we must give reflection time, and we must practice. Making and committing time to reflective practice is essential. If it is true that we make the path by walking, then living the life of a reflective practitioner cannot be divorced from the practice itself. Being able to reflect in a quiet place, alone and with a notebook, is invaluable and certainly the right approach. Solitude is the ideal climate for reflecting on our practice. In the space that we provide for ourselves, we are best able to understand how our practice affects our students in the classroom. Because our work is inextricably tied to the impact we have on minds in formation, reflection is not a luxury. Keeping a reflective journal is a great way to be able to write down our experiences in the classroom. The very act of moving pen across paper (I am biased in favor of the use of a paper journal) is meditative in and of itself. One line begets another until we are in a state of mind where we are ready to not only record details of our teaching and our students, but we become open to truly reflecting on these experiences. Reflection is not the mere recording of details by themselves, and it is not descriptive, although it often starts that way. Reflecting in the journal requires not only fresh eyes but seeing through the eyes of others. For instance, how might a practice that you feel particularly fond of be affecting students in your classes? What kind of feedback have you gotten? What have you dismissed? What might your assessment of your sessions reveal? Are you honoring your instincts or working against them? The process of writing in the journal is a recursive process in that you may (and perhaps should) go back and forth between your entries as you begin to understand and gain new meaning through your experiences.

One of the reasons the journal becomes so important to our practice is that while we are teachi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Reflection as Pedagogy
• 1. Becoming Reflective
• 2. Teach What You Know
• 3. Reflective Practice as Intentional Practice
• 4. The Way to Do Is to Begin
• 5. The Cycle of Reflection
• 6. Using the Journal in Reflection
• 7. Reflection That Accentuates the Positive
• 8. Reflective Practice with Colleagues
• 9. Reflection in the Classroom
• 10. Professional Autobiographical Reflection
• Index