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Full-Text Articles in Education
Academic Instruction Librarians’ Conceptions Of Teacher Agency And Affective Orientations Toward The Concept, Andrea Baer
Academic Instruction Librarians’ Conceptions Of Teacher Agency And Affective Orientations Toward The Concept, Andrea Baer
Libraries Scholarship
This article reports on findings of an online survey on academic instruction librarians’ conceptions and experiences of teacher agency in the context of their instruction work and, more specifically, on their affective orientations (positive, ambivalent, or negative emotions and feelings) toward teacher agency. Two key dimensions of participants’ conceptions of teacher agency are evident throughout this analysis: 1) views of teacher agency as an individual experience of autonomy (individual agency) and/or views of it as more relational and interactive (and thus potentially collective), and 2) beliefs about the feasibility of librarians’ teacher agency, given librarians’ roles and positions as educators. …
Meaningful Work When Work Won't Love You Back: Sociological Imagination And Reflective Teaching Practice (Reports From The Field), Andrea Baer
Libraries Scholarship
This essay explores the tension between pursuing meaningful work in instruction librarianship and the realities of working in a society in which many jobs provide little fulfillment or pleasure, or, as the journalist Sarah Jaffe puts it, “Work won’t love you back.” Drawing on a recent conference keynote by Anne Helen Petersen, C. Wright Mills’s conception of sociological imagination, and an ecological model of teacher agency, I propose that one way librarians can sustain their teaching practices and preserve their well-being is by actively investigating how social structures and relationships influence their teaching roles.
Exploring Librarians’ Teaching Roles Through Metaphor, Andrea Baer
Exploring Librarians’ Teaching Roles Through Metaphor, Andrea Baer
Libraries Scholarship
As librarians’ instructional roles continue to evolve, metaphor can be a powerful tool through which to reflect on and at times to reframe librarians’ evolving educational roles and pedagogical approaches, as they consider beliefs and assumptions about teaching and learning and about their unfolding work and identities. This article explores this potential by examining professional documents on librarians’ teaching, discussing empirical research on metaphor as a tool for teacher development, examining metaphors that librarians have sometimes used to describe their pedagogical work, and sharing the author’s experiences facilitating a librarian workshop on metaphor and librarians’ teaching roles.