How do academic librarians' identity and experiences shape their teaching practices? - Houtman

How would you answer this interview question?
(Don’t worry, you won’t have to share your answer)
How does you personal identity, who you are as a
person, affect how you approach or think about your
teaching? [follow-up if necessary:] How do you bring
yourself into your teaching?
If I did ask you to share, what would you feel
comfortable talking about? What would you keep to
yourself?

Eveline Houtman
Library Instruction Coordinator
User Services, Robarts Library
April 26, 2019
How do academic librarians’
identity and experiences shape their
teaching practices ?
A qualitative study
How do academic librarians’
identities and experiences shape
their teaching practices ?
A qualitative study

What shapes academic librarians’ teaching practices?
From the conference abstract:
Within librarianship, there is a proliferation of courses,
workshops, webinars, conferences, local professional
development initiatives, and literature aimed at teaching
librarians how to teach - or teach better. This begs the
question: what, out of all of this, actually matters for
librarians' learning? What actually shapes their teaching
practices?

What shapes academic librarians’ teaching practices?
Contexts
Culture
e.g. teaching culture;
professional culture
Structure
e.g. faculty structures;
curriculum; one-shots
Self
Identities (personal and
professional), personality,
attitudes, beliefs, what
people care about and
value, experiences

“The self that teaches”
• The question we most commonly ask is the “what” question—
what subjects shall we teach?
• When the conversation goes a bit deeper, we ask the “how”
question—what methods and techniques are required to
teach well?
• Occasionally, when it goes deeper still, we ask the “why”
question—for what purpose and to what ends do we teach?
• But seldom, if ever, do we ask the “who” question—who is
the self that teaches? How does the quality of my selfhood
form—or deform—the way I relate to my students, my
subject, my colleagues, my world?
Parker Palmer (2008), The
courage to teach: Exploring
the inner landscape of a
teacher’s life, p. 4.

Does the “who” question matter?
More Parker Palmer:
We teach who we are. (p. 1)
Technique is what teachers use until the real teacher arrives. (p. 6)
No matter how technical my subject may be, the things I teach are the
things I care about – and what I care about helps define my selfhood. (p.
17)

Does the “who” question matter?
More Parker Palmer:
We teach who we are. (p. 1)
Technique is what teachers use until the real teacher arrives. (p. 6)
No matter how technical my subject may be, the things I teach are the
things I care about – and what I care about helps define my selfhood. (p.
17)
If identity and integrity are more fundamental to good teaching than
technique – and if we want to grow as teachers – we must do something
alien to academic culture: we must talk to each other about our inner
lives – risky stuff in a profession that fears the personal and seeks safety
in the technical, the distant, the abstract. (p. 12)

What about in the library instruction context?
For me, I think [teaching] is really entwined with who you
are. I mean, I know that you can teach without it being a
part of your identity, but I think to be an effective teacher it
has to have some kind of connection. I believe that you
have to have a reason that you want to teach. And I think if
you don’t care about students’ learning, then you’re not
going to be a very effective teacher….
It’s harder for me to think of ways that I don’t [bring myself
into the teaching].
Rachel, experienced librarian, Interview 1
(btw Parker Palmer is cited in the Association of College
& Research Libraries’ (2017), Roles and strengths of
teaching librarians.)

Qualitative research towards a PhD in education
Recruitment:
“I’m looking to recruit academic teaching librarians from a
variety of geographic locations and institution types from the
United States and Canada. Please consider participating in my
research if:
• you feel instruction (in-person, online, blended) is an
important part of your work;
• you take a reflective approach to your teaching;
• you like talking about your teaching practice!”
12 participants

Two interviews
• Interview 1 – focused on the participants’ experiences and
contexts
– How does you personal identity, who you are as a person, affect how
you approach or think about your teaching? How do you bring yourself
into your teaching?
• Interview 2 – focused on the participants’ teaching.
– They were asked to come prepared to talk about a specific class they
had taught.
– They were also asked to take and talk about the Teaching Perspectives
Inventory (http://www.teachingperspectives.com/tpi/) which posits
five perspectives: transmission; apprenticeship; developmental;
nurturing; social reform.

As a group, very engaged with teaching
When people ask what I do, I say I mostly teach. So
yeah, that is a very important part of my job. Where I
belong as far as in a position, it’s focused mostly on
teaching.
“[Teaching] is everything. It’s the bedrock of what I
do.”
Cameron, mid-career librarian, Interview 1

Teaching contributed to their professional identity
I do [identify as a teacher]. I think both equally as a librarian and
a teacher.
I was just interviewed by the local news for [something] that we
did, and they called me a teaching librarian and I was delighted.
Stephanie, new librarian, Interview 1
So [my mentor and I] have actually been talking about whether
we are teachers or whether we are librarians.
Lauren, new librarian, Interview 2
I’m not good at marketing myself, so I don’t go, “hey, see, I published [several
things].” But I am respected. I feel like I have a different relationship with faculty because of my
publications and because I have taught as an adjunct than I did before I did that stuff. Because that stuff makes me a
little bit more like them. And so I noticed my conversations about teaching are very different than before.
Meg, experienced librarian, Interview 1

Professional identity
My professional identity is as an educator. [I’m in] an entry-level job that I'll
be in my whole career. I don't have to supervise anybody, and that's
important to me. But we want people who see themselves as educators. If I
wasn't, I don't know what else I would be.
Meg also hoped to go up for full professor soon.
All of my research and scholarship has to do with pedagogy and being a better
teacher…. I’m not good at marketing myself, so I don’t go, “Hey, see,
I published.” But I am respected. I feel like I have a different relationship with
faculty because of my publications and because I have taught as an adjunct
than I did before I did that stuff. Because that stuff makes me a little bit more
like them. And so I noticed my conversations about teaching are very different
than before.

Answering the interview question
How does you personal identity, who you are as a
person, affect how you approach or think about your
teaching? [follow-up if necessary:] How do you bring
yourself into your teaching?

Personality
If you’re standing in front of a class, or even working with
someone one-on-one, or informally at a reference desk, if
you don’t have a personality, they don’t… There’s maybe a
lack of respect or feeling like you’re an automaton. We’re in a
very human profession, teaching, librarianship, being an
educator, it’s all about humanism. I will make jokes about
“oh, I’m wearing a cardigan and comfortable shoes,” you
know, really bad librarian jokes, but I think that showing a
sense of humour really helps. [Anecdote about connecting
with a disengaged student.] And I think that was from being
myself. A performative self, but still myself.
Kate, mid-career librarian, Interview 1

When I first started teaching, I was definitely trying to
be [my mentor]. She has a very… peppy is probably not
the right word, but she has this presence. She’s a very
tiny person, but she has a huge presence when she goes
into the classroom. So the first few times, I realized that
I was trying to mimic that, and it felt very unnatural. It
didn’t resonate with the students…. I realized I did not
have to be somebody I really wasn’t.

I think how you engage with the class, your personality really
has something to do with that. [In] Myers-Briggs I score fairly
high on the extroversion scale. I enjoy relating to people.
We’ve done the Strengths Finder thing too, part of that is
having people like me. I’m also a Leo. And so I want to be a
good teacher because I want people to like me and take my
class…. Maybe it’s because I’m loud, I get my classes that way
too. Vicki, experienced librarian, Interview 1
My teaching identity comes out of my desire to coach
people, so my teaching identity is Coach [Cameron]. It’s a
part of me. Cameron, mid-career librarian, Interview 1
I’m not a charismatic teacher; I’m not and never will be. I’m a
reflective educator; I’m not a performer.

Personality in the LIS literature
“Librarians are more apprehensive, cautious, flexible,
focused, imaginative, open-minded, respectful, self-reliant,
serious, tender-minded, and trusting as well as higher on
general reasoning skills than those in the norm group.”
Williamson & Lounsbury (2016), p. 124.
Professional personas
… "defined as the intersection of an individual's personality,
competencies, and professional interests."
Pressley, Dale, & Kellam (2014). At the corner of personality and competencies:
Exploring professional personas for librarians, in The librarian stereotype:
Deconstructing perceptions and presentations of information work p. 213.

Identity is … complicated
• Identity is both personal and social
• Identity is fluid
• We all have a multiplicity of selves/multiple identities
• We develop our sense of self within social contexts at all
levels
Vignoles, Schwartz, & Luyckx (2011).

Certain aspects of one’s identity will be more or less
expressible in a situation…. In your team, how
expressible is your passion for origami, your gender,
your religion, or your experience as a parent? And
how personally important or practically useful is it that
each of these be expressible? In a given context, how
much of one’s full range of experience is expressible?
And when does it matter?
E. Wenger-Trayner & B. Wenger-Trayner (2015), p. 25.

Multiple identities
So, you know, I embrace my goofiness, I embrace my quirkiness. Trying
not to pretend to be cool by [the students’] standards. Like, I’m a nerd.
On Halloween, I am going to be in costume. So, you know, goofy
humour, that it’s okay if they don’t get. Embracing that I am a nerd.
I think primarily of myself as a feminist. So that really informs all of the
instruction that I do. And I think that part of how that plays out is that
I’ve become much more interested in thinking about how my students
will live after college than caring so much about whether they know
how to use a database.
Lauren, Interview 2

Multiple identities
So, you know, I embrace my goofiness, I embrace my quirkiness. Trying
not to pretend to be cool by [the students’] standards. Like, I’m a nerd.
On Halloween, I am going to be in costume. So, you know, goofy
humour, that it’s okay if they don’t get. Embracing that I am a nerd.
I think primarily of myself as a feminist. So that really informs all of the
instruction that I do. And I think that part of how that plays out is that
I’ve become much more interested in thinking about how my students
will live after college than caring so much about whether they know
how to use a database.

Multiple identities
[in a non-library credit course] Because who we are is so tied into how
we communicate, I simply sent a message to my students at the
beginning of class saying, “This is who I am. This is part of why I
communicate the way I do” and encouraging them to reveal as much
as they felt comfortable doing. “I’m a first-generation American. I’m a
practicing Catholic. I’m a cis person, but I have a daughter who
identifies as bisexual.” These kinds of things. There’s identity and then
there’s performance and you know that teaching involves a great deal
of performance. So we can go with the same identity into different
contexts and perform differently. I think that’s what I do. I see my
identity relatively stable, but I perform it differently in different
contexts.
Barbara, experienced librarian, Interview 1

What is (not) expressed
So I’d say my identity definitely affects my instruction. My identity and also my
background in more social justice work.
Andrea, mid-career librarian, Interview 1
I don’t think I totally answered that identity question. I am a mixed race Black woman
who grew up in an area that was primarily white and Mexican. And I also have a
disabled [family member], and I’m a woman. So I think those things really shaped who
I am. I definitely grew up feeling like an outsider. And before I became a librarian I
worked in non-profits, and did training around identity, social justice, community
conditions, and how race and class impact schools and communities. That was a big
part of developing my professionalism.
It informs why I’m a librarian. I guess I see my identity as very much connected to my
sense of social justice. I became a librarian because I want to impact students’
educational experience.

I’m a progressive Christian. I teach these semester-long
[fantasy literature] classes as a way to promote social
justice and help students I might connect with, which are
going to be the oddballs. You know, to be a positive
influence in their life. And all of that’s being an empathetic
librarian, empathetic educator. I come to it as a progressive
Christian, but it’s also just being a good educator…. I don’t
usually talk about [being Christian] all that much. I don’t
want to make other people uncomfortable.

I primarily identify as a queer person. I’m a gender non-conforming
person. I would not say that at work in front of anyone really, because
no one would understand.
To me, queerness is about actively resisting heteronormativity, actively
resisting the idea that I have to conform and assimilate to gender
norms. My students see me in the classroom, and I give – not like I
give them hope, but a lot of them, it’s very meaningful to them. I’m
here, I’m a queer adult, and I have a life. It’s very powerful modeling.
So, I can grow up and be queer. And it’s okay.
Cameron, mid-career librarian, Interview 2

Experiences that shape us
as a teacher

I love the [ACRL] Immersions because you go away from them
really loving your job.
Barbara, experienced librarian, Interview 1
[Talking about Immersion] One of the big things I took away was
people’s frustrations. Because in many ways, I have a very
supportive [environment]. So to hear perspectives from other
people who don’t have access to the same resources or same type
of support, it made me realize that they’re some of the things I had
taken for granted [that] I think about more intentionally now.
[Talking about conferences] We just want a place to be around
people who appreciate and do the work that you do.

Drawing on our student experiences and identity
“The apprenticeship of observation” (Lortie, 1975) – the years we all
spent as students, absorbing ideas of what it means to be teacher –
and what it means to be a student
I think librarians in an academic context love school so much
they work at one. You love learning, you love being in a culture
and a place that likes learning. People who have succeeded in
an academic context are totally self-selected to want to
reinforce the construction of that thing. Yeah, we bring so much
of our own stuff.
Tim, new librarian, Interview 1

[From reading feminist works] I realized that part of my comfort was the fact
that I’m basically built to work in higher education, or they are built for me.
That made me aware of my privilege in higher education – I was intellectually
aware but not emotionally ready to confront.
I think my identity as a student is probably also important because I think that
my view of myself as a student changed dramatically between undergraduate
and graduate school, and I think that’s, in part, why now I feel the need to be
so compassionate to undergraduate students. When I was an undergrad
myself, I would have felt like everybody was an idiot, people deserve to be
called out in class. But when I went to grad school and that type of thing did
happen, I realized how that is not conducive to learning. Going through that
experience as a learner has changed how, now, I want to be as a teacher. I feel
like, sort of, shame about how I used to think about my peers, and that’s
carried over into how I try to treat my students now.
Lauren, Interview 2

Implications for practice?
If the “self that teaches” matters, how do we/can we express
and develop that self?
Parker Palmer: “How can the teacher’s selfhood become a
legitimate topic in education and in our public dialogues on
educational reform?” (p. 2)

Our contexts
The one-shot
Professional culture

We do not learn from experience. We learn
from reflecting on experience.
John Dewey (1933), p. 78.
Reflection on the “self that teaches”
Online handout: http://tinyurl.com/y233vqnp

References
Association of College & Research Libraries. (2017). Roles and strengths of teaching librarians. Retrieved from
http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/teachinglibrarians
Dewey, J. (1933). How we think (new ed). Boston, MA: Heath.
Lortie, D. C. (1975). Schoolteacher: A sociological study. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Palmer, P. (2008). The courage to teach: Exploring the inner landscape of a teacher’s life (10th anniv. ed.). San Francisco,
CA: Jossey-Bass.
Pressley, L., Dale, J., & Kellam, L. (2014). At the corner of personality and competencies: Exploring professional personas
for librarians. In N. Pagowsky & M. Rigby (Eds.), The librarian stereotype: Deconstructing perceptions and presentations
of information work (pp. 213–228). Chicago, IL: Association of College & Research Libraries.
Vignoles, V. L., Schwartz, S. J., & Luyckx, K. (2011). Introduction: Toward an integrative view of identity. In S. J. Schwartz,
K. Luyckx, & V. L. Vignoles (Eds.), Handbook of identity theory and research (pp. 1–27). New York, NY: Springer.
http://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-7988-9
Wenger-Trayner, E., & Wenger-Trayner, B. (2015). Learning in a landscape of practice: A framework. In E. Wenger-
Trayner, M. Fenton-O’Creevy, S. Hutchinson, C. Kubiak, & B. Wenger-Trayner (Eds.), Learning in landscapes of practice:
Boundaries, identity, and knowledgeability in practice-based learning. London, UK: Routledge.
Williamson, J. M., & Lounsbury, J. W. (2016). Distinctive 16 PF personality traits of librarians. Journal of Library
Administration, 56(2), 124–143. http://doi.org/10.1080/01930826.2015.1105045

Eveline Houtman
eveline.houtman@utoronto.ca
Twitter: @EvelineLH
Questions?

Eveline Houtman
Library Instruction Coordinator
Robarts Library, University of
Toronto
Email:
eveline.houtman@utoronto.ca
Telephone: 1 416 457-8969
Twitter: @EvelineLH

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