11B: Learning by Design in Librarian Instruction

This week, while reading through the examples on how not to teach, I could not help but feel that this was describing my entire primary and secondary school public education. And overwhelmingly, that education has seemed to not serve me well, or as effectively as it was supposed to. The reading directly reminded me of my Spanish classes in high school where we were assigned all of these trivial tasks that were supposed to help us memorize vocabulary and remember Spanish grammar rules. Upon starting my college language requirement, this ability to recall that information served me well at first, but I hit a wall when I realized that a lot of my classmates were ahead of me in terms of actually speaking the language! I had not practiced the application of my knowledge, therefore, I had to spend a lot of time catching up to my classmates, which took away time from my other educational pursuits when I started undergrad. This experience is why the following quotation from Put Understanding First resonated with me: “Schools too often teach and test mathematics, writing, and world language skills in isolation rather than in the context of authentic demands requiring thoughtful application.” [1] There were obvious attempts in my secondary school education to cover and have me learn the information I needed to complete my graduation requirements, but there seemed to be no thought put into how that knowledge might transfer beyond the paradigm they have put in place.

The questions that come to mind after remembering this experience with my Spanish class all come back to a central tenet of Learning by Design: yes, we have to follow mandates to provide an education, but why were those mandates created in the first place? What skills or knowledge from these mandates can be applied to the world beyond the classroom? These questions are also central to instruction in the library, as we have to keep in mind that our patrons are not simply empty canvasses to throw information literacy on (a.k.a. the To Kill a Mockingbird example in Understanding by Design that described this approach as “throw some content and activities against the wall and hope some of it sticks”). [2] As librarians, we want our patrons to apply the knowledge we teach to situations that occur in the library and beyond. This means articulating and designing an instruction method that has a clear intention of producing results. As Wiggins and McTighe state in Understanding by Design:

“All the methods and materials we use are shaped by a clear conception of the vision of desired results. That means we must be able to state with clarity what the student should understand and be able to do as a result of any plan and irrespective of any constraints we face.”  [3]

Much like an educator in a high school, a librarian also holds the responsibility to ensure that a user comes to an understanding about a given topic and be able to apply that knowledge for future purposes.

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[1] Wiggins, Grant P. and Jay McTighe. 2008. “Put Understanding First.” Educational Leadership. May 2008, p. 37.

[2] Wiggins, Grant P. and Jay McTighe. Understanding by Design. (Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2005), p. 15.

[3] Wiggins and McTighe, Understanding by Design, p. 14.

11A: The Post-Truth Library

I was intrigued by Alyssa bringing up the concept of a “post-truth” society as it relates to libraries in our last class. Being assigned as Oxford Dictionary’s word of the year, post-truth refers to “circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief,” [1] particularly in the context of the current political climate in the United States and the United Kingdom. I struggled at first to articulate my thoughts on what a post-truth society means for a library, especially public libraries, since I certainly believe that libraries are impacted by this current sociopolitical state of being. In fact, the public library, as a hub of collective knowledge, is currently adapting to post-truth politics and worldviews as we speak.

I think prominent Brexiter and wannabe Lannister [2] UK politician Michael Gove best captured the sentiment of post-truth politics and the Leave campaign in general, when he stated in an interview that “the British people have had enough of experts.” [3] Specifically referring to economists and policy analysts that advocate for free trade and neoliberalism, the anti-expert ethos also applies to the societal elites that support and bankroll such policies. In an essay for his publication The Intercept, Glenn Greenwald argues that many devastating choices made by world leaders and elites have caused this populist, post-truth backlash, citing journalist Chris Hayes in the process:

These are not random, isolated mistakes. They are the byproduct of fundamental cultural pathologies within Western elite circles — a deep rot. Why should institutions that have repeatedly authored such travesties, and spread such misery, continue to command respect and credibility? They shouldn’t, and they’re not. As Chris Hayes warned in his 2012 book Twilight of the Elites, “Given both the scope and depth of this distrust [in elite institutions], it’s clear that we’re in the midst of something far grander and more perilous than just a crisis of government or a crisis of capitalism. We are in the midst of a broad and devastating crisis of authority.” [4]

This modern crisis of authority extends beyond circles of leadership towards all authoritative knowledge and forms of knowing that require expertise. This has a disproportionate impact on organizations like the ALA, which just recently outlined a policy initiative for the new presidential administration and session of Congress that highlighted the role and value of librarians as the “expert of the library.” [5] How can librarians be expected to leverage this expertise in an age where expertise is invalidated by personal and emotional knowledges?

I personally believe that libraries are already shifting to accommodate this post-truth era, which helps explain the rise in popularity of DIY programming and makerspaces in the library. Rather than relying on the expertise of a reference librarian to direct them to sacrosanct knowledge, users are making themselves the experts and creating their own knowledge with the tools provided in makerspaces and their related counterparts. But what of the expertise of the maker who is teaching these skills of self-creation? Because of the somewhat vocational and informal nature of the maker’s work, it can be presumed that a maker would be seen as more authoritative than the expert librarian with an “elite” master’s degree. Imagining the post-truth library as a place where knowledge is created and not sought out opens the possibility for librarians to consider new ways to engage their patrons with a sense of authenticity and meaning, all the while avoiding the cold, elitist stereotypes that have plagued the profession since its inception.

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[1] Oxford Dictionary. Oxford University Press, 2016.“Word of the year 2016 is... | Oxford Dictionaries.” https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/word-of-the-year/word-of-the-year-2016.

[2] Taylor, Adam. “Brits Turn to ‘Game of Thrones’ to Try to Make Sense of Their Politics.” Washington Post (Washington Post), July 1, 2016. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/07/01/in-a-britain-divided-by-brexit-fatalistic-game-of-thrones-references-are-everywhere/.

[3] “Gove: Britons ‘have had enough of experts.’” YouTube. June 21, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGgiGtJk7MA&t=205s.

[4] Greenwald, Glenn. “Brexit Is Only the Latest Proof of the Insularity and Failure of Western Establishment Institutions.” The Intercept. June 25, 2016. https://theintercept.com/2016/06/25/brexit-is-only-the-latest-proof-of-the-insularity-and-failure-of-western-establishment-institutions/.

[5] American Library Association. "45-115 ALA Federal Initiative." Advocacy, Legislation & Issues. October 04, 2016.  http://www.ala.org/advocacy/advleg/federallegislation/45-115-ala-federal-initiative