Really nice article by UCR featuring Dani and Learner-Centered Pedagogy!
An excerpt:
“Most librarians who come out as credentialed MLSs don’t have a background in teaching, but when they come onto their job, a huge amount of their work is in teaching,” Cook explained. “We hope this book will help librarians who don’t necessarily have a background in education to put their students at the center of their work.”
Dani and I are excited to announce that we’ll be partnering with ALA for a six week E-Course based on our Learner-Centered Pedagogy book, taught by … us!
The course, which is asynchronous, begins on Nov. 13, 2017. Students who register for the course will receive an electronic copy of Learner-Centered Pedagogy, and upon completion of the course will get a certificate of completion for professional development/continuing education purposes through ALA.
Here is a basic course outline:
Learning Outcomes:
At the end of this course, you will be able to
- Articulate an individually developed learner-centered teaching philosophy
- Plan and deliver a learner-centered activity for an information literacy-related outcome
- Incorporate evidence-based practices related to autonomy, empathy, relationship rapport, and learners’ intrinsic motivation into your own reference and instructional contexts
eCourse Outline
Week 1: Introduction to Learner-Centered Pedagogy
- How is learner-centered pedagogy defined and what are its theoretical and empirical bases?
- How do we know when learning has occurred?
- How can teacher-librarians (re)define information literacy in a learner-centered environment?
Week 2: Facilitating Curiosity
- How can library instructors tap into learners’ intrinsic motivation and desire for authentic self-expression to make information literacy really matter to learners?
- Why do autonomy-supportive rather than controlling learning environments so successfully motivate learning?
- What are some evidence-based practices librarians can employ to support learners’ sense of autonomy and authenticity in the information literacy context?
Week 3: The Cognitive Science of Learning
- What are some of the cognitive challenges that students face when learning information literacy skills?
- How can an understanding of the cognitive science of learning improve librarians instructional design practices in and out of the classroom?
- What are some evidence-based practical strategies librarians can take from the cognitive science of learning to better organize their instruction to help make information literacy learning stick?
Week 4: Relationships: The Heart of Learner-Centered Pedagogy
- Why do students seem to learn best with instructors that they feel connected to?
- How have librarians historically approached the importance of the librarian-student relationship for facilitating information literacy learning?
- What are some evidence-based practices librarians can use to establish genuine connections and relationship rapport with learners in the information literacy context?
Week 5: Mindsets toward Learning
- How does students’ attitudes toward the role intelligence plays in learning impact their motivation to learn?
- How can we facilitate a process-oriented approach to research?
- What best practices can librarians adopt from the mindset literature to help students who are experiencing roadblocks in their research?
Week 6: The Learner-Centered Technologist
- What is technology and what role does it play in learner-centered information literacy instruction?
- What practical test can librarians use to assess whether the use of a particular technology is learner-centered?
- What evidence based strategies for using technology are recommended by the learner-centered pedagogy literature?
There’s a good bit more info available at the ALA site about registration, etc., but please feel free to get in touch personally with either Dani or myself if you have any questions about the content, etc.
We look forward to the possibility of working with you!
Filed under Education, Library Instruction, Uncategorized
We wanted to share something we’re quite excited by, that our book Learner-Centered Pedagogy was reviewed and recommended by Karen Muller in her “Librarian’s Library” column for American Libraries Magazine.
We’re particularly pleased that the review considers the book useful for school librarians in a K-12 educational setting: though we wrote it, in some sense, with academic librarians in mind (since we’re academic librarians), we do think that the book is applicable for all kinds of libraries, and transfers to any context where librarians are connecting with learners or other educators in some way.
Happily, the review agrees:
Learner-Centered Pedagogy: Principles and Practice, by Kevin Michael Klipfel and Dani Brecher Cook, is intended for academic librarians, but the concept of having empathy for the learner and what that person needs or wants to learn has broad applicability.
We promise we won’t share every review of the book, but we may share some so it’s not just us saying that we think the book is good!
Also exciting, I might add, is the column’s general focus on the importance of librarians as educational leaders.
In advance of the former heavyweight champion’s appearance Saturday night at the Seminole Coconut Creek Casino, where he will perform his one-man stage show, “Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth,” I asked Tyson if he remembered the origins of that quote.
“People were asking me [before a fight], ‘What’s going to happen?,’ ” Tyson said. “They were talking about his style. ‘He’s going to give you a lot of lateral movement. He’s going to move, he’s going to dance. He’s going to do this, do that.’ I said, “Everybody has a plan until they get hit. Then, like a rat, they stop in fear and freeze.’ ”
What I like so much about the quote is that its application stretches far beyond boxing. It really has meaning in any area of life, whether the blow comes from a health issue, losing your job, making a bad investment, a traffic jam, whatever.
It’s how you react to that adversity that defines you, not the adversity itself.
“Exactly,” Tyson agreed. “If you’re good and your plan is working, somewhere during the duration of that, the outcome of that event you’re involved in, you’re going to get the wrath, the bad end of the stick. Let’s see how you deal with it. Normally people don’t deal with it that well.”
He laughed. There’s another way to spin his famous quote:
“How much can you endure, buddy?” he said. “Most talkers, they can’t handle it.”
I don’t generally comment on what other people in the profession are writing or blogging about (ironically, I suppose, I don’t read any library blogs), but on my esteemed co-blogger’s twitter I came across and enjoyed this post by Lane Wilkinson on “Dealing with Both Sides in Your Library.” I liked it not just because I tend to agree with its general sentiments :re folks with morally repugnant and intellectually indefensible positions, but also because I haven’t seen a ton of discussion (though I haven’t really looked) about how dumb it is to think that “pro” vs. “con” or “for” and “against” is at all an interesting or nuanced way to think about research, debate, or anything else that is not a sporting event.
This has come up in a variety of professional contexts for me (e.g., at one job I had I was against showing freshmen the “Opposing Viewpoints” database because, well, there’s just evidence for or against a particular claim, not “opposing viewpoints, which aversion was met by horror for some other librarians) and it’s nice to see someone explaining why it’s not all that great.
More controversially, perhaps: I really like the tone (at least in this post) Lane writes with, and am glad to have people who conduct themselves that way publicly in the profession.
Our publisher just sent over a link to the first review of Learner-Centered Pedagogy and it’s … a good one!
An excerpt:
Fusing theory with practice, this handbook is exceptionally organized and presented, making it a valuable and very highly recommended resource to help every practitioner connect with learners more effectively. Enhanced with the inclusion of a eight page bibliography (Directions for Further Reading) and an eleven page Index, “Learner-Centered Pedagogy: Principles and Practice” is an unreservedly recommended addition to college and university Library Science collections and community library staff in-service training supplemental studies reading lists.
Here’s where you can read the whole review in full, Mom.
(*Small correction to the review, if anyone cares: I’m not, as the review suggests, currently a lecturer in moral and existential philosophy at Virginia Tech – that was a past life. I’m the Instructional Design and Assessment Librarian at the University of Southern California Libraries).
It is an intriguing comment on our educational system that it is assumed that only under the most dire circumstances would a professor reveal himself in any personal way […]
I have almost invariably found that the very feeling which has seemed to me most private, most personal, and hence most incomprehensible by others, has turned out to be an expression for which there is a resonance in many other people. It has led me to believe that what is most personal and unique in each one of us is probably the very element which would, if it were shared or expressed, speak most deeply to others.
-Carl Rogers, from “This is Me,” in On Becoming a Person. (pp. 3 and 26, respectively).
This chapter is a great read – full PDF available free online.
Came across this Mind/Shift article via twitter and though it’s a couple years old it’s worth sharing. Nice to see thinking about our education system catching up with the extensive research in this area.
An excerpt:
I think if many of the innovators I see working in the sector today are successful, we’ll see a school experience that looks significantly different in 2020 than it does today. Technology will play a role, but the key changes will have been in educational approach not technology.
Interest-driven learning, with a focus on projects that are relevant to individual students, will be key.
Well, looks like I need to cross Pro Football Talk off my reliable sources Lib Guide
Filed under Uncategorized
Happy June! We’re really excited that our book is being published this month, and ALA is helping us to celebrate this by offering a coupon code for Rule Number One Readers. If you use code LCPP17 via the ALA Store, you can receive $5 off Learner-Centered Pedagogy: Principles and Practice.
It’s very strange (and exciting) to think that other people will read this book, after we spent such a long and lonely time writing it (together, but still). Stay tuned for more Rule Number One posts coming soon, as we emerge from the book-writing/editing hole and return to blogging!
Filed under ...Etc., The Library Game, Uncategorized
Rule Number One: A Library Blog 