Pedagogy for Practical Library Instruction

Karla Morones

ET, CO

Montgomery, M. (2015). Pedagogy for practical library instruction. Communications In Information Literacy, 9(1), 19-23.

Summary

This article touches on the fact that many librarians have no background knowledge on educational theories.  The author gives personal experiences with her learning process and fish out of water feeling when she first started her position at an academic library.  The author explains how much knowledge a librarian really needs to know and how to obtain the knowledge to become effective instructors.

Evaluation

I very much enjoyed this article.  I felt the author was talking about my particular feelings and experiences.  I, too felt like fish out of water, and I appreciated her humor and tips on pedagogy. The author, much like I did, kept returning to constructivism theory as the best way for her to engage her students.  She had to begin teaching herself theory and pedagogy through books and journal articles.  She also joined organizations such as ALA, ACRL, Library Juice Academy, OCLC’s WebJunction, and others that provided both free and fee-based training via webinars and online classes. She then proceeded to focus her studies on this theory and began applying it to her classes.  She found student led activities had much better outcomes than other activity she had planned.