Another example of context & liaison?

I’m really getting eager for my copy of Hall to arrive in the post. I think that I’ve had another one of those high context communication experiences.

I was coming into work & an academic client yelled out, “Sandra!”. I looked around & she said to me, “Did you know that our students can’t find books on the library shelves?”. Like so many academic librarians, my answer was “Yep” and an addition, “But, remember most of the books in your discipline are ebooks so there aren’t so many to find as there are in some other disciplines”.

Warming up to the subject, I added “And, some students can’t use a table of contents and can sometimes struggle with an index”. Her response? “I know – it’s Google. And, did you know that lots of students haven’t read a book since primary school?” From me another, “Yep” …  “but, in third year, the smart ones figure out that it’s going probably going to hold them back when they do their 4th year research project so at least they are starting to think about it”.

So, I asked “Are we going to do something about it?” & her answer was “Yes”. I expected that from this client, but the next part of her response took me by surprise.

She also felt that she needed to get back into weeding because we needed to make it easier for these struggling students to find things in the subject areas where their analytical thinking is really challenged (or perhaps more to the point I was thinking to myself, eliminate their chances of being able to just make do with irrelevant items because that’s quicker).

Could it be that context spoke to her, as a truly thinking educator, so clearly that she had started to think like a librarian? Well, perhaps that’s an over-statement but …

Liaison & context – a little more

Today the Scholarly Kitchen has a post – Seven things every researcher should know about scholarly publishing. The post contains a very useful comment – “As an acdemic, you are one of many players in a highly complex ecosystem of scholarly communication and publishing much of which functions beyond the boundaries of your perception”. I think that this is a useful prompt for librarians – we & our clients operate in a highly complex ecosystem, much of which functions beyond the boundaries of the perceptions of each of us in this professional partnership. But, they do influence each other – profoundly so, for those of us on the service delivery side of the partnership.

As librarians, we can identify ecosystem intersections & use our professional relationships to communicate how common aspects of our ecosystem affect each other in different ways, but in ways that inevitably influence both of us. I think that this brings us back to the value of high context communication. Two recent examples of liaison work spring to mind – one related to information literacy & the other to collection maintenance.

Yesterday I had a discussion with a Head of School about problem solving learning in our undergraduate programs. His part of the conversation focussed on the difficulties teaching problem solving in the current format & the students’ complaints about the problem solving courses & their value to their studies. From a librarian’s perspective, I could talk about a number of information literacy issues that I often see when I work with the students who approach me or use the online resources that I create. I have learnt that many students struggle to focus on the problem solving process & look to the outcome as the artefact which must be produced. He agreed & this got us talking a little about information literacy & the problem solving process, which moved us on to the Research Skills Developement Framework & its sister problem solving framework & two “translations” of the Framework that I have developed to support staff & students – a teacher-friendly version of Levels 1-4 & a student-friendly version of Levels 1-4. It also let me talk a little about some RSDF work & interest in the University & some interest that his evolving in his School & a closely related School. This is a valuable conversation as it helps a key stakeholder see how librarians’ work links in with teaching work in a way that he has not experienced himself.

And, back to my big weeding project. My communications here have focussed on the common factor in our ecosystem – Google & free web-based information. Yes, it has led to a student preference to avoid the use of scholarly & professional material purchased by the Library & that frustrates markers who see the impact in assignment work. But, that means that demand for library resources declines & hard copy materials are taking up space for no purpose & so libraries want to weed. Turfing out the physical artefacts/records of a discipline’s knowledge base naturally concerns many academics – for many even more than the assessment concerns, so we have a perfect opportunity to connect the various experiences in our ecosystem to create greater understandings &, hopefully in time, responses to a lack of use of the resources that the library purchases.

Liaising with clients & context

I think that the cross-cultural concept of “context” (Hall 1976) could be a really helpful way to think about effective liaison with clients. Let’s begin by considering the two types of environmental (& communication) contexts:

• Low context environments – “low levels of programmed language are used to provide context” & so “a large amount of information must be present to specify meaning” (Korac-Kakabadse et al 2001, p. 6)
• High context environments – “high amount of programmed information is used to provide context” & so “more time is required to programme & abstract meaning from a given set of rules” (Korac-Kakabadse et al 2001, p. 6).

When we are interacting in & with our client groups, we are in a high context situation because we are working in different discipline cultures, so we need to say & do in ways that let our clients make sense of what we are saying & why it is relevant & important to them. And, to ensure that we (as service providers) understand what our clients are saying & doing.

So:

• Putting aside for one moment all the socio-cultural differences within the group I serve (Engineering, Surveying & GIS), I am working with relatively low context communicators. So, building trust, respect, etc is critical to the liaison role as we need to be able to understand each other & engage openly & honestly to work with the issues of mutual relevance.But, these issues are the focus of my role & not the focus of the clients’ role so the clients will not necessarily recognise them the way I do or prioritise them as highly as I do. So, as the service provider & the person responsible for progressing library-related issues, it is my responsibility to be the one to start building the trust, respect & understanding with the group as a whole & with individual clients.This means that I have to have a high context approach in a low context environment
• At the same time, many high context cultures are represented in my client group so there is an additional complexity on a more human level which adds another layer to the liaison role.

Although I have to be able to communicate to make meaning for & with the clients, I also can’t just be a high context communicator as the disciplines are low context communicators & not terribly patient with high context communication styles. So, I have to translate all of this meaning into a much lower context communication style than I would naturally use if I want my clients to work with me.

At the same time, in an organisational sense, I am the one with the least power & authority so I have to maintain the high context complexity approach over time as situations & working relationships with the client group change.

Could this lead us to some insights for liaison librarianship I wonder?

1. To be effective, liaison librarians need to be communicating within a high context framework whether or not their clients are high context communicators
2. Depending on their personal professional style & the clients with whom they work, liaison librarians may need to operate with communication context that does not come naturally to them.

I’ve discussed this with a liaison librarian in Education & the high/low context environments speak to him too. Education disciplines are incredibly different to my disciplines – they use different tools to understand the world & they use different words to talk about the world – so I wonder if there is something in this way of framing liaison work?

My experience with mega weeding & subscription cancellation projects is that they are wonderfully positive opportunities to develop client relationships:

• Clients have a big stake in these activities so they place the “library stuff” higher up their list of priorities & take the time to engage where they normally would not when “library stuff” is lower down their list of priorities
• So, if I’m communicating well, they get to think about the library stuff in different ways & so we get to work together differently towards mutual goals. So, clients begin focusing on what non-use means in a world of Google &  finite library space, what that reality means for the use of their own space, & how information literacy may be relevant
• Not everyone engages and not everyone thinks about all of these things, but a good number of people do start thinking & talking about these things when they never would in the standard settings. And, all this engagement leads to the development of new relationships between client & librarian & stronger existing relationships between client & librarian.

References

Korac-Kakabadse et al 2001, ‘Low-and high-context communication patterns: towards mapping cross-cultural encounters’, Cross Cultural Management: An International Journal, vol. 8, no. 4, pp. 3-24.

 

 

Play & professional practice

A big thanks to Linda @ the Library for finding this post on my old, abandoned & almost empty blog. I’ve started thinking about play & professional practice lately. Not sure why. Perhaps because I’ve got a few substantial projects on, along with all the normal which is also building with some additional new information literacy work coming up, & we’ve had a big library review which is going to result in substantial change I suspect, & it’s been the Christmas/New Year period so I haven’t had so much engagement with my clients. Despite all of this something has been missing – play.

So, I have to reproduce my old post so I can put playfulness back in its rightful place in my practice:

This morning I listened to a psychiatrist talking about the importance of play to adults as well as children. It got me thinking. Is play important to my work as a librarian? The answer came quickly & easily, & with a smile – yes, most definitely yes!!!!!!

Playfulness co-exists with work of substance to help us enjoy our professional relationships and work. It helps us connect with new clients & it helps us maintain and build our professional relationships over time. It helps us stay positive so we can keep ploughing through those piles of work & think creatively. Playfulness helps us stay foward looking & outward looking & client-centred, especially in the tough times.

Having taken some time to reflect, I don’t think that I could produce work of substance so consistently without a sense of playfulness to balance the seriousness.

How my personal pedagogy influences my academic client liaision

When I first began thinking about my personal pedagogy, I didn’t realise how entwined it is with my academic liaison work (student too, but that’s a different post for another day). In fact, the librarian I was very much influenced the teacher that I was when I first began teaching. And now each reinforces the other on almost an equal footing.

My partnership approach to liaison is very much influenced by a belief that my clients are lifelong learners in all aspects of their complex and challenging academic lives (as researchers and as teachers). I have feedback from a client that says “We learn from you everyday” and hopefully many of my academic clients feel that they learn from our work together.

I certainly learn from working with my clients. My first eight years as a librarian were spent in hospital settings and it was very clear right from the beginning that I would have to practice from a learning foundation. I couldn’t even spell many of the things that I had to search for and I felt as though a medical dictionary had been surgically attached to my body during my first year of practice. Of course this also made the reference interview critical. No being tempted not to reveal my ignorance due to false pride; patient care and the professional development of clinicians were at stake.

As I moved to work with engineers, spatial scientists and urban and regional planners in the university sector, my learning foundation held me in good stead as I had a whole lot of fresh learning to do. And, eight years on I’m still learning about these disciplines. My reference work and information literacy work are particular drivers of this learning as they provide opportunities for me to understand more and more about the way these disciplines think and the questions that they ask. These insights are wonderful for working with students who are struggling to work out what their courses are trying to get them to think about.

There are very few recipes to apply to liaison work like this. Yes, there are some basic starting points that any librarian would use, but after that it all depends on what and how I am prepared to learn about my clients, their disciplines and their teaching and/or research environments. I love this; it ensures that every day is different thanks to the different journeys I take to work with my clients.

Some librarians say that, these days, liaison work is generic but, I don’t agree. I think that being a proactive, critically thinking, client-centred librarian means that we cannot practice generically. It’s not physically possible as getting to know our disciplines gives us new thinking tools that we can’t help but apply. Our brains just use them. I bet there’s some kind of neurobiological explanation.

Just as teaching and learning are very personal activities, so liaison work is a very personal activity; embedded in the librarian I am becoming. And, I am always in a state of becoming. My understanding of my personal self, my librarian self, my understanding of my academic partners, my understanding of the disciplines with which I work, and my understanding of our  environment/milieu all reinforce each other as I practice each day. I’m always learning something new thanks to all the short and long journeys that each day brings. No wonder I feel as though I am always in a state of becoming!!

And, this brings me to an interesting question. As a professional practitioner, my focus has been on professional ontology. But, what does this mean for the evolution of my very own professional epistemology? Something new to think about now 🙂 And, it’s probably a particularly useful time to do this thinking as our library is undergoing a major review and who knows what changes await me.

Unpacking personal pedagogy with a metaphor

Using a metaphor to unpack one’s personal pedagogy is another great strategy for awareness creation. It’s probably going to be a tricky method for me but, I’m giving it a shot 🙂

When I teach well, I am like a bus driver. Each of my passengers is on their own lifelong journey to build and share knowledge, and I am responsible for helping them reach just one point in that learning destination. The short trip that they take is an information literacy or library-related trip directly related to their study or research goals.

What they actually make of that journey is up to the passengers; how they choose to engage with me and with their fellow passengers and how they choose to engage with the other elements of our journey.

When they embark, I seek to offer my passengers a hospitable environment (Palmer 2007) through a genuine welcome and a commitment to a respectful, interactive, constructivist journey that induces regular laughs along the way. I hope that my passengers will engage with each other; my pedagogy is designed to encourage it. But, if an individual’s learning journey needs to be more solo than social, I attempt to respect and accommodate this as well. I am not the silent disengaged bus driver, but the bus driver who sees each passenger as an individual with their own goals, needs, personality, mood, attitude to the trip, etc.

Although our route is rather well defined, the stops are determined by the learners and how they respond to the session as it progresses.

The learning objectives, content and pedagogy define our route, and these are authentic to ensure that we are connected to the real world as we move through it. Our planned learning activities, and our interactions with these, are directly related to the real worlds of assignments, professional competencies and course-specific learning objectives set by examiners. As we travel, my passengers feel part of their world.

As I travel with my passengers, I engage with them and learn from them. I reflect during the journey and after it (Schon 1983). This is essential as the more I understand the learners, and the disciplines in which they operate, the more knowledge I have to help me improve journeys to come.

Our bus is not state of the art but I make every effort to appropriately incorporate the technology to which I have access. By incorporating technologies in the appropriate manner, I create opportunities for the journey to be more comfortable and engaging.

My passengers disembark satisfied with new relevant thinking tools and have had some of their entrenched information views and behaviours challenged in a useful way. They feel ready to take another journey with me, and their course examiners are also motivated to explore further information literacy journeys. I cut the bus’s engine feeling energised, a little wiser, and hopeful that the learners will approach me when they need help, or even come to another class or use another online resource some time.

Palmer, PJ 2007, The courage to teach: exploring the inner landscape of a teacher’s life, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.

Schon, DA 1983, The reflective practitioner, Ashgate, London.

The structure of my personal pedagogy

This structure has been informed by three particular sources:

• Elbaz, F 1983, Teacher thinking: a study of practical knowledge, Croom Helm, London.
• Marland, P 2007, Learning to teach: a primer for pre-service teachers, Pearson Education Australia, French’s Forest, New South Wales.
• McGill, M 2013, EDU8705 Personal pedagogy in context: module 2 – personal pedagogies: an introduction, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba.

Personal pedagogy and its influence on my info lit teaching work: An anecdote

Anecdotes are a great way to help us unpack the personal pedagogies with which we work.

Here’s my anecdote:

It’s six weeks ago at 9:15am and five people are sitting in a library computer lab. We’re reading a journal article and it’s quiet. Everyone is reading and sipping from their water bottles or takeaway coffee cups (I know, I know – we’re not supposed to have coffee in the lab but I’ve bent the rule for the circumstances).

As well as the article, each of us has a page of literature evaluation criteria. We are reading an article on the history of sustainability and evaluating it according to the criteria. Four of us have clean, fresh articles and one of us has notes scrawled over her copy. The person with the not-so-fresh copy is me.

I am the teacher (and the students’ liaison librarian). The other four are first year undergraduate Urban and Regional Planning students.

In front of me sits Kathleen, a quietly confident school leaver. Nearby sits Margaret who is about twenty years older, vivacious and at the beginning of a journey to a new career. Behind Margaret is Eric. Eric is young and gives nothing away. He was late to the session today, but much later yesterday (so I’m counting my blessings there). Behind Kathleen is Ethel. Ethel is about the same age as Margaret and she is quietly and actively engaged in the session.

I don’t wonder, even once, about how Margaret and Ethel are going. I do wonder about Eric. He is typing on the computer and I wonder whether he is on his Facebook page. But, something inside tells me not to stroll by him and I think, “He might be typing up his evaluation notes … at least he’s not texting on his phone … we’re sharing our evaluations with each other in a few minutes, he knows that”.

Then I look at Kathleen and I am taken back thirty years. I see myself standing among the book shelves in Central Library at the University of Queensland. It seems quite dark and every book I pick up discusses things that happened before I was alive or when I was a child. I can’t quite connect with what’s in these books and I’m feeling that I’m not quite learning what I should. I come back to the present, look at Kathleen, and wonder if she feels like I did thirty years ago. I think, “I doubt it. She’s confident and a thinker”.

Eric is no longer typing, and it’s time to share our evaluations.

And, here’s what I think the anecdote reveals about my personal pedagogy:

• Connecting with the students as people and learners is important to me – it’s about empathy. After Kathleen shared her evaluation, we explored it a little further as a group and I shared my memory. My sharing led her to reveal that she was also feeling this way which reassured her and created interest from the other students – we began communicating even more as five people rather than four students and one teacher
• Which leads me to something else that I think is important – that I learn much from the students with whom I work and I really value that as a teacher, a librarian and a person. As a librarian it’s critical as it helps me learn basic things about the disciplines that I support and so improves my liaison work as a whole. It also influences how I work with clients in reference interviews
• I thought that I had overcome an insecurity that used to pop up in my teaching sometimes but it’s still there & can rear its head under the right circumstances. I really care about the learning opportunities that I create for students and I care deeply about their learning, but that can lead me to focus on me rather than the students. That showed up in my worries about Eric – was he on Facebook instead of doing the work? I really, really thought that he would  be on Facebook but it turned out that he was typing up his evaluation; and a very unique and though-provoking evaluation it was. I was  worried that he wasn’t engaged with the learning activity that I created???? That shouldn’t be!!!!
• Which leads me to another issue. I grew up learning to value independence, and the level of connectedness that comes with constant accessing of phones and Facebook is something that I struggle to deal with sometimes. I don’t understand what it feels like to need to connected like that and so I have to be very conscious of challenging my instincts as I don’t have that empathy to help guide my responses to such dependent behaviour.