LOEX 2016: Critical Pedagogy

Session Title: Everything We Do is Pedagogy: Critical Pedagogy, the Framework, and Library Practice

Presenter: McGinniss

The presenter, Jeremy McGinniss, was so excited about what he was talking about in this session that it was palpable. He also had to be nervous because this was the biggest breakout space and the room was full. I had a number of take-aways from this session. He asked the question, “How does the library as a whole engage in pedagogy?” I loved this, because this led him into talking that pedagogy is present wherever knowledge is being produced. So often, I feel that we see things like Book-a-Librarian as a service and not as a teaching moment. This helped me get excited and think that even the little things are teaching. The next sound bite from this session that I gleaned was this: Students are “whole human beings in search of meaning.” The thing I like about this is that it takes into account that we are not talking to robots, we are dealing with people who are messy and each at their own level of understanding. It reinvigorated me to think about this and I vowed to myself that I would try to listen more at the reference desk. Something related that he said was that it was “difficult to engage in a culture of questions without people and relationships.” This is so true. We have to be positive and open and allow room for a culture of questions. McGinniss pointed out that all forms of learning are positive, iterative, and relational. He said that our student workers are seen as an authority when they are behind the desk. So often, McGinniss said, we think of them as assets to be managed and not people in a place of learning. This made me think a lot about our graduate student workers and the training and support that they receive--we train them to work at the desk, but we do not train them in teaching and pedagogy. McGinniss brought this point around to the Community of Practice idea from the McMichaels & Dimmit presentation, which was a great tie-in. He said that teaching is hard work, and if we forget that, we are in trouble. One of the funniest parts about this session was how the topic was related to the plenary speaker and how he glowingly talked about her presentation, whereas I found it difficult to keep up with. My feeling was that despite any nerves he might have been feeling, the content of this presentation would have been much more digestible as the plenary. I certainly found it uplifting and helpful in considering my own practice!