Are librarians teachers? Many academic librarians enter teaching roles with limited experience or education in instruction, discovering how to engage students in learning from their own observations, trial-and-error, or professional learning opportunities.

 

Grappling with this potentially unexpected identity comes amid a time of significant transition for higher education itself. Academic librarians must figure out how to counter mis-, dis-, and malinformation, address shrinking funding for collections while costs increase, and establish meaningful partnerships in diverse, data-driven environments.  And writ large, librarianship as a profession continues to grapple with its responsibility to challenge information illiteracy across contexts, its support of systemic systems of oppression under the guise of neutrality, and its value to a society flooded with information.

 

In three volumes, Instructional Identities and Information Literacy uses transformative learning theory—a way of understanding adult learning and ourselves—to explore the ways librarians can meaningfully advance how we think about our identities, instructional work, and learning as transformation. Three volumes explore:

Chapters include transforming a critical, feminist pedagogy with antiracist pedagogy; becoming an advocate for library instruction to promote student success; the intersection of reluctant professionals and the academy; transforming STEM learning and information-seeking experiences; using the Framework to reshape student responses to media narratives; and much more. Instructional Identities and Information Literacy contains many ways to consider the programming, dispositions, behaviors, and attitudes we can use as we continue to advance information literacy instruction and reshape our profession.