About this Book

This edited volume aims to emphasize real-world examples from an array of librarians to explore how teaching-centric perspective transformation can happen in diverse environments, for librarians with diverse needs, around diverse instructional issues (e.g. teaching with technology, considering critical pedagogy, integrating the Framework into instruction, finding nexus with other literacies).

Instructional Identity and Information Literacy will use transformative learning theory, and the diverse ways to consider this approach to adult learning, to more fully explore how these ideas may be put into action for libraries and librarians looking to reconsider their instructional identities and teaching practices.

Proposed Sections

Please consider submitting a proposal that addresses one or more of these proposed sections, or feel free to suggest an idea not included here!

Instructional Identities: Initiatives that have impacted how individual librarians, or groups of librarians, established or made sense of their identities as instructors

For example:

• Have you had a personal experience in exploring, critically reflecting on, and/or redefining your own identity as an educator in the wake of social, political, or cultural events?

• Did you lead or engage in a shared professional learning opportunity for a group of librarians (journal clubs, learning communities, etc.) that focused on transforming or reshaping teaching identities?

Program Identities: Professional learning initiatives that impacted broader library/information literacy instruction departments/units, and how this work reframed teaching practices at programmatic levels or the broader identities of information literacy programs

For example:

• Has your library unit worked in systematic, intentional ways to reshape how your library offers information literacy instruction? How has transformation played a role in such work?

Institutional Identities: Academic librarians' work (or partnership) in re-focusing information literacy instruction across institutions/educational organizations

For example:

• Have you and your colleagues spearheaded efforts to connect information literacy instruction to student success initiatives, high-impact practices, or other institution-wide efforts?

• Have you had a strong voice on your campus in redefining information literacy broadly or for specific disciplines, especially since the release of the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education?

Professional Identities: How academic libraries have, or can, re-conceive of information literacy and teaching within our profession

For example:

• Do you have a distinct perspective on how we, in librarianship, might transform our instructional work to be more anti-racist, inclusive, or critical?

Transformative Learning Theory

This edited volume will use transformative learning theory as its underlying principle to think about instructional identities and information literacy. While this edited book will be focused on real-world, authentic experiences, these underlying ideas will be a through line in each of the book chapters. There does not need to be a strong emphasis, but chapter proposals should demonstrate some sort of connection to this theory, however informal.

As background, transformative learning theory was originally developed by Jack Mezirow in 1978, and it draws on the theoretical foundations built by constructivist (e.g. John Dewey, Lev Vygotsky) and critical (e.g. Paulo Freire, Jurgen Habermas) theorists. You can find an informal overview of this theory in Wikipedia.

Since Mezirow's original positing of perspective transformation, many other adult learning scholars have expanded, adapted, critiqued, and countered his theoretical framework. Here is a partial list of additional scholars on this topic:

• Patricia Cranton

• John Dirkx

• Kathleen P. King

• Sharan Merriam

• Rosemary R. Ruether

• Edward W. Taylor

As you prepare your chapter proposal, please consider which approach to transformation resonates most with your experiences and viewpoints. You will be asked to connect your proposed chapter to transformative learning theory in 200 words or less.