Academic librarians’ development as teachers: A survey on changes in pedagogical roles, approaches, and perspectives

Abstract

This article reports on findings of an online survey of teacher librarians about their instructional work, approaches, and roles and how these aspects of their teaching have changed over time. Academic librarians who had at least one year of library teaching experience and who had been actively involved in library instruction within the past two years completed the online survey. Participants were asked a series of questions, the majority of which were open-ended, about the types of instruction-related activities in which they presently and previously engaged, if/how their views of their instructional work and their instructional roles had changed over time, what experiences had been particularly influential in their teaching, and if they identified as teachers. The responses were analyzed through manual textual coding, through which emerging themes and variations in participants’ responses were identified. These findings provide further insight into academic librarians’ ongoing teacher development and their experiences as teaching librarians. Fuller understandings of this development and experiences can inform professional development and communities of practice in which librarians foster a sense of agency, confidence, responsiveness, and purpose in their teaching, cultivate and sustain meaningful teaching practices, and prevent burnout.