Publications and Research
Document Type
Other
Publication Date
1-1-2025
Abstract
The Applied Improvement Project (AIP) was conducted to address the inconsistency of academic librarians’ teaching engagement on the AIP site. The problem of practice was framed as the gap between having all librarians prepared to teach and technical services librarians’ unpreparedness to teach. The implemented intervention was developing a professional learning community among technical services librarians of different generations with a variety of teaching experiences to increase teaching preparedness by sharing, discussing, and reflecting. The learning topics covered library teaching basics, motivating students, self-assessment, planning to teach, using Wikipedia, embedded librarianship and credit-bearing courses, teaching and research, and building a teaching portfolio. Data collection included an AIP implementation journal, reflective writing, and interviews to assess the learning process and outcomes. Answers to the guiding process questions were obtained by addressing what happened during the PLC implementation in terms of attendance, activities, and reaction. Answers to the guiding outcome question were obtained by examining the impact of PLC on participants’ teaching preparedness. Process results showed good attendance, a challenge in scheduling due to time conflicts, and tacit knowledge transfer. Outcome results showed that the PLC had a positive impact on participants’ teaching attitudes, motivation, and self-efficacy. In terms of attitudes, participants believed their knowledge of bibliographic organization and library operation would help them to teach, and the PLC activities broadened their definition of library-based teaching. Participants’ self-motivation was associated with the need to build a positive relationship with faculty and students, and new motivation was linked to the value of self-reflection to improve library-based teaching. Participants’ low self-efficacy was caused by negative experience or linked to familiarities and patterns built by experience. Participants’ self-efficacy was improved by open, sharing, and transferrable PLC activities. PLC’s successful implementation resulted in three implications for professional practice, including valuing gap analysis to identify organizational problems, valuing internal librarians’ talents to promote organizational learning, and valuing action research in community-based adult learning practice. Recommendations included repeating the PLC with adjustments to benefit more technical services librarians. The existing literature about technical services librarians’ teaching relies on sporadic personal accounts and mentoring relationships. This action research added to the literature on the effectiveness of community learning practice as a collaborative professional development approach to enhance technical services librarians’ perceptions about improving teaching preparedness.