My learning in Critical/Cultural Perspectives in Education
felt in some ways like opening Pandora’s box – if we can reimagine the box as a
chaotic good instead of chaotic evil. The chaos came from opening myself up to
critiquing in a curious way.
Pandora's Other Box: Critique
I illustrated my “Pandora’s Other Box” with bubbles because some of the ideas still feel fragile to me (although not in danger of popping) and I love the imagery of bubbles rising. Good ideas should rise and be seen/heard. The box could also be labeled “Critique.” The bubbles come from several arenas of this course. For example, “race” and “feminism” are two of the types of critiques we examined this semester. Other bubbles, such as “together” and “listen” came from my need to practice being a good collaborator.
The bubbles are: Who?; Together; Ask; Responsibility; Race; Inclusion; Care; Feminism; Accessibility; Reflect; Tell; Listen; and Equity. These represent the main themes and practices I reflect on the most from this course. Part of being a good advocate is noticing and asking, collaborating, and telling/sharing. One of the bubbles I could have put in a hundred times and not felt guilty is "responsibility." As future leaders, educators, or really any person who wants to have a guiding hand in a child's life or community, responsibility is so important. We have a responsibility to critique every-day practices, not just new ones. It's our responsibility to make the world a better place for everyone else!
Something I always want to do is rethink my biases. This course helped me formalize some of the techniques (critiques) I can use to examine not only my own biases, but also others'. These are techniques I will carry forward in my work as a librarian, not only through my ongoing advocacy project (diversity audit), but also through future projects and programs that are yet unknown to me!
I'll be keeping Pandora's other box close to me going forward as a reminder of my own biases and what I can do to make things better.
My learning has culminated in a lot of ideas about how education and librarianship go hand-in-hand. A library is a home for lifelong learning, and education is one of the first roads we can take to get there. The word-cloud below shows some of the important themes I studied that represent programs, practices, or just thought processes that I have worked on personally or professionally during my time in this program.
The words depicted in the word cloud include: diversity audit, universal design, preflect (introduced to me by a peer in this course!), representation, collaborate, critique, research, equity, practice, empower, global, lesson plan, educate, ethics, makerspaces, STEAM, libraries, advocate, 3D printer, coding, diversity, reflect, individual, robotics, characters, action research, microbits, awareness, and engineering design process.
What is my professional future vision?
Throughout the semesters I have worked on my degree in Education, my vision of my profession and how I fit into has changed. While my previous degree in librarianship more than prepared me to undertake research, I focused largely on conducting case studies and literature reviews in preparation of my work as a special or academic librarian. In the past year, I've embraced action research as a necessary part of youth services librarianship.
Last semester, I performed action research to work on finding a new method of reaching teens and inviting them to the library. My findings in some ways contradicted my takeaways from published research: while the research supported going to where teens were (in this case, I visited the high school twice during their free period to talk with them), what I found was that the teens were less interested in what the library could do for them and more interested in what they could do for the library through volunteer. This action research is helping me re-design my approach for future academic years to greet teens where they are and talk to them about what they are most interested in.
Beyond outreach, I have been researching two other avenues that will direct the future of my work as a youth services librarian. One of these is an advocacy project in my Critical and Cultural Perspectives course that is ongoing in the youth collection at the library (with plans for including other collections later): I have started work on a diversity audit to determine whether the youth collection reflects diversity in main characters, authors, and settings. This work will be ongoing, as it needs to be in order to remain effective, and will help me order books to fill gaps so all readers can find themselves in the books here. This is also work that can be shared with local school librarians as we have overlap in parts of our collection.
The other avenue that will direct the future of my work as a librarian is the implementation and maintenance of a Create Space (makerspace) with appropriately diverse and educational programming. My initial introduction to this topic was more of a deep-dive into the equipment and management aspects of makerspaces and has since expanded and is culminating in my Capstone course. The past several years in this program and with my research have introduced me to some of the challenges that users face with makerspaces. In particular, the areas I have been most keen to research in order to implement change beginning in my library include equity (especially with economics), inclusion (especially with gender and race), and accessibility (especially with designing the physical space to be accessible so a person can feel welcome without needing to ask for accommodation).
I started working on this M.A. in Education with a focus in Digital Media Literacy to help better design educational material and programs at the library. What I found is that the crossover between education and librarianship is vast and there was so much in both fields that I could tie into my practice and my education. My STEAM programming at the library has evolved to support learning in robotics (kids especially love Robot days where they get to design obstacle courses with the Dash robots and use the different apps for block coding, remote control, or line drawing to compete). I suspect this is true of many fields, but especially for these two, learning is lifelong! There is always more I can be critiquing and learning from, and there will never be a time where what I do at the library does not in some way support students -- whether they're from public, private, or home schools.
We started this course with ethical training, especially focused around working with students and protecting their rights to confidentiality and privacy. I completed similar research ethics training when working on my MLIS degree. Re-doing this training was very helpful for me; I may have felt as though it was unnecessary, but as I delved back in I realized how many details I had forgotten, although the larger gist of it remained in my brain.
As a librarian, I place a lot of importance on the quality of research and part of this is being aware of how ethical the study was. Another part of the ethics as a person who is disseminating information to others is making sure that I can help them deconstruct it if needed. Understanding the ethics and terminology used overall is essential.
Action Research
I love research. I was a researcher, I am a researcher, and now I am also an action researcher. Being able to tailor the research to small-scale sample sizes and a short period of time was key for my library and my work as a youth services librarian. I will break up this research in three parts: database diving, organizing to the nth degree, and living the life.
Database diving is my bread and butter. Give me a topic -- even one that I previously had 0 interest or knowledge in -- and I am going to dive deep. This part of research is comfortable for me. I can skim abstracts, articles, and key words. I can analyze the currency and relevance. I can re-word and re-connect subjects all day. And, as makes most introverts happy, I can do it mostly on my own.
Organizing to the nth degree is my kryptonite. I will plan and organize and get excited about research and what comes next -- but it's also a way that I procrastinate. I will organize and reorganize as many times as necessary to avoid actually stepping up to start the action part of the research.
Having an assignment that required action research instead of solely a literature review forced me to keep my organizing and planning to a moderate amount so I could live the life. This action research was AMAZING. I analyzed data from the past five years at the library and learned that some of the hearsay was rose-tinted and my goals were more reasonable than expected. I also made connections with more teachers and school librarians. And most importantly, I made connections with students.
What Now?
Now that I've started my action research, I feel fully confident in continuing it. Where before I was most interested in the literature review and analyzation for my personal research, I feel equipped to jump off the high dive and actually engage beyond the safety of published work. This action research helped me check my own biases about what teens want and need. My goal was to give teens a bigger voice at the library, and this research helped me step back to quiet my voice and give them more space. As an added bonus, it also helped (and is continuing to help) me reach and engage with more teens to give them access to resources and services at the library.
Many different philosophers, educators, psychologists, sociologists, and other specialists have different theories about how the brain develops and what that means for children and learning. While some of these theories may be applied to one person, it seemed that they may not be applied to everyone. One of the theories that has given me the most thought was Bronfenbrenner's Ecological System. This is one of the systems we learned about this semester that really gives weight to how individuals in similar systems may experience and grow differently.
Guy-Evans, 2023
Characteristics of Diverse Learners
A lot of different characteristics can affect how a person learns. Some characteristics were particularly interesting due to their physical implications, such as people with split-brains. Once the brain has been split, one eye may process something without relaying that information "verbally" to the other side of the brain, and yet the information is still being processed. What I learned is that the brain is really elastic and adaptable.
The implications of learners with different characteristics is that learning is not -- and never really has been -- one size fits all. In the past, those with different characteristics could be institutionalized, hidden away, or discarded due to their diverse characteristics. Now, we have a better understanding that is continuously evolving and hopefully we can make adjustments in the classroom to help all learners.
One of my favorite examples of adjusting materials or lessons to include and make stories accessible for a wider range of learners came from one of my annotated bibliography assignments. Huisinga et al. (2018) worked with student volunteers to study how making changes to physical storytime books could help accessibility for students who were otherwise unable to participate during storytime. These changes included adding vocabulary words, making pages easier to handle for those with mobility issues, adding more visual support, and even including textures.
Disability Support at the Library
Something that came out of my studies this semester was an appreciation of how difficult it can be for people with certain disabilities to access services and materials. It is frequently discussed at library conferences and even in informal meetings that many library buildings are outdated and may not be ADA-compliant, although changes are being made. Some concerns include capital for these projects -- and that doesn't even include services that may need continuing capital. Some grants can help offset the budgetary concerns, but other concerns include space, and "when and where". Services may not always be accessible for people with disabilities if they are unable to get to the library through public transportation or other means. Furthermore, the materials and services provided at the library may not be suitable for each individual.
Vermont has a decent support system for helping library users with disabilities access books and different types of media through the ABLE Library. These resources are invaluable and each year we learn about new resources ABLE is getting access to that our community members can use to support different disabilities.
(More information on ABLE Library can be found here: https://able.vermont.gov/)
What Now?
My biggest takeaway this semester is that there is always room to improve. Each weekly reading had me examining the practices at my library to see what could change. Some of these changes -- many of them -- will take a lot of time. Other changes I could implement immediately. One of these was while learning about brain development in young children, and how much textures could help them learn and engage. That very day, we ordered textured squares to use during Baby Time and Storytime to engage different senses for individuals who learn or experience differently.
After meeting with my library director, my hope is that we will continue to improve our services to be more inclusive to our community members with disabilities. While this has been on my director's radar, there were things we hadn't thought of, like reaching out to caregivers we know to make sure they know that our programs are open to all and no matter the suggested age, others are always welcome. I learned that this can sometimes be a barrier to folks with intellectual disabilities as they "age out" of certain programs. However, here at the library they are always welcome!
References
Guy-Evans, O. (2023). Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory. SimplyPsychology. https://www.simplypsychology.org/bronfenbrenner.html
Huisinga, S., Luttrell, L. A., Cook, R., & Jones-Bromenshenkel, M. (2018). Making books accessible for all readers: Students reflect on a service project. Illinois Reading Council Journal, 47(1), 18-27.
This course covered a variety of topics that I reflect on daily in my own work. Those topics span from different learning theories to learning accessibility. Early on, we reviewed Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Remembering these different levels of needs helps with my own interactions at the library helps me empathize and act differently to behaviors from individual children. For example, rather than immediately effecting consequences on a student after school, I first offer them a water or a granola bar to be sure the most basic of levels of their needs are being met. Frequently, this corrects the behavior without me having to address it directly.
Other insights I gained through this course that are influencing my work as a librarian and educator is offering a voice and choice to students. Rather than deciding for them what we will be doing, I ask what they want to do. This was inspired by our reading "7 Things That Happen When Students Own Their Reading" and how the desire to learn from the individual children spread to more peers (Spencer, 2017).
Now, if we're learning about origami and structures as part of a STEAM project, I offer them some different origami figures we can learn. I am also sure to include various styles of learning and activities so everyone has the same learning opportunities. Using the origami example again, different instructional formats are always available. We have books, papers for tracing the lines, videos for examples, and then live demonstrations. As Spencer (2017) points out, this helps them embrace a maker mindset and lets them tie the learning into their own passions, like the guinea pig below based on one of the reluctant learner's own pet!
Origami figure chosen by library patron to learn about how folds are used in engineering to support machines and structures! They started with this since it was "easy" and then chose to do more difficult shapes after.
Since my professional goals as an educator and librarian are not entirely align with professional goals as teachers, I appreciated that the takeaways in this course could be applied to all activities and not year-long classroom activities. While I learned a lot from the book reviews my peers presented on, I was happy to have chosen the book I did. Characteristics of Effective Early Learning opened my eyes to some of the small actions I take in daily interactions and how that can effect early learners before they are even in a traditional and formal learning environment. For example, it is important for adults to fully commit to pretend-play. Knowing this and understanding how this helps early learns has helped me work past my own personal insecurities to give play with children 100% of my effort and commitment (Moylett, 2014). This also ties in with core competencies of social and emotional learning (SEL). By committing to play, the educators are helping early learners learn empathy, becoming socially aware, and also modelling behavior for relationship skills and decision-making (clubXcite, 2020; Wings for Kids, 2020).
This book also really characterized "will, skill and thrill" for me (Moylett, 2014). Now, when planning educational events (such as weekly pre-school story times), I am very intentional about choosing books at an appropriate level (skill) and including enticing activities and environmental attributes (will) and always end with hands-on crafts or games to encompass the learning (thrill).
What Now?
Moving forward, I will be pursuing professional development opportunities in the area of engaging story-times and STEAM activities in the library. I have already started towards this goal with the purchase of several books on immersive experiences in the library and pairing STEAM activities with fictional books. My hope is to start with the early learners but use the experience on learning on all ages up to teens as I begin applying it! We already gave glitter jars a try with teens, learning about water viscosity! It was one of our most-attended teen events since the pandemic started.
References
clubXcite(2020).Social-emotional learning: What is it and why is it important?. https://www.exciteway.com/resource-blog/social-emotional-learning-sel
Moylett, H. (2014). Characteristics of Effective Early Learning : Helping Young Children Become Learners for Life. McGraw-Hill Education.
Spencer, J.(2017) 7 Things that happen when students own their own learning. http://www.spencerauthor.com/7-things-student-ownership/
Wings for Kids. (2020) Core competencies. https://www.wingsforkids.org/sel/social-emotional-learning/core-competencies/
This course explored the integration of technology into the
classroom, both physically and digitally.
One of the takeaways that was reminded again and again was that
technology should be used to enhance learning, being student-centric, rather
than used for technology’s sake. When
looking at the 2020 Annual Technology Survey results for Vermont, this becomes
even more clear. Technology needs to be
implemented thoughtfully and with a student-centered purpose since not all
students have equal access.
Another important learning point for me was how easy it is
to build a learning network as an educator.
RSS Feeds and Digital Bookmarking can be one helpful tool for this, but
so can Twitter! I had started using
Twitter in the past year or so to connect with other librarians and this was a
wonderful reminder that while Twitter can be a great connection, there are also
dangers to be aware of (Lipsett, 2009).
Where this course intersected more fully with my interest in
the role of librarians in educating students outside of school was in the
exploration of digital citizenship and citizen science. Digital citizenship in particular is an area
where I can offer a lot of passive learning opportunities by posting in our
computer areas some tips or rules to avoid cyberbullies and to report it when
it is seen. Similar to camping, the idea
is that you should leave the area a better place than you found it – or at
least, leave nothing behind. I also
think students need to learn about privacy early since using social media is a
way of communicating with their peers now. Students should be aware of the permanence of
their online interactions and the consequences.
Going forward, these are facts and opinions that I will be
taking with me in my practice. I need to
think about technology purposefully, and it is important that I help students
become aware of digital citizenship. While
I touched on some of the most important points above, I had also been keeping a
bullet journal with takeaways throughout the semester. There are three I want to share as they were
points that I experienced personally through lesson-planning and screencasts:
Not all technology is equal, and paid technological tools
are not necessarily better than free ones.
Example: Ginger vs. Grammarly
Technology needs to be used with a purpose in class. As with the smartboard examples, it cannot
be used simply for the sake of using technology.
Accessibility can be improved with the use of
technology. There are many tools
available to help make sure web pages or documents are visually accessible for
people who are color blind or have impaired vision; there are grammar tools
available for people who have dyslexia or are learning the English
language. Closed captioning can be used
with videos and even Zoom calls to help students who are hard of hearing. There are many wonderful tools available to
assist in pursuit of accessibility.
Learning about global education was such an inspiring journey for me. It will help me formalize some of what is already a passion for me, but it also helped me learn about things I hadn’t even considered could be an aspect of librarianship and teaching. For example, I already work with several DEI initiatives and committees that help bring different perspectives, cultures and backgrounds into different parts of education, but I never considered actually connecting students via Zoom or other means to people around the world.
In particular, I have begun to consider how the 4 C’s (or 6!) can be incorporated and why that’s important. There is one institution in particular that I wish I could recreate as a library:
In particular, they have an entire Center for Civic Engagement lounge/classroom in the library. There are library communities devoted to problem-solving global issues, civic issues, and more. There are rooms for designing, telepresence rooms, and more. At the beginning of the video, there’s an image on the large screen in the lobby that shows where people are from.
I think what I found most inspiring about global education is how much room it has for empathy and collaboration. It’s a creative and worthy effort for our future populations. I also liked that it isn’t just about people; it’s about the environment and the future and how we can support the world around us, not just ourselves.
Global Connections
The Global Connections I found most valuable were the ones I made on a local level (to get started). I found that while through my observations, teachers seemed very communicative through means such as Twitter, I was not having the same luck with librarians, and since I do not use some social media such as Facebook, I am probably missing out in some great online communities. However, I am hopeful that my local connections will help me start branching out nationally and then globally, building my own little web of global librarians!
One of the books I have been reading on this topic has some tips regarding how I should present myself in order to join or create global networks, which I may need to work on:
“Be respectful but do not be shy.
Try to establish a cooperative connection and avoid being perceived as patronizing.
Leaders of international library development initiatives need to question what they bring to developing countries as outsiders.
Collective negotiation of timelines and schedules necessitates a calm approach, sensitivity, and flexibility (Constantinou et al., 2017).”
There were also a lot of resources I learned about this semester, such as the UN’s 17 sustainable global goals. Knowing about these resources is a great place to get started in building my own toolkit.
My Plan
I am planning to continue learning to be a global educator (and global learner) through library programming and networking. Through library school, conferences, webinars, and more, I have met and kept contact with librarians around the country (and even one currently practicing librarianship in China). My hope is that I can leverage these connections to pick their brains for more ideas and collaborations. Through my readings, I’m learning more about the technical and practical skills I will need to make the most of these connections, outlined in part above.
In researching how libraries can support global education, one of my big takeaways is that it largely requires cross-institutional work, or “boundary crossing.” One project in particular that drew on this used students and teachers to help the library form global library exhibits. According to Hickling-Hudson and Hepple (2020), this is part of a new field called “public pedagogy.” This is not the only way librarians can become involved, but it is a good place to start to bring multiple institutions together to help the public embrace global themes.
There are several instructors who work with their students on research for topics in different countries. I will contact them this year to see if we can display the student work outside the library in line with public pedagogy. Some of the research papers may not draw in attention, but one instructor in particular has a project regarding propaganda in different countries that I think could make an interesting and visually magnetic display.
Less concretely, I am looking into memberships that could assist the library in obtaining global resources. Back in the 1990s when the internet was becoming the electronic universe it is today, experts were examining how to support the “global village” it was creating. They found that education and library services might be at the core of this, especially in creating on- and off-ramps for all of the information available (Ballard, 1995). One of my favorite quotes about this is “A GVS (global village school) is a community of learners, not a place.” Ballard describes global education as preparing students to see connections between themselves and “their counterparts in other countries” and how that can lead to cooperation in the future.
Ballard (1995) also suggests that library’s are core to global education as opening electronic doorways to information and providing electronic access to databases and other digital resources. To that end, resources I already have access to that I will market to faculty through semesterly newsletters include our HeinOnline database which has a library of global constitutions, and Global Issues in Context which explores news and issues (both historical and current) around the world.
In particular, I am interested in the Centre for Global Education (centered in Northern Ireland) which includes a library of books, research, videos, music, articles, and more. This organization also has access to classroom support resources. The current issue is that I believe many of these resources are available in print only so I need to find a corresponding organization with either a larger amount of digital resources or something more local.
References
Ballard, D. W. (1995). The role of libraries in the global village. Library Software Review, 14(3).
Canstantinou, C., Miller, M. J., & Schlesinger, K. (2017). International librarianship: Developing professional, intercultural, and educational leadership. Suny Press.
Hickling-Hudson, A., & Hepple, E. (2020). Crossing the boundaries of imagination: The role of a public library exhibition in global learning for student teachers and teacher educators. Teaching and Teacher Education, 90(102916). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2019.102916
