What I Learned-ed 3: What are you saying?

I wanted to tell you about a paper by Cameron Hoffman and Sarah Polkinghorne. The session was entitled “Discourse identity and practice: analyzing librarians’ conversations about information literacy and the social web.”

They analyzed posts to the email list ILI-L (an email discussion list for Information Literacy Instruction Librarians). The idea behind the study was that by examining how we talk about something we can often identify the assumptions and motivations behind the text. Hoffman and Polkinghorne considered what instruction librarians said about the use of the social web (Facebook, MySpace, Youtube etc.) in information literacy instruction.

I wasn’t surprised by their results, though I am certainly concerned. Although librarians are adopting social software for instruction, their concerns, as expressed on the list, aren't always about pedagogy; rather it was often about control. First, librarian posters frequently portrayed their clients as consumers not learners, and then themselves as service providers. (Wait a second, isn’t this list about teaching? Why does it suddenly sound like marketing?)

Hoffman and Polkinghorne then identified four themes in this discourse:

• Tips, tricks and techniques – Librarians weren’t really interested in pedagogy (learning theory and practice). They wanted tips on “making them listen” etc.
  
• Moral language – Wikedpedia is pure evil, we are gatekeepers to the good.
• Anxiety – There is a lot of anxiety around social web and instruction, and the future role of librarians.
• Sensitivity to new technologies – We think we need to be masters of the social web. (I guess the joke is on librarians: no one masters the social web.)

I’m over simplifying their research, but what I began to ask "is it really about the social web or is it whether librarians know how to teach?" Are wikis a tool in your teacher kit or is that the sum of your game? If you don’t understand teaching, then the gimmicks will only take you so far. But if you understand learners and learning, and when the social web can be engaged to foster learning, then you really have little to fear.

We need to talk about this more...