Abstract
Learning community programs play a critical role in developing and nurturing productive campus and community collaborations. Through reviewing the literature and reflecting on their own experiences, the authors illustrate how cross-disciplinary learning community partnerships have shaped collaborative initiatives among librarians and department faculty to advance student education. This case study also explores how learning community partnerships have provided professional development opportunities for educators in areas such as discussion-based teaching, reflective practice, anti-racist pedagogy, and the scholarship of teaching and learning. Benefits, challenges, and lessons learned from cultivating learning community partnerships are also discussed.
TopLiterature Review
As a collaborative initiative, a learning community is shaped by a community-of-practice framework. Wenger, McDermott, and Snyder (2002) define a community of practice as a group of people “who share a concern, set of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis’’ (p.4). Designed as a community of practice focusing on instructional initiatives, a learning community is a cross-disciplinary group of educators who engage in communication about teaching and learning across diverse subject areas. Learning communities provide a strong mechanism for increasing interest in pedagogy, engaging in the scholarship of teaching and learning, and fostering civic responsibility (Cox, 2001). As spaces for professional growth and development, learning communities also help to gradually facilitate holistic change within educational organizations (Cox, 2001; Bauer, Brazer, Van Lare, & Smith, 2013). Learning communities can be cohort-based or topic-based. Cohort-based learning communities are composed of members who share common experiences (such as new or senior educators) while topic-based learning communities focus on an area of interest to a broad range of participants (Bazeley, Waller, & Resnis, 2014). Mader and Gibson (2019) encourage librarian participation in learning communities. They note that such participation not only helps to build librarians’ knowledge about pedagogy, but also increases awareness among disciplinary faculty about the distinct expertise and perspectives librarians contribute to ongoing conversations and initiatives in teaching and learning.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Interdisciplinary: Characterized by the integration or synthesis of perspectives and approaches from more than one discipline.
Critical Information Literacy: A lens for information literacy which focuses on examining and dismantling oppressive structures within the information ecosystem and which impact information production, dissemination, access, and use.
Discussion-Based Teaching: The practice of utilizing instructional techniques to actively engage students in substantive, inclusive, and thoughtful conversation in the classroom.
Reflective Practice: A practice of self-introspection.
Quality Matters: An organization dedicated to promoting and improving the quality of online education and student learning.
Anti-Racist Pedagogy: Approaches to teaching which involve working to actively and explicitly dismantle structures of racism in the classroom, curriculum, and wider world, rather than simply focusing on racism as a subject of study.
Cross-Disciplinary: Characterized by the inclusion of more than one disciplinary practice or viewpoint.
Blended Learning: A method of teaching that integrates online and in-person instruction and provides students and teachers flexibility in designing learning experiences.
Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: The use of the tools and processes of scholarly research to analyze pedagogical practice and experience.
Critical Self-Reflection: The practice of uncovering, examining, and questioning one’s own assumptions and perspectives.