Becoming Confident Teachers

With instruction now generally accepted as a core academic library function, librarians often want to learn more about teaching and instructional design. Here, Clare McGuinness, a part-time lecturer at the School of Information and Library Studies, University College, Dublin who has been teaching and researching information literacy for more than a decade, suggests strategies and methods for self-development and fostering a “teacher identity,” giving teaching librarians a greater sense of purpose and direction and the ability to clearly communicate their role to non-library colleagues and within the public sphere.

Becoming Confident Teachers: A Guide for Academic Librarians thoroughly examines the role of academic librarians in this time of changing responsibilities and expectations, and explores how you can communicate more effectively about your role in the public sphere. She describes major trends that are emerging in the teaching world of academic librarianship, and offers innovation suggestions. She also includes real-life perspectives from academic librarians, and identifies common problems in the classroom, calling them “confidence zappers.”