Foreword

I

have been extraordinarily lucky to work closely with educational developers for most
of my career, and I have always been struck by the similarities in the space we occupy
in the academic enterprise. We both inhabit the space where the boundaries between
disciplines are at their most permeable. We both use our expertise to work with faculty
to introduce students to their own disciplines’ ways of thinking and knowing, not to our
own disciplines of librarianship and educational development. We both have developed a
facility for asking the questions that allow us to understand another’s disciplinary thinking
and, from our own liminal perspective, to translate those concepts so that they may be
understood by novices and outsiders, whether those are students or fellow participants in
a faculty learning community.
But even with all this common ground, there has been relatively little shared conversation. This became obvious to me during the introduction of the ACRL Framework for
Information Literacy for Higher Education. In many of the discussions, librarians appeared
surprised by threshold concepts and unaware of their long history in educational development circles. Similarly, much of the work on assessment of information literacy appears
independent of parallel work from educational developers. The introduction of the Framework has been an impetus for many of us to learn new things, and in this learning we need
to look beyond the library and connect to larger conversations as learners and teachers.
Educational developers and librarians have much to learn from each other, and this book
is a giant leap in the right direction.
The authors are international leaders in educational development, whether or not that
phrase is part of their current position description. Some have formal roles within teaching and learning centres, while others drive change in their disciplines or through large
organizations. The chapters they contributed to this book provide everything from road
maps for changing institutional cultures to examples of particular strategies in particular
contexts that may be easily adapted to our teaching. The book is effervescent with potential to transform our work in everything from our relations with students to our role in
developing teaching cultures on campus. There are insights into general topics like the
need to restructure reward systems and very particular considerations of teaching. The
questions sparked are deep—“What is our signature pedagogy?” could be the focus of a
book on its own—and each could be the nucleus of a faculty learning community either
at the library level or more usefully with others in the institution.
As I was reading the book, the word that kept coming to mind was belonging. This
is another area where there is some commonality between librarians and those involved
in educational development. At many colleges and universities, we both don’t quite fit
the structure of the institution. In some places neither of us are quite the same as other
faculty in terms of professional expectations, support, remuneration, or visibility; our work
doesn’t look quite the same as that of “regular” faculty. Sometimes there is an undertone of
“outsiderness,” of wanting to belong. This may be what makes us most effective because we
can empathize more deeply with students who work their way into belonging—in higher
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Foreword

education, in a discipline, in a peer group. Faculty learning communities, communities
of practice, collaborations, conferences are all ways that we can belong more as learners.
Students as Partners, Decoding the Disciplines, and Signature Pedagogies are all part
of helping students feel that sense of belonging more deeply, of becoming more active
participants in their academic communities.
I have recently moved to a city where gardening is taken very seriously, in part because
the climate supports growth and in part because there is a latent expectation that if you
live here you will contribute to the community by, at the very least, having an interesting
front yard. Getting to know the neighbours has often resulted from a brief pause to admire
a spectacular rhododendron or a carefully composed rockery; questions are met with
generous advice and occasionally cuttings or promises of seeds. Although neighbourhood
walks frequently take the same route, each time the gardens look a little different and each
time I see something different in them, depending on where I am in my own planning.
For me this book provokes a similar feeling. The authors, all experts in their fields, are
providing us with a look into their gardens. On some visits we may be looking for particular tips, on others for ways of setting up conditions for growing, and sometimes we may
just be craving the inspiration that may come from contemplating someone else’s approach
to a common situation. This is a book for returning to frequently under varying needs and
conditions. It is a collection of “over the fence” conversations that may lead to similarly
generative discussions with colleagues involved in educational development closer to home.
It is also a book that opens up pathways for librarians to contribute to wider academic
discussions around learning and teaching. As I read the chapters, I saw not only where I
could apply the approaches in my own work, but also where my expertise as a librarian
could enrich the approaches for others. The work provides interesting glimpses as to how
librarians are perceived by leaders in educational development and shows that there is
ample room for us in these communities of learning and practice. Roxå, Mårtensson, and
Alveteg write about the need for cluster-to-cluster communication to leverage communities
of practice to change teaching culture.1 Librarians are ideal participants in this endeavour,
not only because we are adept at translating between other academic cultures, but also
because we have expertise in teaching and learning to contribute. Often, we see a wider
range of learners than others, we see different learning bottlenecks, and we see patterns
across groups of learners that others can’t. Our participation in educational development
initiatives creates opportunities to change teaching culture not only in the library, but also
through our interactions with others on campus, across the institution.
This book is an entry point into some of the most interesting conversations in higher
education. It is an example of active learning with text, proposing questions and challenging assumptions, providing examples from parallel situations and inviting us to make them
our own. Engaging with the ideas proposed by the authors may transform your thinking
about learning and teaching and your teaching about thinking and learning. Enjoy!
—Margy MacMillan

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Building Teaching and Learning Communities

Note
1. Torgny Roxå, Katarina Mårtensson, and Mattias Alveteg, “Understanding and Influencing Teaching
and Learning Cultures at University: A Network Approach,” Higher Education 62, no. 1 (July 2011):
99–111, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-010-9368-9.

Bibliography
Roxå, Torgny, Katarina Mårtensson, and Mattias Alveteg. “Understanding and Influencing Teaching and
Learning Cultures at University: A Network Approach.” Higher Education: The International Journal
of Higher Education and Educational Planning 62, no. 1 (July 2011): 99–111. https://doi.org/10.1007
/s10734-010-9368-9.

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