What I've Learned about Professional Learning

Craig Gibson/Professor & Professional Development Coordinator/The Ohio State University Libraries/Drake Institute Faculty Fellow for Mentoring

"In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future, while the learned find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists." - Eric Hoffer

Emerging from the Pandemic

It is, almost certainly, an unusual circumstance to write about professional learning as a separate topic, apart from the myriad of specialized seminars, webcasts, webinars, short courses, institutes, and other venues and formats for advanced learning in a profession.    We saw these many options in overwhelming abundance during the past two years of pandemic-inflected work lives, with teleworking or remote routines as the norm.   We saw face-to-face events—conferences, workshops, and institutes—converted to virtual formats,  and some gained traction (and some not) with their intended audiences.    Despite the shift to online or hybrid formats, the hyper specialization within our library profession continued.   Opportunities abounded, as advertised on listservs, websites, Twitter feeds, and in organizational forums, for continued learning in archival work, intellectual access and description, data visualization, geospatial projects, digital scholarship projects, information literacy and virtual instruction, and reference and research support.   Leadership training appeared regularly as well, in addition to engagements of various types on issues of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging.    The offerings were legion.   

The return to more face-to-face events, but with many examples of virtual or hybrid opportunities, has caused me to ponder the whole landscape of what we call “professional development” in libraries.   How to engage in sense-making as professionals, among this welter of opportunities? Do we construct tracks or thematic threads among these opportunities?  How do we make the best choices among them?  Can we learn from them in a more coherent way that benefits ourselves, and also our organizations?   Do these professional development opportunities create real value, or are they just “check boxes” to note on an annual report or a resume? Can they be organized collectively to augment organizational learning?    These are questions many are reflecting on across academic,  public, and school libraries, as we ponder our post-pandemic work lives, and consider possibilities upon returning to whatever “normal” looks like in the future.

The Larger Context

These questions are compelling ones, but I am stepping back from them to offer a broader view of professional learning, and more generally, the library profession.   I take for inspiration some readings of several key texts outside the library field, because I have found our own LIS literature offers only rare examples of what we need to think about collectively about this ever-more-important topic.    I also relate here some highlights from conversations with colleagues, who have informed my own thinking in this arena.   I also relate this particular topic of “professional learning” to the separate but related one of “organizational learning, ”  previously discussed in another post:  The Future of Organizational Learning - by Craig Gibson (substack.com) . 

At the outset, I want to point out an important distinction between “professional development” and “professional learning.”   For many years, the former term was used to convey a continuing focus on gaining competencies, knowledge, skills, and awareness of new trends, technologies, and areas of practice, through a series of discrete updates. These were one-off events designed to offer professional continuing education credits (CEUs), certifications, or other external signs of completion of a particular series of events signifying new knowledge or skills gained.    This professional development model is familiar across all professions.  Certainly, in the library field we’ve used the term frequently and have sought to incentivize colleagues to participate in it. However, over time, a newer term, professional learning, has begun to supplant the previous one.  The reasons are complex, but underpinning it are theories of adult learning and ideas about professional growth spanning a career, through developing the self individually but also in community with others.   The shift from “development” to “learning” also suggests a change from a deficit model—where the individual lacks expertise, is deficient in some way—to an empowerment model—where the individual brings pre-existing knowledge to a new learning opportunity and engages in more complex learning and self-development, with others.    Learning in a community and building shared knowledge together is now the new aspiration—whether in cohorts, learning communities, reading circles, communities of practice, or other groups intended to honor the expertise and knowledge of each group member, but amplifying that expertise and knowledge communally, and building new understandings and opening up new questions for the group to investigate together.

The shift from professional development to professional learning is more than a semantic one.  It signifies an important principle, that of “self-authorship,” drawn from adult learning theory (Kegan & Lahey; Baxter-Magolda).  Individual professionals create their own meanings and are responsible for their own identity formation over time, whether working with a mentor, with colleagues in a cohort, through attending formal training, or through multiple workplace conversations and informal learning opportunities as part of their daily practice.    It is the learning, and continuous learning that matters, not the externally mandated “development” requirement for CEUs, certifications, or other formal requirements.      Professionals control their own destiny, not through pure autonomy, but through choices over time, with others,  that inform their practice, and their professional growth.   They reconstruct their mental universes in concert with colleagues and continue to ask questions about what they don’t know, and need to learn to become better in their professional lives.    It’s the question-formulation, and reflections upon those questions at pivotal points, uncertainties, and liminal spaces, that create opportunities for “self-authorship” as a professional. 

In our library field, we are adept at providing multiple learning opportunities, through conferences, webinars, institutes, and workshops, but we don’t provide often enough those opportunities for self-reflection, and a visioning of self-authoring according to the theory of Kegan and Lahey.   We also don’t amplify grassroots knowledge and practice sufficiently (though the recently developed Library Collective conference is a welcome departure), and we don’t provide enough interdisciplinary or inter-functional professional learning opportunities. We too often remain locked within functional silos that impede real learning across our organizations, and across our profession.    We need to take note of other models developed by Student Life organizations, Centers for Teaching and Learning, and grassroots organizations in our localities.  Professional learning communities, sometimes called faculty learning communities, are a well-known venue for faculty learning and interdisciplinary conversations about teaching improvement;  research cohorts are another model; in local communities, public libraries offer a myriad of opportunities for librarians to participate in community organizations or other groups where they can develop the “self-authoring” mindset more completely.

A Potential Future Model

One scholar who has investigated professional learning across professions in depth, Ann Webster-Wright, found that the most effective professional learning is not accomplished through externally imposed “add on” events or through didactic workshops or lectures.   Instead, based on interviews with professionals in a variety of fields, she learned that authentic professional learning occurs through both informal and formal learning opportunities, and is situated, contextual, social, and sustained over time.   Real professional learning occurs through a seamless blend of conversation, questioning, training, mentorship, reading, and listening within the context of the work environment, though formal training opportunities may augment those ongoing learning opportunities that are “moment to moment” and ongoing.     Webster-Wright’s investigations suggest that asking about the lived experiences of professionals—what works best for them, where have they learned most deeply in the past—should inform ongoing plans for professional learning.     Compliance mandates for training are out, while calls to commitment around genuinely engaging learning where individuals or cohorts themselves are empowered to investigate and learn together, become the norm.  

Webster-Wright suggests that one specific method for professional learning is action research—a kind of practical investigation into one’s practice, one’s work, based on a gap, a hypothesis, some informal data collection, and an inquiry into an improvement process and a change in practice—will benefit most to amplify both individual and collective learning.  She also describes “professional practice knowledge”—as a complex array of personal traits, ethical codes, technical skills, situational and propositional knowledge, and professional judgment—that develops within the context of professional growth.   She also refers to the metaphor of  “professional knowledge landscapes” to convey this organic complexity—these are profession-wide landscapes for managers and leaders to ponder.   These “landscapes” are fields of activity that can be integrative based on interests of individuals that also amplify strategic goals of the organization.     

What are the implications for this perspective on professional learning (as individuals)  and for organizational learning?   How can the “professional knowledge landscapes” described in Webster-Wright’s research be turned into specific programs for individual professional learning that also build up organizational knowledge and expertise?  

Here are my initial thoughts:

·       Individuals develop multi-year professional learning plans.  For some academic librarians, this is already a part of promotion and tenure planning, but such plans could be strengthened by more reflective activities that knit together what is learned from conferences, workshops, webinars, and meeting publication and presentation requirements.    A reflection portfolio or journal as integrative learning activity may be one option for meeting this goal.

·       Groups or cohorts of colleagues do action research.   The action research identified as crucial by Webster-Wright for individual professionals to iterate for improvement, through identifying a gap in knowledge or skill, can be adapted for cohorts within organizations through self-studies; reviews of practices, programs, or services; with plans for iterative improvement based on ongoing group reflection.   Cohorts of teaching librarians, for example,  can use the well-known “lesson study” model employed in K-12 to improve teaching practices through group analysis of lessons. 

·       Libraries implement formal or informal mentoring programs.  Mentoring for professional learning is well-understood as a crucial element in all professions and occupations.   Many libraries already offer informal mentoring programs to new hires, in order to help orient them and guide them initially through the mazes of organizational processes and policies, or to help early career librarians gain their footing more firmly over time.   Libraries could build on this approach with more sustained and systematic mentoring programs, either individual or cohort-based, that span careers, and in which all librarians participate, at whatever stage of professional life.   The mutual learning that occurs for both mentors and mentees in itself is one option for deepening organizational learning through reflective practice in collegial settings across an organization.

·       Librarians conduct research and publish findings in larger groups, with a firmer grounding in empiricism and collaborations beyond our field   Our LIS literature is often too case-study-based, and too often addresses particular processes for improvement, or a particular practice in one organization or in one setting, or is a study with small effect sizes that aren’t generalizable.   Of course, there are notable exceptions: the multi-year, multi-institutional Project Information Literacy studies of recent years, for example.    However, in general, we should position our findings from professional learning in local libraries, gained through action research and larger research initiatives, into collaborative ventures with others, in consortia and in professional associations focused on evidence-based approaches to practice.  We need to build toward research that allows for meta-analyses in the future.  We should aim for testing hypotheses, and using data verification, data sharing, and transparency measures such as those offered by the Open Science Framework.   We also need to avail ourselves of  more opportunities for interdisciplinary testing of research questions where librarians and libraries  could participate.  Examples here include the Adversarial Collaboration initiative at the University of Pennsylvania; and the recent Stanford Mega-study that identified interventions to promote civic discourse and democratic norms.   These are the kinds of larger research opportunities where our long-held values of intellectual freedom, openness to ideas, and outreach to many communities and constituents can help us amplify our own professional learning.

A through line for all of these forms of professional learning is what Adam Grant calls a “challenge network”—each individual is responsible for creating a network of colleagues, sources, associations, and influential others who are committed to critical inquiry, skepticism, viewpoint diversity, and challenging assumptions.   Ongoing professional learning unfolds best within that kind of network, where orthodoxies are challenged, where re-thinking is the norm, and where flourishing builds an arc of growth over time. 

[This article is adapted from an original version published on the OSU Libraries’ Teaching & Learning blog, April 6, 2021, at:  Reconsidering Professional Learning | OSUL Teaching & Learning Blog]

Sources

Grant, Adam.  “Why You Need a Challenge Network,”  Knowledge at Wharton, Why You Need a ‘Challenge Network’ - Knowledge at Wharton (upenn.edu)

Baxter Magolda, M. B. Making their own way: Narratives for transforming higher education to promote self-development. Sterling, VA: Stylus, 2001.

Baxter Magolda, M.B.  Authoring your life: Developing an internal voice to navigate life’s challenges. Sterling, VA: Stylus, 2009.

Kegan, Robert, and Lisa Lahey.   An Everyone Culture: Becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organization.   Cambridge: Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation, 2016.

Kegan, Robert, and Lisa Lahey.  Immunity to Change: How to Overcome It and Unlock the Potential in Yourself and Your Organization.   Cambridge: Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation, 2009.

Webster-Wright, Ann.   “Reframing Professional Development Through Understanding Authentic Professional Learning,” Review of Educational Research, vol. 79, no. 2 (June 2009), pp. 702-739.  DOI: 10.3102/0034654308330970

Organizations

The League of Awesome Librarians.   The League of Awesome Librarians

The Library Collective.   The Library Collective.

Project Information Literacy.  Project Information Literacy (projectinfolit.org)

Stanford University.  Home | Strengthening Democracy Challenge

University of Pennsylvania Arts & Sciences.  Adversarial Collaboration Project | Adversarial Collaboration Research Center (upenn.edu)