Philosophy

In my approach to teaching, I strive to create a learning environment that enables community, invites rhetorical pluralism, and gives student critical and creative agency. 

I believe research is fundamentally about problem solving. I facilitate embodied, active learning experiences and encourage students to recognize their own agency as researchers and information creators. Practically, an emphasis on problem solving in the classroom means highlighting the importance of developing specific, researchable questions related to the problem(s) students need to address. Through scaffolded, project-based learning, I engage students in the process of finding information and analyzing the research tools and environments that they encounter. 

I address how knowledge is actively shaped by socio-political and economic systems. By introducing the various socio-political and economic contexts that effect what we know and how information is “valued,” students evaluate sources alongside the larger systems in which information is created, shared, and interpreted. Instead of presenting binaries of “good” or “bad” sources, I teach students to examine why information was created and how it relates to their own research purpose. I focus on transferable, interdisciplinary research skills that students can carry use to meet future research needs in and outside of college. 

I strive to create community in my classrooms by acknowledging the limits of the codified education environments in which we interact. I present academic research environments as one of many ways of looking at the landscape of knowledge and use student domain expertise as a touchstone in order to emphasize that we are all experts in different arenas. This approach diffuses library anxiety through a collective acknowledgment of the complex and rarified nature of academic research processes and environments. This also invites critical conversations about information (in)equity and knowledge production processes. 

The different pedagogical roles I occupy and the position of the library—as always intersecting with and somewhat outside of the traditional structures and hierarchies in other academic departments—has shaped my overall teaching philosophy and has also impacted how I think about classroom power dynamics, affect, and engagement. As a guest in other’s classrooms, I collaborate closely with faculty in other disciplines to ensure that my instruction is integrated into and re-enforced by the overall curriculum. My perspective as a disciplinary outsider is pedagogically useful in that it helps me connect with students and bring specific disciplinary research practices into conversation with student experiences.