Evidence Summary
Academic Librarians Perceive Duration and Social Interaction as
Important Elements for Professional Development
A Review of:
Attebury, R. I.
(2017). Professional development: A qualitative study of high impact
characteristics affecting meaningful and transformational learning. The
Journal of Academic Librarianship, 43(3), 232-241. http://dx.doi.org//10.1016/j.acalib.2017.02.015
Reviewed by:
Hilary Bussell
Assistant Professor/Social Sciences Librarian
The Ohio State University Libraries
Columbus, Ohio, United States of America
Email: bussell.21@osu.edu
Received: 2 Feb. 2018 Accepted: 27 Apr. 2018
2018 Bussell.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative
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same or similar license to this one.
Abstract
Objective – To
understand the characteristics of meaningful and transformational professional
development experiences of academic librarians.
Design – Qualitative
analysis of in-depth interviews using a hermeneutic phenomenological approach.
Setting – Public
and private colleges and universities in the United States of America.
Subjects – 10
academic librarians.
Methods – The
researcher selected 10 participants using an initial survey distributed through
national library electronic mail lists. Two rounds of semi-structured in-depth
interviews were conducted over Skype during fall 2014 and spring 2015. The
first round of interviews began with background questions about participants’
careers, then moved on to questions about professional development experiences
that were meaningful and/or transformational. The responses from this first
round of interviews were used to develop questions for a second round of
interviews with the same participants. After completing the interviews, the
researcher sent follow-up emails to participants in order to gather feedback on
summaries and interpretations of interviews. The transcribed interviews were
used to create an initial set of codes and then imported into NVivo for
analysis using a hermeneutic phenomenological approach.
Main Results – All
participants reported on professional development experiences that they found
to be meaningful. Half of the participants discussed professional development
experiences that were transformational for their perceptions and practice of
librarianship. The themes of duration and interaction were identified in every
participant’s discussions of meaningful or transformational professional
development. Reflection, discomfort, and self-awareness were also identified as
prominent themes.
Conclusion – The study
found that two of the most important ingredients for meaningful and
transformational professional development are activities that are sustained
over time and that include social interaction. The participants perceived
long-term interactive professional development activities as opportunities to
identify and address gaps in their professional knowledge, which benefits
themselves and their organizations. On-the-job learning, single-theme workshops
or institutes, and professional committee work were particularly promising
forms of meaningful professional development.
The author recommends that academic librarians who are
interested in meaningful or transformational professional development look for
activities that are sustained and interactive, that promote reflection, and
that provide opportunities to increase self-awareness of gaps in knowledge.
Facilitators of professional development activities should include interactive
components and ensure that participants have a chance to stay in contact after
the event in order to encourage long-term interaction and reflection.
Commentary
Librarian professional development has garnered
significant interest in recent years. With rapid changes in the library
landscape, continuing education and skill development will continue to be
essential for librarians (ACRL Professional Development Committee, 2000). A
number of recent studies explore professional development for specific areas of
academic librarianship, such as information literacy (Shamchuk,
2015) and data librarianship (Conrad, Shorish,
Whitmore, & Hswe, 2017). Building on previous
work (Attebury, 2015), this study uses adult
educational theory to identify characteristics of meaningful and
transformational professional development across academic librarianship.
The form developed by Letts et al. (2007) was used to
evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of this study. The purpose and
justification for this study are clearly articulated, and the author grounds
her research question and findings in adult education theory. Hermeneutical
phenomenology is an appropriate research design, as it can be used to interpret
and develop practices and policies around a social phenomenon based on
participants’ first-hand descriptions. The author describes how hermeneutical
phenomenological techniques were used to enhance the analytical rigor of the
study, and she includes a number of transcript excerpts in order to more fully
illustrate the importance of the themes. The fact that the descriptions and
interpretations of the interviews were provided to participants for feedback
increases the credibility of the results.
The main weakness of this paper lies in the lack of
descriptive clarity of the sampling and data collection methods. Although the
author mentions that the interview participants were purposively selected, she
does not provide the criteria for selection. Further, she does not indicate
whether 10 participants was determined to be an appropriate sample size in
advance, or whether sampling was done until redundancy in data was reached.
More discussion of the purpose and development of the second round of
interviews would also be helpful. Specifically, it is not clear whether these
interviews were conducted to address gaps and misunderstandings of the content
covered in the first round of interviews or to cover additional content. It is
also unclear whether individual sets of follow-up questions were constructed
for each participant. Finally, the reader’s overall understanding of how the
findings follow from the data would be enhanced if the interview questions were
included as appendices at the end of the paper. The lack of transparency of
methods may cause problems for anyone wanting to reproduce this study.
This study is significant in its focus on adult
educational theory, particularly the constructs of meaningfulness and
transformational learning, in exploring the professional development
experiences of academic librarians. With limited time and money, librarians
face a daunting task in choosing among the plethora of professional development
activities available. This study will help librarians and their organizations
to know how to identify opportunities that are likely to be the most impactful
for their practice.
References
ACRL Professional Development Committee. (2000). ACRL statement on professional development. Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/acrl/publications/whitepapers/acrlstatement
Attebury, R. I.
(2015). Adult education concepts in library professional development
activities. New Library World, 116(5/6),
302–315. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/NLW-08-2014-0100
Conrad, S., Shorish, Y., Whitmire, A. L.,
& Hswe, P. (2017). Building professional
development opportunities in data services for academic librarians. IFLA
Journal, 43(1), 65-80. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0340035216678237
Letts, L., Wilkins, S., Law, M., Stewart, D., Bosch, J., &
Westmorland, M. (2007). Critical review
form - qualitative studies (version 2.0). Retrieved from https://srs-mcmaster.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Critical-Review-Form-Qualitative-Studies-Version-2-English.doc
Shamchuk, L. (2015).
Professional development on a budget: Facilitating learning opportunities for
information literacy instructors. Partnership: The Canadian Journal of
Library & Information Practice & Research, 10(1), 1-14.
http://dx.doi.org/10.21083/partnership.v10i1.3437