Learning about learning rather than about teaching

This paper draws on the experiences of the author during the past fifteen years of working primarily with school, college, university and health librarians, but with occasional forays into the public and special library domains. It is written by an educationalist and teacher trainer with an interest in library development; someone who has never run a library but who has researched into them and has supported library-based action research; someone who is not a librarian but who has designed and facilitated innumerable in-service courses for librarians. The paper argues that teaching in libraries is too often mired in a traditional view of teaching as informationgiving; that sessions run by librarians often actively flout many of the principles that underpin effective adult learning (usually with the best of intentions and informed by the need to cram in a lot into a short space of time); that teaching courses for librarians usually focus on practical teaching techniques to the detriment of an understanding of learning theory. This paper asks what is fundamental to the enhancement of librarians as teachers? It argues that anyone who teaches needs to begin with insights into learning. Learning theory is not an optional extra. The paper then explores some of the relevant theories that can be used to support good teaching in libraries because "there is nothing so practical as good theory". Finally, the paper looks at some different models of librarian in-service support used by the author in different contexts. “It makes no sense to decide how one is going to teach before one has made some study of how people learn.” (Sotto 1994) “...teaching is not just a practical skill which requires no thought and no education, only training.” (Hammersley 1991)