Viewing our practice through a different lens: A reflection on participating in a reciprocal peer review process

Abstract

Information literacy instruction and teaching is among the increasing variety of roles which librarians undertake (Vassilakaki & Moniarou-Papaconstantinou, 2015). However, as teaching development is a missing component in the majority of library courses, many in the profession learn skills when in post (Levene & Frank, 1993; Alabi & Weare, 2014). Apart from learning by doing, approaches to in- job development can include training programmes, short courses and a range of other methods including colleague shadowing, professional reading, speaking at library conferences and peer observation of teaching (Bewick & Corrall, 2010). In this article we concentrate on peer observation, which is a popular development tool (Bell & Mladenovic, 2008), explore its use in libraries, and reflect on our personal experience of participating in a reciprocal peer observation arrangement newly introduced to our team which has responsibility for Information Literacy skills teaching.