Integral Pedagogy in LIS Education

LIS educators have an obligation to assist burgeoning LIS practitioners and scholars in developing field competency and enacting their visages into the LIS industry. Our work concerns care for the whole person of our students. Student well-being has experienced heightened consideration and conversation in academia since 2020. Masters level LISprograms are not immune to these discussions, or the student, faculty, and campus administrator concerns—retention rates, student mental health—that warrant them. Campuses actively promote services and resources aimed to help students that are in crisis, coping with an aspect of neurodivergence, or another condition—chronic or undiagnosed. Since 2019 I have experienced increasing levels of three student behaviors that cause me concern: 1) perfectionism, 2) anxiety, and 3) validation-seeking. Wholly ignored, or mitigated simply by pedagogical discipline, these behaviors persist in classroom, distend beyond a student’s time at campus, and eventually permeate sectors of LIS. Proven teaching and learning strategies—active-learning, grading rubrics, gamification modules—increase students’ immersion with course content and assuage student coursework anxieties. However, teaching and learning tools cannot holistically impart the needed competencies for an LIS professional to our students. Conversely culture of care pedagogies solely center student inclusiveness and belonging to promote a shared education community. Integralpedagogy provides LIS educators with a model that integrates both teaching and learning best practices and culture of care pedagogies to promote student self-regulation of concerning behaviors, self-actualization via a commitment to gaining LIS field competencies during their studies, and continued life-long discovery during their career.