This document discusses the need to include inquiry into self as part of professional development. It argues that current frameworks treat workers as machines rather than humans. Focusing only on efficiency and performance measurement increases stress. The document recommends using tools like values inquiry, reflection, and action research to incorporate personal qualities, feelings, and perspectives. Including the self can provide benefits like leadership, values-based action, self-efficacy, and alignment between work and personal values. It asserts this approach is important to address issues like lack of time, inequalities, and prioritizing humanity over compliance.

1. The Self: Why We Need
To Include Inquiry into
Self in Professional
Development
Seminar 18/10/18

2. The Self in Professional
Development
Framework
Domain 1
Personal Development in Teaching
& Learning
Values, Emotions, Perspectives,
Approaches to Learning
Our Journey/Autobiography

3. Self
Complexity in thought, action,
emotion, beliefs
Notion that Self Matters
Notion that Self Impacts
Matters in our work as Library Staff
who teach

4. Shock & Distrust
That we are HUMAN
That being Human
MATTERS
That being “Human”
needs to include
light/shadow
Every bit of Self
involved in and in
service to Work
Control

5. And Still Shocked
Machine Model of Being
HEI & New PPM
Machine Model
What it means to be
‘at work’

6. New Public Management
(NPM)
Hood associates a number of
doctrines with NPM. These include
a focus on the measurement of
performance, a search for
efficiency and effectiveness, shift
to competition, cost cutting and
greater discipline in expenditure.
(Hood, 1991, 4-5)

7. Work
“The value of what is produced per hour
worked, is slowing across the rich world –
despite the constant measurement of
employee performance and
intensification of work routines that
makes more and more jobs barely
tolerable.”(Beckett, 2018, np)
“Stress … an overwhelming ‘to-do’ list …
[and] long hours sitting at a desk are
beginning to be seen by medical
authorities as akin to smoking.” (Beckett,
2018, np)
Can Work be ‘Fun’ and ‘Of Service’?

8. Even in HEIs & Libraries
“Many academics are simply unable to cope with
increased workloads and university strategies that
force them to be both dynamic teachers and
energetic researchers, but with no time to actually
do either role well.”(Christie, 2018)
“When we look at studies of academic stress, we
are struck by how many apparently diverse
situations identified as sources of stress are
actually about lack of time.”(Berg and Seebar,
2013, 2)
“Working as a librarian has been traditionally
considered a non-stressful profession; however,
the role of librarians has changed and expanded,
as they are no longer viewed only as keepers of
library collections.” (Petek, 2017, 128)

9. What’s the Cost?
“He probably just doesn’t have enough
time.... He’s probably too busy attending
meetings, and preparing budgets, and
making staff assessments, and doing all the
other things that professors have to do
nowadays instead of thinking”
(Berg and Seebar, 2013, 2)
When we are so busy what are we missing?

10. Why We Need to Include
the Self ?
“The administrative university is concerned
above-all with efficiency, a corporate value
which results in a time crunch, making
those of us subjected to it feel powerless.
So, talking about professors’ stress is
not self-indulgent; not talking about individual
professors plays into the corporate model.”
(Berg and Seebar, 2013, 4)

11. Why We Need to Include
the Self ?
Because we have to be more than just ‘busy’
and more than just ‘compliant’
We Need tools, approaches, prompts to recall us
to what actually matters.

12. When Are We Asked About
Self?
Job Descriptions/Recruitment/On-going
Development
– Rarely mention personal qualities
– Rarely address values, feelings, thinking
Not necessarily included in professional
Development.

13. What’s the Cost?
Not recognized or rewarded or enabled to
act in a values based/connected/whole
human way
Not allowed to be ‘human’ – Wrong/Right,
Know it All/Learning, Machine/Human,
Unit/Whole
Identity – Who I am? Who Am I serving? What Do
Really Care About?
Not having “ground” in our work.

14. How Can We Include the
Self?
• Values Inquiry
• Why we Became Library Staff?-Biography and
library philosophy statements
• Capturing the experience through Reflection
• Accepting the Choices
• Taking Responsibility for Our Selves

15. Approaches to
Including the Self
Action Research
– I am a researcher
– What I do is worthy of inquiry
– I can Inquire into my practice
Mc Niff states “ Action research is a term which refers to a practical
way of looking at your own work to check that it is as you would
like it to be. Because action research is done by you, the
practitioner, it is often referred to as practitioner based research;
and because it involves you thinking about and reflecting on your
work, it can also be called a form of self-reflective practice.”
(Mc Niff, 1997, 6)
Reflection: revisiting our experience, actively inquiring,
persistent exploration and wondering

16. L2L Emerging Tools
• Values Inquiry
• Journey & Self Audit
• Reflection & Diary
• Library Philosophy statements.

17. Challenge of Including
Self
Adult
Fitting in or not
Dis-Comfort
Discombobulation
Courage
Now what?

18. Benefits of Including the
Self
• Leadership
• Values Based Action
• Self Efficacy
• Alignment

19. Leadership
“People call for leadership because they feel unable to
do the difficult and challenging work of thinking about
how to move forward together” – (Sinclair, 2007, XII)
Find our role in service of what we value and want to
dedicate our time to
To take our place as teachers and educators
To address the inequalities,
To be ethical
To care for scholarship, scholarly record
To be critical
To place the human at the centre

20. Self Efficacy
An empowered state of action and
being. Its presence and its
strength relates to personal
practices of learning, affirmation
or not, and our sense of how we
and our practice is valued.

21. What/Who Am I?
“Craftsmanship names an
enduring, basic human impulse,
the desire to do a job well for its
own sake.”
Richard Sennett

22. References
• Berg, M. and Seebar, B. K. (2013). The slow professor: Challenging the culture of speed in the academy.
Transformative Dialogues: Teaching and Learning Journal, 6(3), 1-7.
• Beckett, A. ( 2018). Post-work: the radical idea of a world without jobs. The Guardian [online], Available from:
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jan/19/post-work-the-radical-idea-of-a-world-without-jobs.
Birch. T. (2015). A model for reflective practice in libraries . [PowerPoint] Available from:
http://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/librarian_pubs/25 [Accessed 17 August 2018].
• Christie, S. (2018). Don’t pity stressed students too much –
academics have it worse. Times Higher Education [online], Available
from: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/blog/dont-pity-stressed-students-too-much-academics-have-it-
worse#survey-answer. [accessed 13 August 2018]
Fleming, P. (2017). The death of homo economicus: Work, debt and the myth of endless accumulation. London:
Pluto Press.
• Hood, C. (1991). A public management for all seasons? Public Administration, 69(1), 3-19.
• McNiff, J. (2002). Action research for professional development: Concise advice for new action researchers.
Dorset: September Books.
• Petek, M. (2018). Stress among reference library staff in academic and public libraries. Reference Services Review,
46(1), 128-145.
• Sinclair A. (2007). Leadership for the disillusioned: Moving beyond myths and heroes to leading that liberates.
Crows Nest: Allen and Urwin.
• Beckett, A. ( 2018). Post-work: the radical idea of a world without jobs. The Guardian [online], Available from:
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jan/19/post-work-the-radical-idea-of-a-world-without-jobs. [Accessed
17 August 2018]

23. Thank You