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title: Experiments towards a Pedagogy of Creativity and Learning in the Library

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# Experiments towards a Pedagogy of Creativity and Learning in the Library

Amos Blanton - Draft 5 Jan. 2023

## Abstract

Since 2020, Aarhus Public Libraries and the author have been exploring the question of how to create the conditions for library educators to engage in a dialog between theory and practice that could enable librarians to develop their own pedagogy of creativity and hands-on learning. Over 14 months of biweekly meetings, 5 librarian educators led by the author studied and reflected on the pedagogy of creative learning and tinkering, and ran two hands-on workshops for adults and children. Documentation from those workshops is included as well as analysis of opportunities and challenges relevant to the goals of the project. The author suggests that library scholarship on serendipity might be a useful framework for situating existing learning theory in the context of playful and creative learning in the library. 

## Introduction

In *A new model for the public library in the knowledge and experience society*, Jochumsen et al. (2010) articulate a need for libraries to support learning as "a dialogue-oriented process that bases itself on the user's own experiences and their wish to define their own learning needs." This kind of learning "takes place in an informal environment – it happens through play, artistic activities and many other activities." Towards this end, they describe a need to "translate the model’s more abstract concepts into a concrete reality." 

What Jochumsen et. al. describe is not so much a set of discrete goals as it is a culture shift in the way libraries think about learning and how they serve their communities. Rather than facilitating the consumption of facts, they suggest that libraries could become a place where new ideas are created, playfully and in community.  This is a tectonic shift. Librarians must transition from enforcing quietness by holding a finger against their lips and "shushing" to attempting to *elicit* the citizen's creativity and self-expression through a collection of skills that are the exact opposite of "shushing." Their role has changed from the prevention of creativity and self-expression (at both the individual and collective level) to creating the conditions for it.

Aarhus Public Libraries, co-sponsor of this research, have been working on developing "a library for people and not books" (Østergård, 2019) since their flagship library, Dokk1, was conceived a decade ago. Inspired by human-centered design, their vision stated that "The library of the future should be co-created with the citizens" (Bech-Petersen, 2016). This is done through an ongoing dialog between the librarians and citizens, the principles of which are described in *Design Thinking for Libraries: A Toolkit for Patron Centered Design* (IDEO, 2015), which they co-authored with the design firm IDEO and Chicago Public Libraries.

This work describes investigations into the question of how to develop and facilitate hands-on creative activities in the library, a subset of the broader challenge described by Jochumsen et. al. and taken up by Aarhus Public Libraries. The research question is: How can we create the conditions for a dialog between theory and practice that can enable library educators to develop a pedagogy of creativity and learning in the library? 

One can attempt to tackle this problem at different time scales. For example, one can devise a monthlong project to teach people how to use 3D printers creatively and try to align it to some of Jochumsen et. al.'s criteria. When the next project comes along with its own funding and its own particular goals and ideals, often shaped by the preferences of the funders, librarian educators must do their best to adapt to it. The long term risk of such a method is that the there is little time left for reflecting on and articulating insights gained across different projects in order to generate a theory of learning and creativity in the library that is robust and generalizable.  Such a theory could be called a pedagogy.  A pedagogy of creativity and learning in the library is a means for developing an answer to the need that Jochumsen et. al. describe at the scale of years and decades. 

As Dubin (1976) described it, "A theory tries to make sense out of the observable world by ordering the relationships among elements that constitute the theorist's focus of attention in the real world" (in Weick, 1989). A pedagogy is a theory of learning that clarifies what kind of learning is valuable and why, and how best to create the conditions for it to occur (‘Pedagogy’, 2022). Like any theory that is useful for practitioners, it must enable them to make sense of what they observe, guide their interventions, and help them articulate why they do what they do for the stakeholders around them. In addition, it must provide a shared language with which to communicate with other library educators, and to collectively ask and answer subtle questions that enable the continuing evolution of the pedagogy.

Most librarians have little if any coursework addressing learning theories of any kind, as these are rarely offered as part of library science education programs (Montgomery, 2015, p.19). Most existing pedagogy is strongly tied to formal learning environments like school, where learning tends to be compulsory and planned around a predetermined set of standards and goals. As contexts for learning, libraries, as non-formal learning environments, share more similarities with museums than schools. Both receive learners of all ages, often in family groups. And both must try to engage learners in ways that they find relevant and meaningful or they won't come back.

In exploring what sort of actions and structure could support the development of a pedagogy of creativity and learning in the library, my colleagues and I used a "try it and see" approach, utilizing inductive (Eisenhardt et al., 2016) and abductive reasoning, with the goal that theory would emerge from the practice through collective exploration and reflection. Over the course of 14 months the author met biweekly online or in-person with 5 experienced library educators in what was called the "Creative Learning Research Group" (hereafter referred to as CLRG). Each educator brought a variety of skills and knowledge, including experience design, the facilitation of creativity through crafting with small children, to the use of complex digital fabrication tools. All had experience with Design Thinking for Libraries (IDEO, 2015).

In the course of those meetings we explored content (in the form of readings about various learning theories) and processes (in the form of reflective practices and conversations) which had the potential to be useful and relevant in the context of the library. On two occasions we facilitated open-ended playful learning experiences together, and would have done many more were it not for the Covid-19 pandemic. In the course of these two experiences we collected reflective documentation as a form of practitioner-based research inspired by the work of the children and educators of the city of Reggio Emilia, Italy (Guidici et al., 2008 and Krechevsky, et. al. 2013). Our reflective documentation took the form of notes, quotes, observations and photographs of learners in the process of being creative - curated summaries of which are included in the findings section. 

In the analysis section I suggest that library educators already use a patchwork of elements from various learning theories, but they rarely have space and time to reflect on or attempt to synthesize them. The practice of reflective documentation shows potential as a means for generating new pedagogical questions, ideas, and answers - the fundamental elements of a pedagogy. The lack of clear agreement of what quality creativity and learning in the library looks like is another challenge and may be made more challenging by epistemic issues associated with the division between academic research and practice.

In the Discussion section I argue that two pedagogies of progressive education -- constructionism (as well as its associated practices: tinkering and creative learning) and the Reggio Emilia Approach -- have the potential to form a useful foundation for this endeavor. Design thinking as well as recent scholarship in the library field on serendipity (Björneborn, 2017) is compatible with these learning theories. Designing for serendipity might serve as an organizing principle around which to build a pedagogy of creativity and hands-on learning for the library.

This work accepts as axiomatic the following ideas which, while debatable, are beyond the scope of this work to defend: 1) Each learner's experience is idiosyncratic, a process of integration that is contingent on their own pre-existing knowledge, skills, and interests as well as the values of their surrounding culture. And 2) In order to be useful and effective, theories of learning must be reinterpreted critically by educators for use in their own cultural and physical context (Guidici et al., 2008). Librarian educators can be inspired by other pedagogies. But in order to be successful along the lines that Jochumsen et. al. describe, they must ultimately craft their own. This research describes a small step down that path. In the longer term, success is not so much a specific outcome as it is an effective process through which librarian educators can continually develop and refine their approach to supporting learning and creativity within the local cultures that surround them.

### Background

This research forms a part of the author's PhD project titled Experimenting, Experiencing Reflecting: Collective Creativity in the Library, and is funded by Aarhus Public Libraries and the Experimenting, Experiencing, Reflecting project (EER). EER is a science and art based research collaboration between the Interacting Minds Centre at Aarhus University and Studio Olafur Eliasson, which itself is funded by the Carlsburg Foundation. The goal of the research is to explore collective creativity through the design of materials, activities, facilitation strategies, and environments designed to support it.

Prior to beginning this PhD research the author worked as a designer of activities, environments, and materials to support open-ended playful learning at LEGO for four years. During that time he designed learning through play activities for LEGO House, founded a small design lab called the LEGO Idea Studio, and co-led research into play and technology with MIT Media Lab, the Tinkering Studio at the Exploratorium, and the Reggio Children Foundation.  Prior to moving to Denmark in 2015 he ran the Scratch online community as a member of the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at MIT Media Lab for 6 years. Based around the first tile based programming language developed at MIT, the Scratch website hosted the largest online programming community for children in the world at the time. 

##  Methodology

How can we create the conditions for library educators to have a dialog between theory and practice that could enable them to develop a pedagogy of creativity and learning in the library? 

At the start of this research, my supervisor Sidsel Bech-Petersen and I formed the Creative Learning Research Group (CLRG)[^1] consisting of myself and 5 library educators from Aarhus Public Libraries, in the Fall of 2020. The educators were selected by Bech-Petersen on the basis of availability and interest, and the selection was confirmed by the author after 1:1 interviews. The mission of CLRG was written in advance by the author: to grow knowledge and expertise about creative learning in libraries by studying the theory and practice of creative learning experiences, spaces, and communities, to apply these ideas to our work as library educators, and to reflect on the relevance of these ideas for libraries. For a little more than a year the CLRG group met every two weeks for 2 hour sessions, mostly online due to the closing of the library during the Covid-19 pandemic. In our meetings we discussed readings and theory related to creative learning and progressive education. Each member was invited to present some of their work outside of the CLRG to the rest of the group for critical reflection. 

Creative Learning is an approach to play-based learning described by Mitchel Resnick in his book *Lifelong Kindergarten* (2017), which is an elaboration of Seymour Papert's Constructionism (1993). While much of this body of work is concerned with computation and applied in schools, *Tinkering* (Vossoughi, S., & Bevan, B. 2014) is also an elaboration of constructionism developed by the Tinkering Studio at the Exploratorium and utilized in informal learning environments around the world, especially science museums and makerspaces but also in schools. Theory related to these pedagogies, all of which are forms of progressive education, formed the bulk of the readings, which were selected by the author. Some emphasis was placed on conceptual tools designed for direct use by practitioners, for example the *Learning Dimensions of Making and Tinkering* produced by the Exploratorium (Bevan et al., 2014). In choosing to create an encounter between library educators and these learning theories, I was attempting to ask: Can these theories provide a shared language that is useful for reflecting on the work of creativity and learning in the library?

In addition to readings and discussions, on two occasions[^2] the Creative Learning Research Group facilitated tinkering activities - one online with adults and one in person with children and adults. In both cases, CLRG members collected Documentation in the form of photographs, videos, and notes to form a record of the learner's encounter with the activity. Our use of Documentation was inspired by the work of the children and educators of the city of Reggio Emilia in central Italy, who over the past 80 years have developed a pedagogy known to early childhood educators around the world as the Reggio Emilia approach (Rinaldi, 2006).

The Reggio Emilia approach takes the position that each child is unique, complex, and deeply interconnected with their surrounding culture and environment (Krechevsky et al., 2013). Reggio educators are careful to specify that any theory or understanding of learning that emerges from their own work is extremely contingent on the child's context - including the culture of their community, school, and family (Giudici et. al. 2008). What is learned may be useful in other contexts, but it is dangerous to apply it without first reinterpreting it in an educator's own context. As a pedagogy, it is committed to embracing the idiosyncratic nature of each learner and each learning community, and responding to their interests to support their processes of inquiry and research. 

The educator who practices the Reggio Emilia approach is also considered to be a researcher whose research is about how to support the research of children. The data of that research consists of Documentation, which Krechevsky et. al. (2013) defined as "The practice of observing, recording, interpreting and sharing through a variety of media the processes and products of learning in order to deepen and extend learning.” By reflecting critically on Documentation of children's learning, Reggio educators develop theory to explain observations and guide interventions. 

The CLRG Team sought to use ideas from this approach in the context of the library. Prior to each activity in which the team documented the learner's process, we began by choosing a research question. We then developed strategies for documentation we could use to gather evidence related to our question. Afterwards, we spent time discussing and reflecting on the documentation we gathered. Out of these discussions I made a draft of the completed documentation which was then discussed and edited by various members until we reached consensus that it was finished. 

It is important to highlight here that group reflection of educators on collected documentation is a key element of the Reggio approach to documentation. It is not sufficient for a single educator to generate interpretations about a learning experience. Any explanation for what was observed and documented should reflect the diversity of views and the scrutiny of one's colleagues and peers. Competing interpretations that persist through the discussions should merit mention in any published documentation.

In attempting to introduce this practice of documentation to the library, my goal was to understand: Can a Reggio inspired approach to documentation, as reinterpreted in the context of the library, create a setting in which library educators can generate theory to explain what they have observed and documented in their practice? My assumption was that such a practice could become an engine for collective reflection among library educators which, over time and in the aggregate, could add up to a pedagogy of learning in the library.

## Findings

In the spirit of the Reggio Emilia approach to Documentation, the findings section consists of brief case studies created with documentation of two learning experiences facilitated by CLRG mentioned above. These were written by the author with extensive input and feedback from colleagues in the CLRG with an audience of library educators in mind. What appears here are adaptations of blog posts shared on the Aarhus Public Libraries website. Each were intended as brief experiments in asking the question of how library educators might share evidence (in the form of documentation) and theory (in the form of explanations about the documentation) with the greater community of librarian educators. 

Each case study has been edited to protect the identity of the participants. Although they depict creative work of a small number of individuals, each is representative of circumstances and people that library educators encounter frequently, and are worth considering as a representative instance of a larger issue. In addition to the documentation, each provides a theoretical interpretation - a "proto-theory" - which might be useful to other library educators attempting to make sense of similar situations. The goal is to try to provoke a conversation about theory and practice, not to make definitive claims. The question I am asking here is: What if librarian educators wrote about practice and theory in this way? Could this be a medium that would enable a larger, ongoing conversation among practicing library educators that could help develop a pedagogy of creativity and learning in the library? 

### Case Study #1: Creative Confidence or "Handlemod" in Creative Activities

"I will probably flunk this," said the workshop participant.

Jane, the facilitator, had just finished explaining the prompt for the online tinkering activity she was facilitating, called "shadow remixes," to the two participants in her Zoom breakout room. Developed by the Tinkering Studio at the Exploratorium, shadow remixes invites the learner to point a flashlight at something that casts a shadow, and then create a drawing that integrates and is inspired by that shadow. The participant who spoke was not being ironic - he seemed genuinely afraid that he would fail.

Jane had seen this response many times as an educator working in library Makerspaces. Prior to the workshop, our small 5 member *Creative Learning Research Group* had set our focus on working with people with little confidence in their own creativity. We had all encountered people like this before - mostly adults - so we made no special efforts to screen participants, trusting that some would fit this description. In our discussions we began to refer to the condition as low "handlemod," a Danish word which roughly translates to "courage to act." In our preparatory discussions prior to the beginning of the workshop, we arrived at the following research question: "How can we support people with low creative-confidence (handlemod) to help them engage meaningfully with a creative activity?"

![image-20221219104002015](assets/image-20221219104002015.png)

Figure 1A + 1B: Screenshot from Shadow Remixes Zoom workshop.

When invited to join a playful, open-ended activity, participants with low creative confidence tend to throw their hands up and say something to try to mitigate the expectations they worry will be placed on them - for example, "I'm not a creative person!"

"You can't flunk this," Jane replies.

Jane tries to make clear that this is not a situation in which the learner will be judged or ranked on their performance. From our discussions afterward it was clear that she recognized that people who feel nervous in this way usually have little experience with the creative process, and even less confidence in it. So she begins to lend him some of her own confidence. She invites him to try to see what kind of shadow the light makes through a whisk he got from his kitchen. As he explores the different patterns formed by the shadows, she keeps up a light chatter that follows along with what he is doing. 

"I see the shadow looks interesting when you hold the light that way." 

"Oh, that looks nice. What if you try rotating it?"

"Why don't you trace that line and see where it goes?" 

Her speech is mostly unremarkable in terms of content and meaning conveyed, but it establishes her presence with him across the distance of the video call, and helps set a casual tone. Once he has started to engage with the activity, she checks in on him periodically for the rest of the workshop. 

Over the span of 30 minutes the learner gradually relaxes and becomes more and more focused on drawing and experimenting with the shadows. To an experienced facilitator of creative learning, this kind of transformation is fairly common when the right kind of support is given, though little has been written about it. It could be that having accepted the facilitator's emphasis on play and process over outcomes, he is able to set aside the fear that prevents him from engaging playfully. Perhaps there is a role played by the aesthetics of whatever is being explored, in this case the light and shadows. From the outside, it looks like he falls in love with the process of exploring and drawing the different shadows. As a result, he soon forgets to feel afraid.

The Creative Learning Research group chose to document and reflect on working with learners with "low handlemod" or low creative confidence because this kind of fear is a common barrier to playful and creative learning. Anyone facilitating a creative design experience for citizens must learn how to help some portion of them work around their anxiety and begin to build trust in the creative process. Different approaches to helping people cope with anxiety they have about being creative will likely be an important aspect of a pedagogy of learning and creativity in the library. 

Creative Learning and Tinkering activities are by definition open-ended, which means the variety of possible outcomes is functionally infinite. Unlike building a birdhouse or a Lego set from step-by-step instructions, the final product of an open-ended activity cannot be known before it begins. Discovering it requires a willingness to explore possibilities, reflect on feedback both from the materials and other people in the room, and make choices about directions to take and which new problems to pose next. In this way a tinkering activity resembles a longer-term formal design process in miniature, running at the scale of minutes instead of days. Creating the conditions in which a learner can practice these skills is part of the pedagogical value proposition of tinkering and constructionist learning (Petrich et al., 2013).

### Case Study #2: Learning from the Facilitation Strategies of Parents and Grandparents

In November of 2021, the Creative Learning Research Group observed parents working with their children on an open ended marble run activity in the large public area on the ramp leading to the second floor. Designed by the artist's collective "The Secret Club" (https://schhh.net/), 'Papalapap' provides several open-ended provocations involving cardboard as a tool for construction. We focused on observing and documenting families as they designed, built, and tested stackable sections of vertical marble runs using cardboard and basic crafting tools like hot glue and scissors. In preparing for the workshop, our goal was to look for indicators of creativity and self-expression as described in the Tinkering Studio at the Exploratorium's Learning Dimensions of Making and Tinkering (Bevan et al., 2014). But as we discussed the notes, photos, and quotations we'd collected afterwards, we decided to refocus our reflections on the different facilitation and support strategies we observed parents and grandparents using with children.

One family we observed appeared to have parents who were very comfortable with the creative process. From their demeanor and clothing, we guessed that they might work in a creative field. Having abandoned our prompt to build a marble run, their daughter instead built an ornate and sophisticated dragon out of cardboard tubes, a cup, and hot glue. When she expressed uncertainty as to what sort of legs she should make for it, one of her parents suggested she sketch out different possible designs in post-it notes. With the families' permission, members of the Creative Learning Research group collected these sketches and added them to our documentation board, which formed a shared record of what happened that day that we referred to in later discussions.

 ![image-20221219114021946](assets/image-20221219114021946.png)

Figure 2: Photo of the work in progress dragon and the post-it note sketches for its legs.

 Suggesting sketching out different possibilities is a sophisticated facilitation move on the part of the parents: If you don't know where to go in a design process, it's often useful to begin by sketching different ideas, and then using these to reflect and evaluate which direction to take. It's a good example of a highly iterative, low cost approach: She sketches ideas, reflects on their different qualities, chooses a direction and only then invests the necessary time and energy to make it happen.

Donald Schön described a similar process in his book *The Reflective Practitioner* (Schön, 1983). Though many people still think of creativity as a 2 step serial process of mental inspiration followed by execution, artists and creative practitioners often see that approach as expensive and potentially risky (at least at a gross scale). Picking an idea, building it to completion, and only then evaluating it (and potentially abandoning it) takes far more time and energy and involves greater risk than the more iterative approach of sketching out different possibilities and reflecting on them in order to "feel out" the right direction to take. 

Though it may seem elementary to those familiar with the basic tenets of Design Thinking (IDEO 2015), such basic knowledge about the creative process is undeniably valuable. But not all citizens have the same level of access to it. We also observed parents who were critical of their children's exploratory efforts, and seemed worried that the direction they took would not lead to a satisfactory outcome. Both my colleagues in Dokk1 and the designers of the Papalapap activity were careful to avoid anything in the design of the space or our facilitation strategies that would suggest that evaluation, ranking, or competition would be involved. In spite of this, some proportion of citizens tend to assume that their creations will be ranked and judged critically.

In another observation we noticed a parent who seemed particularly unsatisfied with her daughter's exploratory efforts. At one point she took the project from her daughter's hands and began changing it herself, explaining that what the child was doing wouldn't work or look good. In this case, the child didn't seem to mind and began playing with something else. He seemed mostly unphased or perhaps used to shrugging off this expression of parental anxiety.  

In terms of the pedagogy of creativity, what the parent was doing in this case could be described as the opposite of what Jane was doing for the learner who was afraid of flunking the "Shadow remix" activity. Instead of lending her confidence in the creative process, she was interacting in a way that seemed more likely to instill a sense of fear and self-criticality, a mistrust in the creative process. As we discussed in subsequent Creative Learning Research Group meetings, this puts the facilitator in a difficult position that requires careful ethical consideration. Is it appropriate to try to constructively intervene in these situations? If so how can this be done in a way that is respectful and sensitive to both the child and the parent?

## Analysis

### Library educators use a patchwork of elements from various learning theories, but they rarely have space and time to reflect on them.

In the process of working with the Creative Learning research group I made notes and observations in order to be able to reflect critically on the goal of understanding what it would take to develop a pedagogy of creativity and learning in the library. From these observations, it was clear that each of my colleagues in the CLRG already had a good deal of knowledge built out of experience about how to facilitate creative learning. To name one example, Jane's ability to soothe and support the learner who was afraid of flunking was perhaps primed by the discussions we had about "handlemod" and creative confidence prior to the workshop. But she had already intervened in this way many times before. 

But while Jane had already developed these skills and insights on her own, she mentioned that she had never discussed them before with any of her colleagues. Prior to joining the CLRG, she had little time for individual reflection and even less for reflecting with peers on pedagogical questions. So while she knew how to work with people who lack creative confidence, there was no shared language with which to discuss or refine these ideas with colleagues. I use "shared language" here to refer to a collection of concepts that experts in a field use to discuss and reflect together on subtle issues associated with their craft. 

As we discussed the concept of creative confidence in English, we debated how best to express it in Danish. Danish is the first language of all members the CLRG group except for the author, an American, and at the time I had very little understanding of Danish. So part of developing a shared language for use in a Danish library involved choosing the right word to represent the concept we were discussing in Danish. The group explored different options, including "kreativ selvtillid" (creative self-confidence) and "handlemod" (courage to act) - finally settling on the latter.[^3] In this case the choice of words for translation was an explicit and literal form of creating or defining a shared language, a building block for pedagogical theory.

In our ongoing discussions about creative confidence and how to constructively intervene to support its development in learners, a member of CLRG whose work is focused on children and crafting began to contribute. It became clear that she put into practice a variety of techniques to help children who were nervous or otherwise self-critical about their crafting abilities. But this was again an expertise developed over time which she had not previously discussed with colleagues, mostly for lack of time and context but also perhaps for lack of a shared language with which to do it.

CLRG was composed of library educators from two organizationally distinct departments: adult learning and children's learning. This meant that there was less opportunity for shared reflection between members of different departments than there was within each department itself.  At least in the realm of hands-on creative learning, the consensus seemed to be that there was more overlap in terms of useful knowledge across those working in different age ranges than most had initially imagined. At least in our small but developing pedagogical conversations, educators working with children had a lot in common and a lot to talk about with educators who primarily work with adults. 

Time for reflection, it was universally acknowledged by members of the CLRG, is the first thing that gets sacrificed when the schedule gets tight. And the schedule is usually tight. It is easy to assume that this is because of the demands of management -- and surely in many cases it probably is -- although it did not seem to be the case in our situation. In the CLRG team there was recognition that time for reflection was sometimes sacrificed by the library educators themselves, some of whom mentioned they often underestimated time costs and took on too much out of a desire to get involved in interesting or exciting projects. 

In general, much of the time, effort, and attention of many library educators appears to be structured by grants. In the absence of a commitment from leadership to developing a distinct pedagogical stance, it's difficult to imagine a coherent pedagogy of learning and creativity in the library emerging by itself.  

### Reflecting on Documentation of learning experiences leads to new questions and new ideas.

In the case study above involving observations of parents and grandparents strategies for supporting children, members of the CLRG raised several important ethical considerations that led the author to draft guidelines for collecting and publishing documentation. For example, when we explained to the parents the topic of our research, it was focused generally on how children explore creatively, with emphasis on the learning dimension of creativity and self-expression (Bevan et al., 2015). But upon further reflection, the interesting aspects of the documentation we gathered had to do with the relationship between adults and children. This is a particularly rich and interesting area for libraries to explore, since libraries welcome interaction across generations in ways that schools do not. So we decided to refocus on it after the fact.

In our discussions we agreed that it would be unethical to describe interactions between children and adults that could be seen as negative in any specific way such that the parents or children could be identified or feel criticized. This is not necessarily the case with documentation that is clearly positive. We therefore felt it was ok to show the photograph of the dragon (which we had secured the parents written permission to do.) 

Several other guidelines for writing and collecting documentation emerged out of this conversation which are beyond the scope of this paper. From these I will describe one, which includes both a new problem and several potential solutions to it. Our goal was to create an environment that supports playful and creative exploration.  Based on what we witnessed, parents can clearly be powerful co-facilitators and allies in this effort. How can we communicate our goals with regards to creativity and learning to them in order to enroll them as allies? How can we respectfully redirect them towards these goals when necessary and appropriate?  

One member proposed that we create a "Dogma" - a collection of rules that serve to both challenge and focus people in the space. We also debated possible slogans to place on the wall of the space which we could refer parents to when they enter, as a means of setting the frame for the type of playful creativity we wanted to see. None of these made it past the draft stage before the CLRG group ended. But, in my view, they suggest that a process of reflective documentation has the potential to lead to innovative ideas in the form of both new problems to solve and new solutions to try for solving them. 

 

### Proposing theory in the form of explanations of Documentation requires a firm epistemological stance.

In our discussions, I was most active in proposing explanations and theories to try to explain what we had observed and documented. Partly this was intentional in that I wanted to see if others would follow my example and assert explanations for what they observed. While there were elements of interpretation from all participants in our discussions, only one member, attempted to apply this approach to her work outside of the CLRG group. This led to the creation of a set of pedagogical guidelines by the IRIS team, a project that focuses on developing new opportunities for technological literacy. They used these to frame their ongoing work with children.

There could be many personal and cultural reasons for what felt to me like a reluctance to assert new explanations to explain observations from practice. One possible explanation is that my librarian educator colleagues see themselves as "only" practitioners, and not academic researchers - therefore proposing explanations for what they observe is not in their job descriptions. There did appear to be a readiness to defer to formal and experimental research, even though there was also skepticism about its relevance to their work in the library. So here I found a somewhat paradoxical situation: They had great respect for academic research which they felt was almost never relevant or useful to them as practitioners. It is possible that this willingness to defer to the expertise of academia is related to their hesitancy to propose their own theories about what they observe in their work.

This conundrum reminds me of an interview with Carla Rinaldi, professor, author, and advocate for the Reggio Emilia approach to education, on the relationship between theory and practice. 

> Theory and practice should be in dialogue, two languages expressing our effort to understand the meaning of life. When you think, it’s practice; and when you practice, it’s theory. ‘Practitioner’ is not a wrong definition of the teacher. But it’s wrong that they are not also seen as theorists. Instead it is always the university academics that do theories, and the teachers...they are the first to be convinced of it. In fact, when you invite them to think or to express their own opinions, they are not allowed to have an opinion. (Rinaldi, 2006) 

She goes on to suggest an alternative to this relationship:

> It’s not that we don’t recognise your [academic] research, but we want our research, as teachers, to be recognised. And to recognise research as a way of thinking, of approaching life, of negotiating, of documenting. It’s all research. It’s also a context that allows dialogue. Dialogue generates research, research generates dialogue. (Rinaldi, 2006)

My own view - which I shared with colleagues in CLRG - is that no academic researcher has access to the wealth of contextual and in-practice knowledge that library educators are swimming in. The fact that they are in situ, engaging with the work of facilitating learning in a context that differs fundamentally from that of any other, including schools, makes them the best equipped to propose explanations for things they observe that are the precursors of theory. 

If the reluctance I observed is explained by Rinaldi’s description of the hierarchical relationship between practitioners and academics, then it presents a significant challenge for the goal of developing a pedagogy of the library. For a theory of learning to be proven right or wrong (or useful to practitioners or not useful to practitioners), it must first be asserted as worthy of consideration, described, and then shared among one's peers. That requires practitioners to take an epistemic stance that asserts both the value of their experience and their right to generate theoretical explanations about what they are doing and seeing.

 

### In the absence of a shared definition of quality in learning experiences, it's difficult to know where to begin.

Learning is incredibly complex and difficult to measure - especially when it is improvisational and creative. Developing a pedagogy that explains how to design and facilitate towards it is a difficult undertaking. It benefits from at least some initial agreement as to what quality learning experiences look like in order to sustain movement towards that goal.

My impression was that there was a good deal of agreement about quality learning in the Creative Learning Research Group, much of which stemmed from their shared culture. Danish educational values are a cherished part of the Danish cultural heritage. But when I inquired in greater detail as to how these values could be enacted, answers tended to be somewhat general and difficult to base clear actions upon.  It wasn't always clear what the expression of those values in a real learning experience would look like. At one point, one member of the group stated that while there was general cultural agreement at the level of values about learning, he felt that the practice of education in Denmark didn't always live up to those values. I had hoped that Documentation, because it provokes a conversation between theory and evidence gleaned from practice, might help to concretize what these values do or do not look like in action, but I don't think we reached that level.  It may be something that can only emerge from repeated iterations of facilitating activities and reflecting on them.

Like cultural institutions worldwide, libraries in Denmark are evaluated by how many citizens make use of them. There is a risk that in the absence of a clearly articulated definition of quality learning, “the numbers” of people who show up for a given activity will be viewed as the primary meausure of success. But as is true in schools, the number of participants who attend something, even when they have the freedom to choose or not choose to attend, is not in itself a good indicator of learning. 

Reflective documentation could be a means for describing what quality learning looks like in the library - both for other educators and for outside stakeholders. But a more clear description or set of examples showing what quality learning in a library looks like would help to calibrate the compass such that library-educators could work towards a specific direction, as well as try to address the problem of how best to provide evidence of progress in that direction. 

# Discussion

Generally speaking, each citizen's use of the library is unique. Learning in a library tends to be non-linear and idiosyncratic: A child checks out a dinosaur book, an engineer looks for a reference on a manufacturing process, etc. While the structure of school asks learners to have the same or similar experiences, the goal of the library is to support the learner in having whatever experience is meaningful to them in that moment. Rather than following a pre-defined path, the learner arrives seeking to understand something relevant to their own interests, interests which may evolve and change even during the course of their visit depending on what inspires them. 

Libraries of course often collaborate constructively with schools. But the fact that most people identify learning as something that mostly happens in school makes this relationship potentially risky for libraries. As Gopnik (2011, in Björneborn, 2017) puts it, “Adults often assume that most learning is the result of teaching and that exploratory, spontaneous learning is unusual. But actually, spontaneous learning is more fundamental.” There’s a risk that learning in the library may be seen as an accessory to learning in school, where “real” learning happens. Without a clear articulation of its own distinct learning goals, values, and pedagogy, the library risks becoming irrelevant in the popular conception of learning. The position of libraries is made more precarious by the digital age, which renders at least one of its previous functions - the warehousing of physical books - obsolete.

In the course of discussions with colleagues from the Iris project in Aarhus Public libraries, I used a Venn diagram to describe a way to think about the relationship between learning in libraries and schools (Figure 1). To varying degrees, schools around the world tend to be curriculum driven, compulsory, and dependent on lecturing to achieve the goal of information transfer and successful recall in students. Learning in the library is largely interest-driven, so the learners have a high degree of agency and freedom to choose and shape their own experience. In our discussion one librarian educator pointed out that the literal translation of the Danish word for teaching - *undervisning* - is "showing wonders." She suggested that this would be a good way of framing the role of library educators interested in facilitating creative explorations of STEM phenomena. Another referenced a quote by the famous American intellectual Ta-Nehisi Coates which describes his affection for the library and criticism of school.

 ![image-20221219161857814](assets/image-20221219161857814.png)

Figure 3: Venn Diagram created from online discussions about with IRIS (formerly FilmX) group, 2021. 

This is not to say that the library should try to replace or actively criticize schools, or that schools are never interested in things like agency and interest-driven learning. Many schools share similar goals and aspirations which we attribute in our diagram to libraries. The specific content is tentative, and less important than the structural idea of the  Venn diagram as a means of framing a relationship between institutions. Its purpose is to suggest a strategy for framing the library’s relationship with schools. If a library articulates a clear stance about the kind of learning it values, then it can recognize where that kind of learning does and does not overlap with the school's agenda. This understanding can then shape its interactions with schools.

To give an example based on the cursory bullet-points shown in the slide, if the school would like to collaborate with the library on an open-ended programming activity in which children can design their own games based on their interests, the library would respond with an enthusiastic "yes!" Such an activity falls clearly into the shaded area where the pedagogical values of the school and the library overlap. It also presents an opportunity for the library to develop its own educator's expertise in an area aligned with its pedagogical goals. But if the school invites the library to assist with rote memorization of vocabulary terms to satisfy requirements of the curriculum that don't connect meaningfully to children's interests, the library would politely decline. 

In order to make possible a productive dialogue between theory and practice, libraries must make choices about the kind of learning they will or will not focus on developing the capacity to support. Just as no one can become an expert in everything, the library cannot hope to develop expertise in every pedagogical approach. Expertise takes time and focus to develop, and this requires that practitioners have a clear view of the kinds of learning they are cultivating and the kinds of learning they are not cultivating.

The problem of how to build a pedagogy of creativity and learning in the library is very much an open-ended problem. Without a curriculum, it is difficult to plan ahead and predict what will be required far in advance. The evolving nature of citizen's interests means that what is offered has to evolve as well, with no fixed endpoint or solution possible. Designing learning experiences that appeal to a broad range of citizens with a diversity of interests, ages, cultural backgrounds, and levels of pre-existing knowledge (to name only a few) is challenging.

### Pedagogies relevant to the work of libraries and Joachumsen et. al's Four Space Model

The unique qualities of the library as a learning space mean that some pedagogies are more likely to be useful sources of inspiration than others. Progressive education is an educational movement that began in the early 20th century and persists in various forms to this day (Dewey, 2015). It emphasizes cultivation of individual interests, learning from experience, and creative expression. Progressive education tries to embrace the challenge of catering to a diversity of learners, each of whom bring a diversity of interests. John Dewey's descriptions of the goals of progressive schools (2015) align well with the goals for libraries framed by Jochumsen et. al. (2010) mentioned earlier.

Progressive education as a category encompasses many modern pedagogies which developed in dialogue with the same core issues and challenges over the 20th and 21st centuries. The theory that informed much of my past work designing online learning communities for Scratch at the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at MIT Media Lab, as well as designing learning through play activities for LEGO House and LEGO Foundation, comes from a theory of progressive education called constructionism. Constructionism was founded by Seymour Papert (Papert, 1993) and further developed under the names of tinkering and creative learning by a community of practitioners and scholars based around the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at MIT Media Lab and the Tinkering Studio at the Exploratorium (Resnick, 2017 and Vossoughi & Bevan, 2014).

Here it may be useful to consider constructionism as essentially a theory for guiding a meta-design process: The educator designs open-ended activities, tools, spaces, and facilitation strategies that invite citizens to design creatively and learn through the process.  It asks learners to find out the answers to questions that arise in the process, the answers to which are not necessarily known in advance by the educators (Vossoughi, S., & Bevan, B. 2014). In this it has a strong resemblance to design thinking (IDEO, 2015), which is an approach to grappling with open-ended challenges. The skills learners develop are similar to those that designers and artists use to explore the open-ended space of art and design (Petrich et. al., 2013). A particular area of my own interest is how creative people learn to use self-imposed constraints or limitations as a means of focusing their explorations, and how this amounts to a systematic means of creating the conditions for serendipitous discovery.

### A Pedagogy for Cultivating Serendipity

In *Three key affordances for serendipity* (2017), Björneborn states that ”Serendipity happens when we, in unplanned ways, encounter resources (information, things, people, etc.) that we find interesting.” He provides examples of how serendipity happens in the library, the simplest being that when searching for a particular book on the shelves, it’s common to encounter other books one never knew existed but which are aligned with one’s interests.  Sometimes these other books turn out to be more interesting than the book one was originally seeking. 

Björneborn points out that for something to be serendipitous, it must be “unplanned.”  But something unplanned is not the same as being unexpected. It’s reasonable to expect that one may find other relevant books when searching for a particular title on the shelf.  It’s just not possible for anyone to know in advance or plan what they will be. Therefore the choices we make about how to organize an environment have an effect on the chances for serendipity to occur, even if we cannot know or plan precise outcomes in advance.

Björneborn offers the following in clarification of this point:

> [W]e cannot “engineer” nor “design” serendipity per se. We cannot design environments that always lead to serendipity – as serendipity is a highly subjective and situational phenomenon. Serendipity for one person is thus not necessarily serendipity for another person, and serendipity at one point in time is not necessarily serendipity at another time for the same person. However, even if we cannot “design serendipity,” we can design for serendipity. That is, we can design affordances for serendipity – seen from the designers’ point of view. From the users’ point of view, serendipity must always be encountered in unplanned ways in order to be serendipitous. (2017, p. 1070) 

This framing of serendipity is very similar to the framing that progressive educators, and especially constructionist educators, use in their work. Each encounter with a learner is “highly subjective and situational.” If there is no one-size-fits-all model of the learner, one must design learning environments, activities, and facilitation that can enable each learner to follow their own curiosity and customize their experience. The design of constructionist tools and activities is very much about the design of affordances which can then be used in unplanned ways. 

An important measure of quality in a tinkering construction kit or tinkering activity is that it can be used by learners to create things that the designers of the experience never imagined. For example, during the time I worked on Scratch - a programming language for children that is very much a constructionist toolkit - members of the community used it to create a Scratch-based operating system. Others made role playing games based on popular works of fiction. Neither these nor the thousands of other creative applications of the tool were planned for in the process of designing the Scratch programming language or online community. But both the programming language and the community were designed very carefully to provide affordances for self-expression and serendipitous social encounters.  

Designing and facilitating open-ended tinkering activities is essentially designing for a serendipitous encounter between the learner and the activity. The educator cannot know or plan in advance what the learner will create, because open-ended creativity is inherently improvisational and unpredictable. And yet there are ways to plan and to design to support the learner’s improvisations. The Shadow remix activity described earlier does this by inviting the learner to explore generative shadows that are likely to spark their imagination by connecting to their aesthetic interests or curiosities. This is always, to use Björneborn’s words about serendipity, "a highly subjective and situational phenomenon."

These parallels as well as Björneborn’s description of the conditions for serendipity to occur invite consideration of serendipity as a potential pillar in the framing of the pedagogy of the library. Is what is required essentially a pedagogy of learning through serendipity? If we examine each of a library's current educational offerings as invitations to serendipitous discovery, what generalizable insights might emerge? Is the language of designing for serendipity one in which the library educator who runs craft activities with young children can give useful insights to the Makerspace technology coordinator working with adults using laser cutters, and vice versa? Could a theory's ability to help educators design for serendipity be a central criteria with which to judge its usefulness for facilitating learning and creativity in the library?

## Conclusion

The claims of this research must be limited, as it reflects impressions formed from working with a small group of library educators in a very well-known, respected, and well-resourced library. Most librarian educators would likely encounter even greater challenges doing this work in their libraries, many of which have little to no budget at all for running learning activities. Still, I hope that at least some of the ideas here could be useful to librarian educators in diverse contexts.

Any reflective dialog between theory and practice that is to yield useful insights for practitioners will take a significant amount of time and energy. The approach to reflective documentation as developed in the Reggio Emilia tradition, when reinterpreted in the library, is one viable process for organizing such a conversation. Organizing teams around pedagogical focus, rather than age of the library patrons, could be another way to help facilitate such a conversation. Inviting library educators into a dialog about what the library sees as a quality learning experience, and providing concrete examples, is another. 

Many more questions remain open. What sort of rhythm and proportion would be most effective for supporting library educators in encountering and digesting existing pedagogy, documenting in-person practice, and reflecting on documentation afterwards? Should one spend a few hours per day on each topic successively each week? My own attempts at asking this question were foiled by the uncertainty and interruptions of the Covid-19 pandemic. 

It seems probable that an effective pedagogy for libraries would have to be developed in a conversation among library educators that extends beyond any single library or library system. What would be the best medium for sharing insights and ideas about learning across libraries around the world? Librarian educators appear to be like other practitioners in that they don't tend to read very much theory or research. What medium would be the right medium through which to have an ongoing conversation as research practitioners, and not just practitioners? What sort of network would be able to support this kind of ongoing conversation, and help to justify the time and expense associated with it? 

My belief is that regardless of what sort of pedagogical ideas one wants to experiment with in the library, some sort of reflective practice will help facilitate that process. Because to get really good at supporting the improvisational nature of creativity and learning in the library, library educators will have to enable an ongoing conversation among ourselves in which we explore new ideas, have a few of our own and try them out, and then share our results with our peers so we can reflect on them together.

## Acknowledgements

Many of the ideas presented reflect extensive discussions, reflections, and inspirations informed by the educators of Aarhus Public Libraries, especially the Creative Learning Research Group, which included Sofie Gad, Rasmus Ott, Marie Pasgaard Ravn, Jane Kunze and Lisbeth Mærkedahl. 

Many thanks to my advisors for their help and patience, including Andreas Roepstorff, Sidsel Bech-Petersen, and Peter Dalsgaard. 

Thanks to the Carlsberg Foundation and Aarhus Public Libraries for making this research possible.

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[^1]: Description of the Creative Learning Research Group at Dokk1 Library: https://www.aakb.dk/nyheder/kort-nyt/the-creative-learning-research-group-at-aaarhus-public-libraries
[^2]: At the start of my research my intention was for the Creative Learning Research Group to co-design and co-facilitate between between 6 and 10 hands-on tinkering workshops which we could observe, document, and reflect on together, allowing for a much larger pool of data from which to generate publishable documentation. The lockdowns and restrictions of the Covid-19 pandemic forced me to compromise, causing us to spend much more time reading and discussing theory and much less time running workshops and reflecting on the documentation we gathered than I originally intended.
[^3]:  It's worth noting here an interesting cross-cultural issue. The English "creative confidence," as heard by Danish CLRG members, would be something one would attribute almost exclusively to geniuses or well-established artists like Picasso. Whereas "Handlemod" could be understood as a quality anyone would possess to varying degrees, and which could be more or less supported by different actions on the part of the facilitator.