Transferring Genre Pedagogy to the Library Classroom

“for the student, genres serve as keys to understanding how to participate in the actions of a community”

Miller, 1984, p. 165^[1]

In addition to theory, RGT serves as a foundation for pedagogy. In an article titled “Teaching Critical Genre Awareness,” composition instructor and scholar Amy Devitt (2010)^[2] explained why RGT has useful pedagogical application:

• If genres are rhetorical actions, then learners can gain rhetorical understanding by gaining access to the language and forms of genres.
• If genres reinforce existing structures and ideologies, then gaining consciousness of genres can help learners reduce the reinforcement and propagation of existing norms and ideologies.
• If changing genres changes existing norms and ideologies, then learners who change genres can change a group’s aims, structures, and norms. (p. 343)

Although Devitt uses RGT in the composition and rhetoric classroom, her pedagogical arguments can easily be migrated to the library classroom. Discussions of the similarities between these fields have taken place for decades. For example, librarian and scholar Barbara Fister (1992)^[3] aptly described this connection in a 1992 ACRL conference proceeding.

Both fields deal with the teaching of skills rather than content, which makes us stepchildren in the academy while making us innovators in pedagogy. We, more than other fields, attempt to view the academic world from the student’s vantage point and try to interpret its peculiar culture in ways that make sense to newcomers. Because of our interdisciplinary nature we teach holistically, attempting to give students a lingua franca to gain entry into the bewildering variety of academic discourse communities. (p. 154)

Library and composition instructors work towards the same goal: to assist students in negotiating unfamiliar rhetorical situations within their newly chosen academic disciplines. In composition classes, students primarily learn about genres in order to write using them. In library sessions, students learn about genres to become better at accessing, assessing, and creating with them. In both circumstances, the use of genre pedagogies can assist students in becoming more confident in their discipline. These connections will be furthered explored in the remainder of this resource.