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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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Portland State University

Journal

Critical Library Instruction

Articles 1 - 9 of 9

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Critical Library Instruction As A Pedagogical Tool, Nicole A. Cooke Jun 2020

Critical Library Instruction As A Pedagogical Tool, Nicole A. Cooke

Communications in Information Literacy

The opportunity to expand pedagogy is an especially good thing for library educators, particularly when library professionals do not have formal training as teachers and instructors. We have a responsibility to ourselves and our students to grow intellectually and share growth and new knowledge with others. We should be promoting and practicing critical self-reflection and thinking critically about and even critiquing the information we consume and the sources from which it originates. This is an ongoing and iterative process that requires that we consistently read and remain abreast of new and interdisciplinary ideas that can challenge and inform our practice. …


Rethinking The Neoliberal University: Critical Library Pedagogy In An Age Of Transition, Jason Coleman, Lis Pankl Jun 2020

Rethinking The Neoliberal University: Critical Library Pedagogy In An Age Of Transition, Jason Coleman, Lis Pankl

Communications in Information Literacy

In the chapter we wrote 10 years ago for Critical Library Instruction: Theories and Methods we asked instructors to free themselves from the stifling heritage of positivism that privileged tools and instrumentality above meaning. Drawing on Henry Giroux and Oscar Wilde, we urged our peers to embrace dialogue that respects the individual and draws connections between information literacy and the students’ authentic goals and experiences. In this essay we describe numerous changes over that past decade that embrace the central themes of our chapter. We then explain that these examples coexist within a vast edifice of antithetical, neoliberal institutions. We …


Beginning And Extending The Conversation, Maria T. Accardi, Emily Drabinski, Alana Kumbier Jun 2020

Beginning And Extending The Conversation, Maria T. Accardi, Emily Drabinski, Alana Kumbier

Communications in Information Literacy

The co-editors of this special issue of Communications in Information Literacy describe the origins and context for this issue and provide an overview of the ideas and perspectives of the contributors.


That Was Then, This Is Wow: A Case For Critical Information Literacy Across The Curriculum, Margaret Rose Torrell Jun 2020

That Was Then, This Is Wow: A Case For Critical Information Literacy Across The Curriculum, Margaret Rose Torrell

Communications in Information Literacy

This article applies a Writing across the Curriculum approach to Critical Library Instruction. The information landscape has drastically shifted over the past ten years, altering the ways we perform, interact with, access, and understand research. These changes call for critical library instruction programs that are more robust and sustained than the one- or two-shot critical library instruction lesson I had described in 2010. However, college classroom practices, due to a variety of challenges, have been slow to adapt to this need. In this article written from my perspective as an English teacher, I identify the central place of critical information …


Iterable Ciphers For Insurrection, Dolsy Smith Jun 2020

Iterable Ciphers For Insurrection, Dolsy Smith

Communications in Information Literacy

This piece situates the project of critique in relation to the idea of library instruction as labor and the library as an organization. If the laborer can come to reflect on the conditions of their labor, thereby achieving a measure of autonomy even at the grindstone, it's also possible that the critical subject can be induced or coerced to labor on behalf of the organization. In the attenuation of organized forms of solidarity at the workplace, the organizations that employ us demand more and more of their workers' time, energy, and commitment. In this piece, I surface these tensions in …


Teacher As Stranger: Unfinished Pathways With Critical Pedagogy, Caroline Sinkinson Jun 2020

Teacher As Stranger: Unfinished Pathways With Critical Pedagogy, Caroline Sinkinson

Communications in Information Literacy

In 2010, Accardi, Drabinski, and Kumbier published the edited collection Critical Library Instruction, which marked a turn to more broadly integrate critical theory into the practice and literature of librarianship. This article looks back ten years to trace how critical pedagogy continues to provoke librarians' reflective measurement of the coherence between theory and practice, whether in the classroom or in advocacy for open education. With Paulo Freire’s notion of unfinishedness and Maxine Greene’s metaphor of ’teacher as stranger,' the article explores the nature of teaching as a continuously reflective and creative act.


Dreaming Revolutionary Futures: Critical Race’S Centrality To Ending White Supremacy, Sofia Y. Leung, Jorge R. López-Mcknight Jun 2020

Dreaming Revolutionary Futures: Critical Race’S Centrality To Ending White Supremacy, Sofia Y. Leung, Jorge R. López-Mcknight

Communications in Information Literacy

Critical Library Instruction: Theories and Methods dangerously lacked a centering, and critique, of white supremacy, as a structure of domination; we see the continuation of that active avoidance, or a progress approach through liberal or multicultural frameworks that do not precisely identify roots of racialized oppression in critical librarianship currently. In this essay, we reject progress narratives depicting the profession as having arrived, or even moved further, to a critical space, paying particular close attention to the absence of white supremacy, not only in the text Critical Library Instruction: Theories and Methods but in critical library instruction. We then explore …


Critical Library Instruction, Causing Trouble, And Institutionalization, Maura Seale Jun 2020

Critical Library Instruction, Causing Trouble, And Institutionalization, Maura Seale

Communications in Information Literacy

This essay considers the institutionalization of critical library instruction in the decade since the publication of Critical Library Instruction: Theories & Methods. Drawing on the work of Sara Ahmed and Rod Ferguson, I suggest that because library instruction is marginalized within librarianship, critical library instruction can and has become institutionalized within the profession. The institutionalization of critical library instruction represents the management of the wider-ranging and more troublesome critiques of critical librarianship. The marginality of critical library instruction, however, means that it continues to function as a site of troublemaking.


Building A Critical Culture: How Critical Librarianship Falls Short In The Workplace, Jennifer A. Ferretti Jun 2020

Building A Critical Culture: How Critical Librarianship Falls Short In The Workplace, Jennifer A. Ferretti

Communications in Information Literacy

Critical librarianship, or critlib, has made its way into the mainstream of library and information science through conferences, scholarly publications, social media, and other outlets. Over the past 10 years critical library instruction specifically has continued to be a much presented and published topic. Classes and other groups that come through our libraries are opportunities for us to teach, learn, and empower. The care and critical perspectives we bring into the classroom are necessary, but are we also fostering this type of environment in the workplace? Are we doing enough to turn the critical lens on ourselves? As a woman …