In the Library with the Lead Pipe (Dec 2016)
Critical Pedagogy, Critical Conversations: Expanding Dialogue about Critical Library Instruction through the Lens of Composition and Rhetoric
Abstract
In Brief: As interest among academic librarians in critical pedagogy has grown, discussions about this concept and its implications for librarianship have been richly expanding our ways of conceiving of library instruction and of our (librarians’) instructional roles. At the same time, this concept is still a relatively new one for our field. We may thus benefit from further exploring debates about critical pedagogy that have occurred outside of librarianship. In this article I explore salient themes in debates about and critiques of critical pedagogy– particularly those evident in the field of composition and rhetoric–as a means of opening further inquiry into and dialogue about the possibilities and the challenges of critical pedagogy and, more specifically, critical information literacy instruction. With an appreciation of the value of inquiry and problem posing, I view my goal with this writing as not to suggest definitive answers about how librarians do or ought to teach, but rather to invite further thought, questions, and dialogue about how we teach and how we relate to students and fellow educators within our unique instructional contexts.
