Working title: Credit-bearing Information Literacy Courses: Critical Approaches

Critical librarianship understands the work of libraries and librarians to be fundamentally political and situated in systems of power and oppression. This approach requires that information literacy instruction expand its scope beyond straightforward demonstrations of tools and search mechanics and towards more in-depth conceptual work that asks questions about, among other things, the conditions of information production, presumptions of neutrality, and institutionalized oppression.

The goal of this book is to examine those critical approaches specifically in the context of credit-bearing courses. This will be useful to librarians who have struggled to find literature and case studies that directly address the unique features of teaching a credit-bearing course, including course and lesson planning, designing formative and summative assessment measures that address course-level learning outcomes, and building rapport with students.

Contributed chapters will discuss some of the ways these concepts have been developed, implemented, and assessed in various course contexts. Those who teach information literacy courses draw from many influences, including (but not limited to) literacy studies, social justice work, and sociological and anthropological approaches. This book will highlight the diversity of possibilities for implementing a critical approach to teaching information literacy in credit-bearing courses.

The book will include both discussions of conceptual approaches and case studies. Contributed chapters will be divided into appropriate sections, based on their foci.

We invite chapters on topics including, but not limited to, the following, within the context of a credit-bearing class:

• Feminist/anti-racist/anti-colonial approaches to curriculum development
• Critical approaches to grading and assessment
• Unique challenges and opportunities of incorporating a critical approach in a credit course vs. one-shot/course-integrated instruction session
• Critical reflection about instructor positionality vis-a-vis critical content and/or relationship to students
• Conceptions of neutrality and objectivity with regard to information literacy and potentially controversial (and/or political) subject matter
• Difficulty of critical approaches in a stand alone information literacy course (and/or criticisms of the credit-bearing mode of instruction)
• Approaches that critique the academy and/or higher education and the neoliberal discourses that shape it
• Reflections on the process of adopting a critical approach, whether shifting the content to critical information literacy or adopting other practices from critical pedagogies (like eschewing the banking model of education, breaking down hierarchies, incorporating social justice, etc)

Proposal submission guidelines:

1. Abstract of up to 500 words – submit as a google document shared with creditclassbook@gmail.com
2. Author/s CV – email to creditclassbook@gmail.com

Please feel free to email the editors with any questions about the suitability of proposal ideas or the scope of the publication.

Timeline

Proposals (up to 500 words) due February 27
Notifications sent out by March 17
Completed manuscripts (tentatively 3,000-6,000 words) due June 30

Publisher: ACRL Press

Editors:

Angela Pashia is an Instructional Services Librarian and Associate Professor at the University of West Georgia. She regularly teaches an undergraduate level credit bearing information literacy course. She also teaches an online course for Library Juice Academy, “Developing a Credit-Bearing Information Literacy Course.”

Jessica Critten is an Instructional Services Librarian and Associate Professor at the University of West Georgia. She teaches a credit-bearing information literacy course that focuses on news and media literacy.