Book Reviews

Critical Approaches to Credit-Bearing Information Literacy Courses. Angela Pashia and Jessica Critten, eds. Chicago, IL: Association of College and Research Libraries, 2019. 328p. Paper, $62.00 (ISBN 978-0-8389-8947-0).

One of the more fraught adjectives in academic discourse is the word “critical.” The term “critical” as a precedent to any number of terms (“theory,” “pedagogy,” “literacy,” and “librarianship” are only a few) brings to the reader’s mind an array of scholarship, a large body of literature and criticism, as well as a spectrum of possible interpretations of meaning and consequence. At their core, each of these critical approaches represents a close examination and questioning of that which represents the consensus, the status quo, the establishment understanding of the subject. Our shared consensus understanding has developed through systemic choices, leading to an academic and larger socioeconomic environment that has centered the viewpoints of, and worked to the advantage of, predominantly white middle- and upper-class heterosexual men. A critical approach to information literacy pedagogy therefore seeks to decenter this predominant, consensus viewpoint from how we teach information literacy.

Editors Angela Pashia and Jessica Critten have gathered together 15 stories from librarians and other faculty members working to implement critical approaches to information literacy in credit-bearing courses. By focusing on the credit-bearing, full-term courses, each author or collaboration had the opportunity that greater time with the students affords an instructor to work through a topic in depth. While those of us constrained by the “one-shot” library instruction approach may be envious, especially of the ability to develop ideas and work with students for a sustained time, Pashia and Critten point out in the introduction that the credit-bearing course requires significantly more effort due to such things as classroom management and grading loads.

The editors organized the chapters so that earlier chapters have more general examinations of topics like course format and thematic approach. However, even the earlier chapters contain practical and applicable lessons for teaching information literacy. For example, in chapter 4, Kate Hinnant and Robin Miller describe the evolution of their course “Living in an Information Society,” taught in 2015 and 2017. When first teaching the course, students had difficulty connecting with the issues raised that could be addressed by considerations of power and identity. For example, in 2015 the students had difficulty seeing beyond their own perspectives when discussing Hinnant and Miller’s chosen topic of the digital divide. For 2017, the instructors worked on providing readings that “decentered” both themselves and the students. Additionally, Hinnant and Miller made an effort to choose topics in which the students sensed more urgency and did not distance themselves from the problems. Class activities included both consideration of the narratives associated with defining the poor and a case study of redlining. Other class activities provided less charged opportunities for students to inquire and test their comfort limits. As evidence of the impact of these changes, one student response in the 2017 course mounted a pronounced critique of Facebook’s reliance on “individual responsibility” as the control on privacy of data. In 2015, students were uniformly uncaring about the issue of privacy beyond taking care of it for themselves. Hinnant and Miller found that students had more success in this course when asked to question or support positions and solutions that were not theirs, or when given specific case studies to consider.

Among other approaches, the chapters include a course redesign that mapped specific ideas and methods from bell hooks’s “engaged pedagogy” onto frames of the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education; involving students in decisions about course content, or the creation and structuring of the rubric for their course’s paper; structuring learning activities around developing an awareness of marginalized knowledge and the ability to critically examine sources of information; selecting fan culture and fandom as a subject of critical inquiry and research for a writing class; and using E.M. Forster’s 1909 science fiction story “The Machine Stops” as a text to illustrate how information experiences of the present are shaped by past technology, policy, and customs.

The author or authors of each chapter present a context for their critical approach through a review of relevant literature in critical librarianship and critical pedagogy. The chapter texts have end notes and a sufficient bibliography for the reader who wants to dig deeper. There are abundant practical ideas for course structure, exercises, course assignments, and discussions that help students build abilities to ascertain many assumptions behind information systems and to be more aware and intentional consumers and producers of content.

The chapter authors often include a reflection on the pedagogy they introduced to their students, their students’ reactions to these innovations, and the changes that the work wrought upon them as instructors. These reflections provided valuable insights and welcoming candor about the relative success of these initiatives. More often than not, teaching information literacy using critical pedagogies can feel Sisyphean, with the instructor striving not only to decenter the accepted status quo and to call into question dynamics of power and privilege, but also to facilitate student growth in the ability to examine, question, select, use, and create information in ways that the students will apply beyond the course boundaries. The instructor may notice resistance from within the students themselves to the approach, let alone curricular, institutional, and wider cultural resistances to the adoption of the critical stance. For these very reasons, this collection should be on the reading list of those readers who may be looking for silver bullets to address issues of systemic oppression or social justice. Those quick fixes aren’t here. Aspects of a course would go well, while other aspects failed to achieve their intended goals. Instead, what these instructors gained were new appreciations for the resistances they encountered and a renewed commitment to lean into these resistances. Each grew in pedagogical experience and confidence to try again. The work of critical pedagogy experiments, iterates, innovates, and reflects, but does not reach a completion.—Scott Curtis, University of Missouri–Kansas City