Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Date

2024

Abstract

The last decade has seen major shifts in culture, the information landscape, and library instruction. For most of that time, librarians have focused on helping students question information sources, in part a reaction to the rise in misinformation and disinformation, and in part in response to specific requests from our communities who look to the library as a source of “good” information. Yet, students are still not critical enough of external information that aligns with previous beliefs, and hypercritical of external information that does not, reinforcing polarized thinking. There has been a paradigm shift in the information environment and among our students, specifically that our students’ struggle with evaluating authority may stem from over-critical approaches to research and increasing lack of trust in expertise. If this is true, continuing to teach heavily deconstructive approaches is not only unhelpful, it may contribute to the issue. This session ended with some thoughts on ways librarians might engage kindness, curiosity, and generosity to adapt our instruction to this new paradigm.

Comments

This is the slidedeck presented at Atla Annual, Long Beach, CA on June 21st, 2024.

See the video of the presentation here: https://vimeo.com/986754089/1ab5fbe23a

See the write-up here: https://serials.atla.com/proceedings/article/view/3559

Download

Share

COinS