Developing Critical Disciplinary Knowledge Under (Always) Less-Than-Ideal Circumstances
Presentation | Monday, May 17, 2021 | 2:45pm – 4:00pm EST
As we know, students often struggle to grasp the disciplinary norms of writing and research they’re expected to work within. As Michelle Holschuh Simmons and others have argued, librarians are well positioned to help students understand those norms and, more importantly, develop skills in critiquing the power structures these norms encode and perpetuate. However, as always, there’s a wide gap between what we want to do and what we get to do, and the pandemic-prompted shift to remote instruction has added additional social and technical hurdles, for students, faculty, and ourselves. This paper argues that even outside of the challenges of remote instruction, many librarians have been left underprepared, in terms of disciplinary and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), to do disciplinary discourse mediation work with students. In light of this, I explore (1) how librarians might work individually and together to increase their disciplinary knowledge and (2) strategies for incorporating critically minded disciplinary knowledge into (in-person and remote) library instruction and faculty member’s classrooms. I raise more questions than answers, with the hope of creating a ground for rich dialogue.
Presenter: Michael Nicoloff
Michael Nicoloff is Head of Information Literacy at Holy Names University in Oakland, CA.