CCLI 2022: Engaging in Speculative Pedagogy: Reimagining Library Futures with Creative Foresight
May 13, 2022
Online on Zoom
CCLI presenters shared the ways their instruction work imagined or adapted something new in their setting and/or the ways their current work explores and contains the groundwork for a future vision.
The push by some librarians to resist dominant structures and policies by imagining something different has opened the door to new possibilities. The possibilities latent in library work, in openness and universal access, require that librarians change, demolish and build. Emerging instruction pedagogies and practices based on these possibilities are humanizing librarians and our users, as well as creating visibility through greater representation. Possibilities for deconstruction of the dominant paradigm arise from librarians seeking out nontraditional publication formats and challenging long held conventions and practices (e.g., controlled vocabularies) that no longer hold up. When librarians see students’ realities, we are catalyzed toward not only radical creation of new programs, policies, collections, and spaces; but also new approaches to instruction. Putting the traditional and safe aside — allowing ourselves to engage in the speculative — has the power to propel our imaginations and dream the impossible. Our honored keynote speaker was Jen Brown.
Schedule
9:00 – 9:05 | Welcome Remarks
CCLI 2022 Chair: Stephanie Miller, San Francisco Theological Seminary Library
9:05 – 10:20 | Keynote Address – Speculative Pedagogies for Liberation
Jennifer Brown
Undergraduate Learning & Research Librarian, UC Berkeley
Ignyte Award nominated Science Fiction & Fantasy author
10:20-10:30 | Break
10:30 – 11:45 | Workshops
Citational Justice: Speculative Citation and Pleasure-Oriented Instruction
Kiana Borjian, Assistant Librarian
Redwood Day
How can we cite in more creative, critical, and engaging ways? What does this mean for liberation? In this workshop, we will explore the idea of citational justice and speculative instructional practices that empower ourselves and our students to engage in research in pleasurable and generative ways.
Participants will:
1) Develop an understanding of citational justice and how it can deepen research, critical thinking, and capacity to imagine and act according to their imagination
2) Question and critique existing citational paradigms as well as identify sources of satisfaction and play within them
3) Engage in reflection, discussion, close reading, and guided activities that reimagine citation
Wander With Purpose: Using Speculative Art and Design to Reimagine Information Literacy Instruction
Mackenzie Salisbury, Information Literacy Librarian
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Shannon Robinson, Assistant Director
Fisher Fine Arts Library, University of Pennsylvania
Looking to push boundaries in the classroom and think critically about conventionality in instructional design? Visual practitioners have tools to help ignite our imagination, including card decks,a game-based methodology for ideation and serious play. An example is Oblique Strategies by musician Brian Eno and artist Peter Schmidt, which requires no specialized knowledge to use. In this workshop, attendees will collectively generate a deck to use in developing information literacy sessions.
Participants will learn about speculative design and the Situationists’ International notion of the dérive. Both challenge conventionality by posing troublesome problems to encourage reflection while considering alternative futures objects and narratives derived from these practices foster discussion about hypothetical, but perhaps possible, realities.
Using their new knowledge of these methods, participants will create prompts to be used in engaging students with information literacy in unconventional ways. The compiled prompts will contribute to a publicly available Speculative Information Literacy Deck.
11:45-12:30 | Break
12:30 – 1:30 | Presentation
Framework as Disruptor: Teaching Students to Fit In But Also F*** S*** Up
Cynthia Mari Orozco, Librarian for Equitable Services and Associate Professor of Library Science
East Los Angeles College
Erika Montenegro, Instruction Librarian, Professor, Library Science
East Los Angeles College
While some community college librarians have bemoaned the adoption of ACRL’s Framework for Information Literacy, at East Los Angeles College librarians have reimagined the Framework as a useful tool to investigate and disrupt academic norms that often fall upon our first-generation and non-traditional students that they often do not yet understand. This includes the norms of scholarly communications and privileging hegemonic knowledge sources. Community college library instruction shouldn’t be limited to only basic information literacy; for our transfer students, we ought to sufficiently prepare them to navigate these information landscapes. The presenters demonstrate this through two approaches, one attempting to theorize what scholarly communications work could look like in community college libraries, while the second approach positions students to utilize their expertise and authority of local subcultures in East LA to retrieve scholarly sources on these subcultures and situate them with unconventional sources, like interviews, zines, and local niche publications.
1:30-1:45 | Break
1:45 – 2:45 | Presentation
A reimagination of information literacy: Centering students’ ability to replicate information skills outside of the ivory tower
Faith Bradham, Reference Librarian
Bakersfield College
Learn how a community college librarian’s information literacy instruction fundamentally changed by focusing on teaching information skills that students could replicate within their personal communities (rather than in a solely academic context). She now centers her instruction on teaching source evaluation skills that expose the inherent power structures and structural biases within information’s creation and distribution. All skills are aimed to be replicable within both academic and personal contexts, so that students can share their skills with their friends, family, and other members of their personal communities. This session will lay out how this change in teaching lens has caused this librarian to completely overhaul her one credit research course, including examples of strategies she has successfully used. It will culminate by offering participants the chance to brainstorm and share their own ideas for active learning strategies and lessons on the information skills outlined in this session.
2:45-3:00 | Break
3:00 – 4:00 | Lightning Talks
Building Better Futures With Power Literacy
Ashley Peterson, Research and Instruction Librarian (Digital Scholarship & Data Literacy)
UCLA
Katherine Kapsidelis, Research and Instruction Librarian
UCLA
The Limits of Open Access in Open Educational Resources: Incorporating Accessibility into the WI+RE Way at UCLA Library
Salma Abumeeiz, Research and Instruction Librarian (Online Learning & Scalable Teaching)
UCLA
Matt Johnson, Librarian for English & History; Lead for Teaching & Learning
UCLA
Student learning on display: Library book displays as pedagogy
Stacy Brinkman, Head of Education and Outreach
UC Irvine
Carolyn Downey, Education & Outreach Library Assistant
UC Irvine
Envisioning Library Instruction for Incarcerated Community College Students
Janet Calderon, Librarian
Cal Poly Humboldt
Stephanie Dolph, Librarian
College of the Redwoods
Lynn Durkee, Librarian
College of the Redwoods
Susan Gehr, Associate Faculty, Librarian
College of the Redwoods
4:00-4:05 | Closing Remarks
CCLI 2022 Vice-Chair: Daniel Ransom, California College of the Arts
4:05 – 4:45 | Zoom Happy Hour