Teaching as a Political Act: Critical Pedagogy in Library Instruction

Abstract

Establishing the theoretical framework and reviewing the literature to build a foundation for my engaged pedagogy perspective for library instruction encompasses a number of fields due to the multidisciplinary influence of critical feminist theory, critical race theory, engaged pedagogy, critical library pedagogy, and critical information literacy. Together these ideas create the context and lens to analyze library instruction and how using critical theories and pedagogy could potentially empower our students in evaluation of information and which could be transformed into lifelong learning. Though my framework seems at first to be built upon a number of different and separate (read: disjointed) theories, when examined closely, the common foundation of critical analysis is found and they easily merge into a strong base.