Atla Annual 2024

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. This session will contend that 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 will invite attendees to consider specific trends in cultural discourse and in higher education and how they might be creating such a paradigm reversal. It will explore the philosophical ramifications of hypercritical approaches and demonstrate how they result in behaviors similar to but not quite the same as a lack of critical thinking. Finally, it will offer a generative approach to information literacy instruction that:
-Offers understanding to students who are seeking neatly packageable answers to complex questions while navigating information overload and resulting cognitive fatigue in a polarized information environment.
-Considers whether we can position the library as a place to pursue understanding rather than an arbiter of ultimate authority, and how this might help students ask more generous (and information literate) questions.
-Activates wonder and curiosity to curate a more stable and sustainable approach to learning for comprehension rather than correctness.