A Pedagogy of Inquiry

Pegowsky, N. (2015) A pedogogy of inquiry. Communications in Information Literacy 9(2), 136-144.

Summary: This article discusses the ACRL’s Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education (2015) and how teacher librarians can use the Framework to push pack against neoliberal agendas in current pedagogy to reinvent the teacher-librarian role. The article expresses that neoliberalism, which creates a false sense of urgency for changes in higher education, turns education into an economic exchange and vocationalizes education, which the author calls “trickling up.” The author further states that teaching, and librarianship becomes devalued in this economy because librarians do not have clearly defined roles. Pegowsky suggests that we move away from exclusively skills-based instruction and make our pedagogy more explicit, thus enhancing student learning and outcomes.

Evaluation: This article doesn’t provide practical applications for teaching or librarianship, as most research in the field does. Rather, it focuses on underlying ideology that has affected pedagogy and how we teach, to education’s detriment. A philosophy of education drawn out to some interesting conclusions.