#LILAC24 Playful and compassionate approaches for inclusive Information Literacy instruction

Pam McKinney live blogging from the final day of the LILAC conference in Leeds.  The keynote today is from Andy Walsh @Playbrarian and is titled "Playful and Compassionate Approaches for Inclusive Information Literacy Instruction".  Andy himself is a neurodivergent librarian, and runs the CILIP neurodivergent librarian group, and acknowledged some of the challenges he faces with neurodivergence in the design and delivery of the keynote. He spoke about his working-class origins on a council estate in Birmingham. We took part in a little bit of play, a "gentle Mexican wave" because, as Andy said, some of us were looking a bit tired after the conference party last night! Andy made a point that this was a bit challenging, but it is even more challenging for people who are neurodivergent and are trying to cope with conflicting stimuli. 

Andy passed round some notebooks which the audience was encouraged to write how they are currently being playful in their teaching. Games can be used in teaching as a starting point for engagement.  Games are structured, they have a set of rules and a feedback system, and these mechanics allow play to take place and learning to take place. The games are there to enable the play. Play is an act that is apparently purposeless, voluntary, has an inherent attraction, time free, diminishes self-consciousness, has the potential for improvisation. It can bring all sorts of benefits, but you can't force someone to play! Once people start playing, they tend to want to carry on playing - it can be relatively easy to make play happen. It's easy to lose track of time when you're playing, which can be a bit of a problem in a time-limited teaching session. People can feel braver to express thoughts and ideas in playful situations than they would otherwise do.
Play can be seen to be a mental attitude of "playfulness", and this is often accompanied with humour, and it ca involve setting conditions for play to emerge, and providing opportunities for people to feel comfortable in playing. The notebook activity that Andy set is one example of setting a condition for play, in that we've been invited to write or draw in the notebook, but people could add content that is playful. Once one person has started doing this, others will naturally follow. Andy made the point that even if you use games to facilitate play, it's the play that's important, not the adherence to the rules of the game.

Andy then moved onto the benefits of taking a playful approach to information literacy teaching. Using play differentiates IL teaching, as it's probably not an approach learners will have in other situations. Play can shift power dynamics, it gives learners more power to take their own path and adapt the content to work for them. It can help learners see things from different perspectives, and it encourages creativity. 

Higher Education in the UK seems to be driven by a target approach, money and metrics rather than learning and creating well-rounded members of society.  The concept of compassionate pedagogies originated in the early years sector but could be applicable in HE in terms that we could love our learners. Learning and teaching should be driven by compassion, and recognising the diversity of learners with different strengths and stresses. The way we teach needs to try to reduce stress and recognise this diversity. A new set of notebooks was then passed around the audience for the audience to write about how they show compassion to their learners.
Compassionate pedagogies require a commitment to criticise institutional and classroom systems that place underserved students in disadvantageous positions. Teachers need to be reflexive about this and attempt to welcome and accept people with any kind of disadvantage. Students need to be listened to and valued, and empowered to be who they really are in the classroom. Teachers need to create safe environments in our classrooms, without feeling safe learning can't take place. We need to build relationships with our students, which is tricky for librarians who only see students once or twice a year. Compassionate pedagogies and play go hand in hand. Both seek to transfer power from the teacher to the learner.

Information literacy definitions (e.g. the one from CILIP) do not say that there is one correct way to be information literate. It is not absolute and varies by context. People make choices about their information literacy based on their context and situation. Working in Higher Education can feel as though librarians and lecturers do have an ideal way to be information literate, and position their teaching to transfer this knowledge to students, without trying to understand the needs of their learners. Sometimes people just need to get a bare pass, and adopt information practices that facilitate this, rather than doing the "ideal" literature search with lots of excellent boolean searching. IL teaching needs to be learner-centred.