Co-constructing knowledge justice: faculty and student partnerships that transform library instruction, Heather Campbell, Lea Sansom and Ashley McKeown.

 Pam McKinney here live-blogging from the final day of the LILAC conference in Sheffield. The presenters from Canada have blended roles that involve teaching and library roles. There is a lot of focus on decolonial practice in Canada, and the presenters wanted to enact knowledge justice in their information literacy programme. We are all equal, and have equal capacity to be knowers, but sometimes certain people are privileged as "knowers", and knowledge justice seeks to embed equality. They were unsure about how to do this in their teaching, so this panel is about exploring how they managed to find their way. There are 25 people in the partnership, but only 3 people are presenting. The first question they explored was why collaboration is necessary to address knowledge justice. Lea said that there has to be ways of recognising multiple ways of knowing, so collaboration is essential to bring different perspectives and different ways of knowing in the team. Everyone brings something to the team. They have all had moments of imposter syndrome, but the group can provide support and reinforce that everyone has something to contribute. Ashley spoke about how knowledge justice is very much grounded in indigenous knowledge systems, and expressed a feeling of loneliness and thought she had very different ways of approaching her nursing course. Collaboration was important to keep on her journey, and support her interaction with students who come from indigenous communities and become nurses. The collaborative approaoch supported the whole group to decolonise their teaching and decolonise their minds. Its importa t to trust in the collective, go to communities of practice and read important texts. Knowledge justice has felt overwhelming, but it must be done. The trick was to find collaborators from outside their own white identities.

What does collaboration focus on knowledge justice look like? Lea spoke about collaborating with instructors and other librarians. She is focused on relationship building in her new institution and is bringing the knowledge justice perspective with her. Heather spoke about the timeline of the partnership, and the points at which she's worked with students and the points at which they've worked with faculty. There are different types of collaboration that they have engaged with, including faculty administrative staff, and the centre for teaching and learning. She is leading decolonising initiatives that come through the teaching development team. They did some experimentation in Ashley's class and created some open educational resources. Ashley spoke about the approaoch to partnership and collaboration that is strength-based, so that collectively they can identify work that corresponds to people's strengths. Teaching knowledge justice to students has led to conversations between students and faculty that have led to a gradual dissemination of the knowledge justice in the university. It is important that individual academics decolonise their teaching, but this doesn't lead to systemic change.

What has only be posisble due to collaboration? Teaching and learning librarians have to be invited into sessions by faculty. So the only way that they can enact a knowledge justice approach is in negotiation with faculty. So it's about identifying particular aspects of the content or particular assessments that suit a knowledge justice. Heather tries to make sure that she goes to university committees to spread a knowledge justice approach and tries to support meaningful change. Students who have experienced knowledge justice in the curriculum are able to go into the workplace to spread this approach, but they need support for this as new professionals. It's challenging because as a librarian doing Information literacy teaching, they only impact a small number of people, but raising awareness of knowledge justice can have lasting and profound effects on those people. They spoke about the need to record the meetings they go to and the other teaching activities as "library instruction" even though the audience and the mode is really different.