A pedagogy of care for information literacy and metaliteracy asynchronous online instruction

Abstract

A pedagogy of care embraces elements of critical pedagogy, culturally responsive pedagogy, trauma-informed pedagogy, and feminist pedagogy in order to create educational spaces wherein the learner feels seen as an individual and cared for, and in turn enacts care for others. Although since the COVID pandemic there has been more exploration of care in the online environment, a pedagogy of care in a completely asynchronous environment has not received as much attention as other modes of online instruction. Similarly, while much research into metaliterate learning has to-date focused on the cognitive, metacognitive and behavioral domains of learning, there has been little focus on the affective domain. This article presents an exploratory, qualitative study to explore two questions:•Can a pedagogy of care effectively be applied in the asynchronous online environment?, and•Could prioritizing the affective domain of learning help support applying metaliteracy in practice?It is proposed that a pedagogy of care, described here as being implemented in an online library general education course, could play a role in bolstering students' comfort with the emotional aspects of information and promote metaliterate learning.