1.
Sheila Webber
Curriculum, community, context,
sustainability: A reflection
July
2022

2.
Outline
•Context
•Curriculum
•Community
•Sustainability
•Transformation
Sheila Webber, July 2022

3.
Context
Sheila Webber, July 2022

4.
Reflections on online teaching (Bayne et al., 2020)
“the messy complexity of globally
distributed student cohorts”
“working with a globally distributed group of
students, teachers and technologies, all
bringing their own geographies and histories –
both personal (a unique set of experiences) and
local (a current context) – to a course of study”
“Distance is temporal, affective, political: not simply spatial”
Sheila Webber, July 2022

5.
Cannot start with
too many
assumptions
about people’s
context
Sheila Webber, July 2022

6.
Meanings varying in context
• Information
• Disinformation & Misinformation
• The librarian’s status and role
• Freedom
• Justice ….
• Important to take account of this
• As an educator educating
• As a librarian seeking to transform
• At fundamental and more trivial level
Sheila Webber, July 2022

7.
Context
Sheila Webber, July 2022

8.
Curriculum
Sheila Webber, July 2022

9.
Curriculum
• What?
• Knowledge
• Skills
• Attitudes, dispositions – related to discipline,
professional practice, culture
• How?
• How is it organised?
• How is it taught, learned and assessed?
• When?
• How long is the course?
• When in the lifecourse?
• How does it fit with other curricula?
“focus on either how or what at
the expense of the other is
improper” (Egan, 1978, p.71: my
emphasis)
• Who (is it for)?
• Why?
• What are the drivers and influences?
Sheila Webber, July 2022

10.
Curriculum for LIS
“The LIS professional programme curriculum (what is taught) and pedagogy (how it is
taught) constitute what and how LIS students learn about the LIS profession. …This
curriculum for the preparation of library and information professionals, whether at the
undergraduate or graduate level, is made up of required and elective courses. The LIS
programme, depending on degree level, is designed,
and implemented according to local needs, vision and
mission, with varying number of total courses,
individual course credit hours, duration, and a
balance between theory and practice.”
Chu et al. (2022, p9)
Sheila Webber, July 2022

11.
The Teaching-
Learning
Environment
Entwistle,
Nisbet &
Bromage
(2004, p. 3)
Sheila Webber, July 2022

12.
Curriculum in a changing world
“Curricula are offered by institutions of higher education which themselves are
located in a world of change. The extent to which those institutions perceive
such a world of change and the extent to which they choose to respond to those
changes will inevitably vary. There will also be variation, we may hypothesise,
across disciplines. These simple initial observations generate some significant
questions. For instance, to what extent are institutions responding to change?
What are the sources of change to which disciplines respond? What are the
characteristic differences in response? What is the balance of influence as
between institutions and disciplines?” (Barnett, 2000, p.255.)
Sheila Webber, July 2022

13.
Community
Sheila Webber, July 2022

14.
Communities directly related to the LIS course
• Cohort community
• Disciplinary community
• Community of LIS practice
Sheila Webber, July 2022

15.
Dimensions of community
Communities students already belong to or Communities where they start as outsiders
• Physical
• Virtual
• Hybrid
• Preexisting
• (To be) created (by
the student or
librarian)
• Local to the
student or citizen
• Local to the
university or
library
Different types of knowledge, skill, disposition needed, depending on the type of community
& how or why you engage with it
Sheila Webber, July 2022

16.
Sheila Webber, July 2022

17.
Sustainabilty
Sheila Webber, July 2022

18.
Education for Sustainable Development
“ESD gives learners of all ages the knowledge, skills, values and agency to
address interconnected global challenges including climate change, loss of
biodiversity, unsustainable use of resources, and inequality. It empowers learners
of all ages to make informed decisions and take individual and collective action to
change society and care for the planet. ESD is a lifelong learning process and an
integral part of quality education. It enhances the cognitive, socio-emotional and
behavioural dimensions of learning and encompasses learning content and
outcomes, pedagogy and the learning environment itself.” UNESCO (2022)
See also e.g. Advance HE (2021)
Sheila Webber, July 2022

19.
Sustainability and Decolonising at the core, not as extra.
Examples from our forthcoming BSc Data Science
● Starting from Programme and Modules aims and learning outcomes
● Critical friends providing general suggestions & specific comments to
modules
● Collaborative, dialogical
Sheila Webber, July 2022

20.
How do I start to include sustainability in my module?
Sustainability in information sciences would consider how information practices may be able to inform better policies
and practices for the environment (e.g. monitoring environmental systems and biodiversity), promote economic
development (e.g. optimize work processes, reach global markets…), and improve social practices (e.g. promote social
movements). At the same time, it would consider how its practices may negatively impact the environment (e.g. what is
the environmental cost of producing, operating, and maintaining technology?), and exacerbate socio-economic
vulnerabilities (e.g. issues of data privacy and security and how they can impact certain social groups more than others,
issues of bias and social exclusion).
● Can our information practices help us make better decisions?
● How are our information systems used/applied? What other types of information systems are complementing this?
● How open/easy/ to understand/transparent are our information systems?
● Can we be sure that the information systems we implement/operate in are not biased?
● Which social groups will be the most affected by them?
● How will the social groups that have been historically discriminated be affected by them?
Dr Andrea Jiménez & Dr Sara Vannini, 2022

21.
Transformation
Sheila Webber, July 2022

22.
Real transformation is a serious undertaking
• People may not want to be transformed
• Governments, communities, others with power & vested interests may not
want transformation
• Transformation may be painful: for the transformer, the transformed, the
transformed’s family & community
• Therefore those wanting to engage in transformative practice need:
• Capacity to reflect as well as act
• Understanding and empathy for the context
• Knowledge & skills that enable them to interact with the community
• Willingness to follow up & engage with unexpected consequences
• Ability to use participatory research methods – example of Freire
Sheila Webber, July 2022

23.
“Attempting to liberate the oppressed without their
reflective participation in the act of liberation is to
treat them as objects which must be saved from a
burning building” (Freire, 1970; 47)
Sheila Webber, July 2022

24.
Sheila Webber
Information School
University of Sheffield
s.webber@shef.ac.uk
Twitter & SL: Sheila Yoshikawa
http://information-literacy.blogspot.com/
http://www.slideshare.net/sheilawebber/
Pictures by Sheila Webber
partly taken in Second Life (a
trademark of Linden Lab)

25.
References
• Advance HE. (2021). Education for Sustainable Development in Higher Education.
https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/teaching-and-learning/education-sustainable-
development-higher-education
• Barnett, B. (2000). Supercomplexity and the curriculum. Studies in Higher Education,
25(3), 255-265.
• Bayne, S. et al. (2020). Manifesto for teaching online. MIT Press.
• Chu, C.M. et al. (2022). IFLA guidelines for professional library and information science
(LIS) education programmes. https://repository.ifla.org/handle/123456789/1987
• Egan, K. (1978). What is curriculum? Curriculum Inquiry, 8(1), 65-72.
• Entwistle, N., Nisbet, J. & Bromage, A. (2004). Teaching-learning environments and
student learning in electronic engineering.
http://www.etl.tla.ed.ac.uk/docs/Brugge2004.pdf
• Freire, P. (1970) Pedagogy of the oppressed. London: Penguin
• UNESCO. (2022, 9 June). What you need to know about education for sustainable
development. https://www.unesco.org/en/education/sustainable-development/need-
know Sheila Webber, July 2022