The LITS Instructional Staff’s Literacies Framework serves as a set of guiding principles and objectives for our teaching, in support of student’s coursework and independent vocational exploration. These literacies borrow from the work of the Association of College and Research Libraries, education scholars, and smart colleagues across the country who engage in related work.
Vocation + Literacies
We identified six literacies that best represent the areas we work in – Information, Maker, Data, Media, Visual, and AI literacies. We have also explored intersections of each and ways in which they relate to one’s vocational exploration. David Cunningham in At this time and in this place : vocation and higher education suggests one key vocational question for us and our students is “how will I negotiate the larger global context that increasingly affects everything I do?” (2016). We see these literacies as helping students to develop the skills to successfully manage those negotiations as they appear.
The Network of ELCA Colleges and Universities Rooted and Open document claims that “vocation-centered education equips students with the wisdom and capacity for good and needed work in the world through all forms of human endeavor” (2018). In considering our literacies, the terms wisdom and capacity get at the skill building and evaluative techniques we’re trying to instill, while all forms suggests those skills and techniques apply in many different situations and to many different forms of information.
Yet another aspect of our work involves vocational storytelling – the uncovering, constructing, and sharing of vocation stories. In our instruction, we may share elements of our own vocational journey with students. These literacies also provide students with the language and tools to aid in discerning and creating their own vocation stories.