UC Santa Cruz

As librarians, we guide students in learning about information literacy as a framework, allowing individual choices and evaluation to guide how they interpret sources and, by extension, the world around them. While information literacy instruction focuses on critically examining the context of a source, it does not focus on examining the context of the learning environment itself—an educational context that values Western notions of learning, where the student seeks one correct answer as a passive participant. Within this context, students do not have the choice in source selection that we believe they do; they search for sources that are deemed legitimate through a dominant white male narrative of knowledge production. This in turn can lead to a learning process that disempowers the learner, particularly for our Black, Indigenous, and students of color, who are not equitably represented in the research landscape. In an attempt to intervene in this learning environment, the authors identified a pedagogical approach that showcased the value of both intellectualism and intuitive knowledge in Laura Rendon’s model of Sentipensante (Sensing/Thinking) pedagogy. In this chapter, the authors combine the Sentipensante approach with other theories and models used in librarianship that center intuitive knowledge to survey the information literacy instructional landscape. Through a focus on the one-on-one research consultation, the authors share their personal experiences to highlight areas of opportunity toward actively practicing an inclusive Sentipensante approach.