Subjects
critical information literacy, critical pedagogy, information literacy instruction, ACRL Framework, critical consciousness, assessment, academic libraries, higher education
Document Type
Research Article
Abstract
This article offers a critical synthesis of scholarship on critical information literacy (CIL) in higher education from 2015 to 2026, extending and recalibrating prior longitudinal reviews to account for post-2020 theoretical, political, and technological shifts. Drawing on a corpus of 48 peer-reviewed publications published between 2020 and 2026, the study employs thematic cluster analysis—building on Tewell’s four-domain framework—to examine developments in theory, pedagogy, digital and political engagement, reflexive critique, and assessment. Rather than treating critical information literacy as a settled framework, this review positions it as an evolving and contested practice shaped by the political economy of higher education. It argues that the future of CIL depends on three interrelated developments: justice-oriented assessment models that resist reductive metrics, explicit engagement with labor and institutional accountability, and expanded attention to algorithmic infrastructures and generative AI as epistemic actors. By tracing a decade of evolution, this article reframes CIL not as a completed project but as an ongoing collective struggle over knowledge, power, and the conditions of critical work in the contemporary university.
Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/45003
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Williford, D. (2026). Critical Information Literacy in Higher Education: An Evolution in Theory, Practice, and Assessment. Communications in Information Literacy, 20 (1), 106–126. Retrieved from https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/comminfolit/vol20/iss1/6