Cultivating a Critical Disposition in Readers’ Advisory Pedagogy and Practice

This article presents a pedagogical conversation between two readers’ advisory (RA) educators who aim to promote a critical disposition in their respective classrooms. A critical disposition can be understood as an inclination to actively ask and engage with questions that express normative, transformative perspectives on RA work and its underlying commitments. Critically disposed readers’ advisors evince a keen awareness of the conditions of oppression that govern readers’ lives and, additionally, the transformational and autonomy-enhancing potential of the service they provide. Such a disposition is necessary in a library environment shaped and constrained by long-standing inequities in the book industry, changing technological affordances, disinvestment in our public institutions, and coordinated threats to the freedom to read. These educators address how library practitioners can build facility with the conceptual, practical, and imaginative tools required to serve readers well. The ultimate aim is to initiate a discussion about varied visions for RA education and practice that center responsiveness to the real world in which library patrons orchestrate their reading lives.