Whose Knowledge Counts? A New Open Resource Invites Us to Rethink the Answer
Published on September 11, 2025
Curriculum librarian Heather Campbell (left) and nursing school lecturer Ashley McKeown (right) co-led the development of a free teaching tool that is inspiring educators, librarians, and students at Western and across Canada.
In 2022, Western Libraries made a bold commitment: to decolonize its curriculum and move beyond traditional approaches to teaching information literacy. That commitment has now evolved into a national resource—an Open Educational Resource (OER) titled Knowledge Justice in the Helping Professions: From Theory to Practice, launched in August 2025.
Though titled for the helping professions, the resource offers insights and strategies that extend far beyond nursing, counselling, or librarianship. Its core questions—about whose knowledge counts and how we make space for diverse voices—are relevant across disciplines, institutions, and professions.
This free, interactive teaching tool is already generating national interest, with nearly 100 educators and librarians signed up, even before the resource had officially launched.
“We built this resource for educators, librarians, and students across Canada,” said Heather Campbell, Curriculum Librarian and co-lead author. “But its lessons are relevant anywhere—the questions it asks about whose knowledge counts are universal.”
A Spark in Nursing
The OER’s roots trace back to the 2022 Western’s Fall Perspectives on Teaching conference, where Ashley McKeown, Lecturer in the Arthur Labatt Family School of Nursing, first encountered Western Libraries curriculum work.
“I realized my students—and even my own practice—were relying on a narrow slice of evidence” McKeown recalls. “I went home and rewrote my assignments that night.”
That moment sparked an ongoing partnership between McKeown, Campbell, and Teaching and Learning Librarians Lea Sansom and Kathryn Holmes. Together, they began experimenting with how to teach epistemic justice—the idea that social identities influence whose knowledge is heard, valued, or dismissed.
Their work resonated deeply with students and faculty, inspiring new assignments, classroom discussions, and even a presentation to the Canadian Association for the School of Nursing (CASN), where McKeown, Campbell, and doctoral student V. Logan Kennedy shared their curriculum work with nursing educators and regulators.
From Curriculum to OER
Western Libraries Teaching and Learning team quickly realized that putting knowledge justice into practice would require experimentation—and collaboration.
“As librarians, we often teach in other people’s classrooms,” said Campbell. “Ashley gave us the chance to test new approaches, and together we developed something that truly resonated.”
The project was made possible by a dedicated Open Educational Resource grant from Western Libraries, which provided the primary funding for development. Additional support came from the Centre for Teaching and Learning, the Instructional Technology Resource Centre, and faculty from Education and Health Sciences. Co-authors from across Western—including the Faculty of Education, Faculty of Health Sciences, School of Nursing, Centre for Teaching and Learning, and Western Libraries—played a vital role in shaping the resource and championing its inclusive vision.
“This resource exists because so many people came together around a shared belief that students deserve to engage with knowledge in more inclusive and critical ways,” said Sansom.
Built in Pressbooks and licensed under Creative Commons, the OER is free to access, share, and adapt. It includes six chapters, embedded videos, reflection activities, and a downloadable workbook.
What Makes This Resource Different
Unlike traditional information literacy modules, the OER reframes how learners engage with knowledge. It introduces tools like the Voices Flower, which shifts the focus from “finding sources” to “seeking voices,” and the Framework of Harms, which helps learners evaluate all forms of evidence—peer-reviewed articles, government reports, or social media posts—based on their potential to help or harm.
Rather than relying on checklists or source types, learners are guided to assess the diversity and sufficiency of their evidence, and to reflect on whose perspectives are missing.
“We’re teaching students to seek voices, not just sources,” said Campbell. “And to ask: What evidence do we value most—and whose voices are being left out as a result?”
The OER also offers practical guidance on Generative AI, helping learners navigate these tools with care and intention. Rather than treating systems like ChatGPT or Gemini as neutral sources, the resource encourages students to reflect on how such technologies—trained on dominant cultural data—can shape the knowledge they encounter.
What’s Inside the OER
Each chapter explores a different facet of knowledge justice:
- Chapter 1: Identity, positionality, and power
- Chapter 2: Epistemic injustice—recognizing who is missing
- Chapter 3: Defining knowledge justice, and its role in evidence-based practice
- Chapter 4: Strategies to seek missing voices, including guidance on AI and seeking others' lived experiences
- Chapter 5: Evaluating knowledge sources through the Framework of Harms
- Chapter 6: Real-world applications, featuring interviews with professionals in nursing, counselling psychology, and librarianship
The final chapter is a standout. It builds on the foundation laid in the first five chapters by bringing those ideas into the real world, featuring candid reflections from professionals who are learning to apply knowledge justice in their daily work—often in messy, complex, and emotionally charged contexts. It’s where theory meets practice, and where readers see how small, intentional shifts can lead to meaningful change.
“It shows what happens when professionals choose to act differently: when they confront epistemic injustice, reflect on their own social locations, and commit to change,” said Campbell. “These stories are an invitation to imagine new ways of practicing.”
Why It Matters
The OER asks difficult but essential questions, such as: Whose evidence are we relying on? Who is missing from our understanding of the world? How can we practice knowledge justice in spaces dominated by hidden algorithms and systemic biases?
“Our students know that inequities exist. They live them every day,” said McKeown. “Avoiding those conversations in the classroom does them a disservice.”
For Western Libraries, the OER is more than a teaching tool.
“This resource helps us fulfill our operational goal of being leaders in library instruction,” said Campbell. “It’s also a concrete example of how we’re embedding our curriculum across the university.”
Early Impact and Future Plans
Western instructors in Nursing, Health Sciences, Dietetics, Medicine, Library and Information Science, and Philosophy plan to integrate the OER into their courses this year. Nationally, the resource’s authors have presented the curriculum at conferences across the country, sparking conversations in disciplines from counselling psychology to library science.
Looking ahead, the team plans to release a companion teaching guide and explore future volumes focused on academic research and knowledge production.
“Knowledge justice is a collaborative practice,” said Sansom. “We hope this inspires faculty at Western and beyond to reach out to their librarians and explore these ideas together.”
Ready to explore the resource? Visit Knowledge Justice in the Helping Professions or the Western Libraries curriculum online and discover how you can bring knowledge justice into your classroom or professional practice.
