Harvard University

The Democratic Knowledge Project at Harvard University will partner with the Massachusetts Library System to pilot a professional development initiative focused on civics education for youth- serving librarians, including resources and assessment instruments. The pilot phase will include a cohort of 8-10 public librarians and school library media specialists from across the state, and will develop a series of professional development resources and learning modules, as well as a plan for future statewide and national dissemination. This project builds upon the Democratic Knowledge project's Ten Questions framework, an existing reflection-and-action framework which scaffolds the development of young People's capacity for civic action and media-making in the digital age. This framework has been deployed successfully in classroom settings, and this project would explore its feasibility in library contexts.