Authorship:
McKeown, A., Delsooz, D., Turcotte, A. & Campbell, H.
Do you ever pause to consider how many perspectives you encounter—or don’t—when searching for information on an unfamiliar topic? Whether you’re preparing a care plan, writing a research paper, or trying to understand a patient’s experience, the information that appears most readily is often shaped by invisible biased filters. In healthcare education, students are typically taught to rely on what is considered “best evidence”: peer-reviewed research, clinical guidelines, and expert consensus. Yet these forms of evidence are frequently rooted in Eurocentric norms that privilege white-settler heteronormative voices while excluding and silencing voices form equity-deserving communities.
When left unexamined, the limitations of “best scientific evidence” can reinforce systemic inequities and leave healthcare professionals unprepared to provide culturally safe, person-centred care. Recognizing this gap, a collaborative team from Western Libraries, the Arthur Labatt Family School of Nursing, the Centre for Teaching and Learning, and the Faculty of Education co-created an innovative Open Educational Resource (OER): Knowledge Justice in the Helping Professions: From Theory to Practice.
Launched in August 2025, this national, freely available teaching tool challenges learners and educators alike to reflect on whose knowledge counts in healthcare—and whose is left out? While designed for the helping professions, its principles extend far beyond nursing or counselling, inviting educators, clinicians, and students across disciplines to critically examine how they seek, value, and apply evidence in their daily caring practice.
Reframing Evidence Through Cultural Humility
The OER introduces the concept of knowledge justice—the idea that social identities shape whose voices are valued and whose are dismissed and silenced in professional spaces. Through this lens, learners are encouraged to move beyond knowledge hierarchies to recognize the value of lived, community, and cultural knowledges.
One of the featured case studies presents the story of a pregnant adolescent newcomer from Kenya navigating the Canadian healthcare system. Her experience invites learners to ask a crucial question: What does it mean to provide culturally safe care? For example, when exploring infant sleep practices, students are asked to compare the results of searching for “bed-sharing” versus “co-sleeping.” This exercise highlights how search algorithms, terminology, and cultural framing influence what information is found—and what remains hidden.
Equally important, the case prompts learners to critically reflect on their own positionality, values, and biases, and to consider what they bring into each care encounter. This process of self-awareness is not only foundational to cultural humility, but also to practicing knowledge justice. It asks healthcare professionals to recognize how their perspectives are shaped by culture, privilege, and lived-experience, and how those factors influence the care they provide.
That is why Chapter 1 of the OER—“Identity, Positionality, and Power”—serves as the starting point for the resource. It guides learners to engage in reflexive inquiry before they even begin to seek knowledge sources or evaluate them for harm and diversity. By understanding themselves first, practitioners are better equipped to approach others with humility; a critical first steps in creating culturally safe healthcare spaces.
The Voices Flower: Seeking Voices, Not Just Sources
Central to the resource is the Voices Flower, a tool that encourages learners to seek out five categories of voices, rather than source types, when approaching any clinical or ethical question:
- Persons with Lived Experience – such as patient stories, which can be located in places like online blogs, interviews, videos, or even social media.
- Community Representatives – including Elders, religious leaders, or members of advocacy groups.
- Arm’s-Length Observers – independent researchers or evaluators.
- Power Holders – policymakers, managers, or institutional leaders.
- Care Providers – practitioners and professionals directly involved in care delivery.
By engaging across these groups, students learn to assess the diversity of voices of their evidence — not just its source type or publication status. This approach reflects the principles of cultural humility, requiring continuous self-reflection and respect for multiple truths.
A Collaborative Effort Grounded in Justice
The OER was co-edited by Heather Campbell, Ashley McKeown, Lea Sansom, Kathryn Holmes, Dani Dilkes, and Britney Glasgow-Osment supported by a Western Libraries OER Grant. Its development was made possible through contributions from the Centre for Teaching and Learning, the Instructional Technology Resource Centre, and faculty from Education and Health Sciences.
Built in Pressbooks and licensed under Creative Commons, the resource is fully open, meaning it is free to access, adapt, and integrate into teaching or professional development. Each of its six chapters weaves together text, video, and interactive reflection activities, culminating in a practical workbook that invites users to apply knowledge justice in real-world settings.
“We’re teaching students to seek voices, not just sources,” explains Heather Campbell, Curriculum Librarian and co-lead. “And to ask: What evidence do we value most — and whose voices are being left out as a result?”
Why This Work Matters
For too long, health education has relied on narrow definitions of “evidence,” often excluding the knowledge of Indigenous Peoples, racialized communities, gender and sex diverse communities, and equity-deserving communities. By embedding the principles of knowledge justice and cultural humility, this resource helps learners, educators caregivers from helping professions, challenge those hierarchies and co-create more equitable, inclusive healthcare environments.
Already, the OER is being integrated into courses across Nursing, Health Sciences, Dietetics, Medicine, Library and Information Science, and Philosophy at Western University, embedding the principles of knowledge justice into both undergraduate and graduate curricula. Beyond the university, local healthcare institutions such as St. Joseph’s Health Care London’s Professional Practice team are taking up this work, using it to support Clinical Scholar Nurses Program in deepening their critical reflection on positionality and leadership, and to explore how a knowledge justice lens can inform policy development and organizational decision-making.
At the national level, Ashley McKeown is leading a four-part webinar series, Creating Transformative Change: Enacting Epistemic Justice in Nursing Practice, Education, and Scholarship, which provides nurse educators, researchers, and leaders with practical strategies for integrating knowledge justice into curriculum design, research, and institutional practice.
Together, these initiatives demonstrate how knowledge justice is catalyzing transformative change across healthcare and education—bridging classrooms and clinical settings to foster more reflective, inclusive, and equity-driven systems of care.