Transforming Information Literacy Instruction: Threshold Concepts in Theory and Practice
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Forthcoming, November 2018
"This book provides information literacy practitioners with a thorough exploration of how threshold concepts can be applied to information literacy, identifying the important elements and connections between each concept and relating theory to practical methods that can transform how librarians teach. A model that emerged from the Enhancing Teaching-Learning Environments project in Great Britain, threshold concepts are those transformative core ideas and processes in a given discipline that define the ways of thinking and practicing shared by experts. Once a learner grasps a threshold concept, new pathways to understanding and learning are opened up. The authors of this book provide readers with both a substantial introduction to and a working knowledge of this emerging theory and then describe how it can be adapted for local information literacy instruction contexts. Five threshold concepts are presented and covered in depth within the context of how they relate and connect to each other. The chapters offer an in-depth explanation of the threshold concepts model and identify how it relates to various disciplines (and our own discipline, information science) and to the understandings we want our students to acquire. This text will benefit readers in these primary audiences: academic librarians involved with information literacy efforts at their institutions, faculty teaching in higher education, upper-level college administrators involved in academic accreditation, and high school librarians working with college-bound students." |
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"The challenge becomes, not finding that scarce plant growing in the desert, but finding a specific plant growing in a jungle. We are going to need help navigating that information to find the thing we actually need."
- Neil Gaiman |
"The tutor chairing the summary meeting at the end of the day expressed doubts about whether such a mundane act as hand-washing could serve as a threshold concept. The students explained that hand-washing was not merely a drill, but one which betokened a different perspective on the working environment, emphasising hygiene and the possibility of cross-contamination. By learning that some ways of washing hands are more efficient than others (and how to wash in the approved way), the learner is problematising a taken-for-granted procedure and making it marker for an occupational frame of reference. To adopt the standards of hygiene required of a chef is to move beyond the lower standard expected of a consumer, and it is at this basic level that the risks and responsibilities of professional identity are initially conveyed."
Atherton, Hadfield, & Meyers, 2008 |
