Teaching Students, Not Standards: The New ACRL Information Literacy Framework and Threshold Crossings for Instructors
Why this work is in the frame
A frame that forgets how it found something cannot be audited. These are the routes that admitted this work.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
AbstractThe new ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education is an opportunity for IL instructors to ask themselves whether their current approaches to instruction are meeting the higher goals of IL education. Instructors might re-examine their pedagogical approaches by considering their own knowledge practices and dispositions in teaching IL. How might we best create a space in which the desired student knowledge practices and dispositions flourish? How can we approach IL education as fellow students - ones who just happen to be at a different point on the same path of lifelong learning?KeywordsACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education; information literacy; threshold concepts; pedagogyFollowing years of growing sentiment among instructional librarians that the Association of College and Research Libraries' (ACRL) Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education (2000) contained outdated notions of both student learning and the information landscape in higher education, the ACRL Board of Directors in June of 2012 unanimously decided that the Standards should be revised, and authorized the creation of a Task Force charged with drafting a new information literacy framework (Boylston 1). Over several revision projects, webinars, and conference presentations, librarians were invited to weigh in on the shape that the new document would take and the Task Force responded to their suggestions and concerns. The result of those revision efforts is the newly published ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education (ACRL 2015).As a former secondary school teacher turned academic librarian (and advocate of lifelong learning), I engaged with several of these revision feedback projects which, in turn, evolved into an ongoing collaboration with a group of colleagues representing the TRY University Libraries of Toronto (Toronto, Ryerson, and York). Together we've unpacked the Framework in two conference presentations and training sessions, as well as a wiki to expand the conversation with other academic librarians (TRY University Libraries of Toronto). Now, in a new role as a Research and Instructional Services Librarian at Western University, I am examining how the Framework has shifted my perspectives on the respective roles of the teacher and student in information literacy (IL) education.While the ACRL Task Force intends the new Framework and its component frames, knowledge practices, and dispositions to guide instructors in designing curricula for students, I read the document differently: I see in the new Framework an opportunity to ask of ourselves if our current approach to instruction can meet the higher goals of IL education. In this document, I see an opportunity for instructors to reexamine their pedagogical approaches by considering student-focused IL knowledge practices and dispositions, and thinking of them from the point of view of the instructor. In other words, what are my knowledge practices and dispositions in teaching IL? How might my teaching evolve in order to facilitate a space in which the desired student knowledge practices and dispositions can flourish? The Framework in this light is an opportunity for instructors to consider their own knowledge practices and dispositions by adopting a beginner's frame of mind, and to approach IL education as a discussion with fellow students-ones who just happen to be at a different point on the same path of lifelong learning.What I find most compelling about this new Framework is that it inspires a different approach to IL education for instructor and student alike. The instructor must cross a threshold, evolving instruction from a point-and-click database demo style to an engaged and interactive IL discussion with students. The instructor occupies the role of coach, animator, or advisor leading the discussion, while encouraging students to become active agents in their own learning. …
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Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.010 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.009 | 0.205 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it