The goal has to be right for us, and it has to be beneficial, in order to ensure a beneficial process. But aside from that, it’s really the process that’s important.
—Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh
I have always valued process over product, as the old dictum urges us to do, but realize, of course, that in academia, we all must produce. That’s life! I needed to think through a process that worked not only for myself, but for my students as well. Coming to a more conceptual approach, as I have touched on earlier, revealed to me that it is, perhaps, one of the best ways to enact learning in the embedded classroom, and an embedded librarian can be the ideal facilitator of that process.
Again, my frustration with doing most information literacy sessions was the fact that I was deprived of witnessing, and thus deprived of understanding exactly how students were learning. In fact, I was in the dark about what kind of process students were going through to reach their end goals. Or not. But more importantly, I was deprived of the opportunity to reach them and guide them through this process. This was a source of great frustration to me, because I know from years of working reference that it takes some time to figure out and understand what kind of help a student really needs versus what they actually ask for.
In the years before I actually became embedded, I would encounter students who simply wanted information, or sources, or something (usually peer-reviewed, although few knew what that meant) they could walk away with—verifiable proof that they had something, which meant that that something, the journal article or book, would help morph into the project that they were expected to hand in. But in my experience, few students knew what to actually do with that article, that book, that citation or abstract. I noticed that students rarely had difficulty finding something on their topic. That seemed to come easily to them, something they would often mention with pride, being “digital natives.”
I have stood in front of many classrooms in which I encountered the same students I’d encountered in another class for another professor and they would roll their eyes at my presentation, my attempt at teaching them a thing or two. And yet, when I would poll the class on their information literacy skills, beyond being able to do simple searches in proprietary databases, few knew how to evaluate sources, how to fold research into their papers, evaluate authors for authority, or identify the experts writing in their discipline. Faculty often seemed oblivious to these shortcomings, and yet I was expected by them to do what I was increasingly beginning to believe was impossible—in the amount of time I had and with the infrequency with which I encountered students in the classroom. I had no time to process with them, nor they with me. I have a colleague who consistently repeats to his students in information literacy sessions that “research is never as easy as you’d like it to be.” Knowing that can be half the battle, because I believe that most students have a mistaken idea of what research actually is to begin with.
We do ourselves and our (mainly) undergraduate students a disservice, in fact, by the continued use of the word research, which implies a concept that many undergraduates do not seem equal to. “Inquiry,” conceptually, allows for the freedom (and reality) of not knowing, but puts one on the road to find out. Those of us who have already jumped through the many hoops of fire in order to earn our degrees cannot fully understand how daunting the research process is for students. So many of them seem to think they need to already know what they are looking for when they begin to look! I have had students apologize to me because they simply do not know what they are looking for. Others, sometimes prompted by their professors, begin the process with very fixed topics and not only do not allow themselves to fully crack open the topic to reveal the issue, but are frustrated when their inquiry process somehow leads them into different directions, as indeed it often does and should! But however many times I have communicated this to students both individually and in the classroom setting, any deviation from the fixed idea or topic or subject that they begin with distresses them, and in the end becomes counterproductive to their inquiry process. I have come to believe that it is easier to work with a student who has no idea where to begin. Of course, my experience comes from working with students in both English senior thesis as well as a required course for English majors, “Interpreting Literature,” but the difficulty with research and inquiry spans nearly all of the disciplines.
The tendency for students to front-load their research process (I deliberately use the word research in instances where students attempt to merely find sources that will confirm their assertion of their topic) is one that I see more often than not. A few years ago, before I was fully embedded, I asked a senior student what the hardest part of research was for her thesis and she answered, with all seriousness, “Figuring out how to use all of the research I’d printed out and read.” This student had so many difficulties in the completion of her thesis because she simply could not and would not deviate from the topic she chose very early in the semester, when evidence presented itself, early on, that her topic, in this case, gender roles in The Great Gatsby, could be looked at from more than just a few angles. As a result, her paper was poorly conceived and poorly executed and contributed nothing to the conversation or anything new to the body of knowledge about the topic. I took it as a personal failure as the librarian for the class that I could not really “reach” her or others like her.
Christine Bruce1 writes about the “relational” approach that those who teach can use when instructing students about information literacy, which focuses on the learners’, “conceptions.” To this end, Bruce formulated a theory, which is based on four specific features about learning and conception:
1. Learning is about changes in conception.
2. Learning always has a content as well as a process.
3. Learning is about relations between the learner and the subject matter.
4. Improving learning is about understanding the students’ perspective.
These four points made so much sense to me, and in fact, was a validation of sorts because I had a sort of tacit knowing that these points speak to. It has been my experience both in and out of the embedded classroom and as I enact learning in any situation I am in as a librarian, that learning really is about changes in one’s conception. Making students aware of their process (meta-cognition) will allow them to understand how they learn better. The professor in the class, while it goes without saying, is highly invested in actual learning; he or she is, by necessity focused more on content and often leaves the research/inquiry process to a librarian.
It is helpful to look at the six conceptions of information literacy that were the result of Bruce’s study of educators at four universities in Australia, in the hopes of further providing a clearer understanding of information literacy:
1. information technology
2. information sources
3. information process
4. knowledge construction
5. knowledge extension
6. wisdom
The last feature on the list, frankly, took me by surprise. I rarely, if ever hear the word wisdom in relation to students or information literacy. “Wisdom” humanizes and elevates the process of research to one of inquiry in that it implies that students will gain so much more, in the end, than just a paper to show for their trouble. It implies that there is a higher goal than just the tangibles that we can measure. Bruce is careful, however, to make it clear that these conceptions of information literacy are not a prescription, not a one-size-fits-all for what is a highly personal and variable process that is dependent on many factors. Instead she asserts that any one person’s experience of information literacy or learning is “intricately woven, revealing different patterns of meaning depending on the nature of the light cast upon it.”2 This was a liberating philosophy because it reinforced that for me, the one-size-fits-all approach of teaching information literacy, standards notwithstanding, was a wrong-headed approach, and those inclined toward an embedded approach would probably agree.
While I work with two different professors for each thesis class, both have been supportive of my approach in the classroom. It took more than several meetings with the professors, beginning in the spring and lasting through the summer, for us to discuss and implement this approach. At first the professors were reluctant, thinking that what I wanted to do in the class would take too much time, as both of them are very content-driven, understandably. It was my job to constantly reiterate my value in the class. One would be naive to imagine that taking a member of the faculty’s consent or permission to fully embed in a class meant that they fully understood what it is we are trying to do. In actuality, I believe few of them are even sure how or what we do during regular classroom instruction. It was my job to explain this as well as I could, which was frankly, difficult for me in the beginning. “Why” was the constant refrain, questioning that I continued to have to answer, and, quite frankly, felt that I had to justify.
One professor explained to me that her syllabus would be set up in a way that would take the students through the process of writing the thesis step-by-step, but when I took a look at it, what that really meant was that there were specific dates when assignments were due—such as pre- and subsequent drafts. The rest of the class focused on literary theory, in which they would include two approaches in their final papers. Providing dates for drafts, while a necessity to keep students on track, was not a process, but rather a schedule. My own feelings on being auxiliary to the learning process for so long were difficult to squelch, but I knew that if I was going to spend the time and energy to embed in this class, I was going to make a difference, or at least try my best to do so.
I asked the professor for time to look over the syllabus and to use my own teaching philosophy to more fully conceptualize how I could use her syllabus as a framework to embed information literacy practices and processes. She agreed. We met ten days later and I had more of a concrete plan and approach. Still, I sensed some resistance, which I then, as now, believe to be not only the proprietary attitude that professors have with both their subject matter and their classes, but the genuine doubt, not so much about a librarian’s ability, but how that will play out in the classroom. Embedding, by its very nature, can be planned, but not scripted. In other words, one learns as one goes along, but it is better to set goals and methods that will encourage success, though of course, not guarantee it. I found this out the hard way, actually, when I just assumed that all of my careful planning, which played out so brilliantly in my head, was instead met in reality on several occasions with indifference, resentment, or bafflement in the class—and that by the students, to say nothing of the professor!
Managing my expectations was something that I eventually learned. It seemed like all of the advice that I’d preached to students over the years about process was the same advice that I forgot to apply to my own situation. I’d read several books and many articles on embedded librarianship that talked of an endless number of approaches including being embedded in a virtual sense, at a distance, in science, in the humanities, up, down, and all around, with careful steps, but nothing truly prepared me for the experience until I was actually doing it. No one would dream of being a virtuoso the first time they picked up a violin, so I did not understand why I thought I could take our students through a process that would be like a walk in the park. But it was a start.
One of the strategies I envisioned for the class was a research blog that would be done each week, and would be embedded in our learning management system, Blackboard. Because I was driven by a conceptual approach to the students as a way of modeling process, the professor and I decided that each week I would post a question that would require the students to reflect on what was happening in class and their reactions to it. My thinking was that they would feel freer expounding upon the questions I would pose to them on their own time, and feel freer to answer in more meaningful and complete ways. While the professor preferred that I submit the blog questions or prompts to her in advance, I explained to her that I felt that this defeated the purpose. In fact, each week my question would be in response to activities or discussions in class, which not only made the exercise relevant, but also gave the students the valuable time involved in allowing something that was discussed in class to filter down and then reflect upon it more fully in the blog. Admittedly, while waiting for group dynamics to happen, the blog posts were rather short and to the point in the beginning. I felt that students were giving me answers that they thought I wanted to hear. Because I wanted and needed a baseline of information from students in the class, the questions I asked them to answer, first, turned out to be ideal pre-assessment questions, and, in fact, I used them as such:
• List, in steps, your research process.
• Describe your research process.
• What aspects of research do you feel fairly confident in? Please list and explain.
• Which databases are you most comfortable with and why?
• What would, in your opinion, be an unacceptable source for research and why?
• What kinds of resources have you used, predominantly, in your past research projects (e.g., books, databases, Wikipedia, newspapers, academic journals in hard copy, videos, Ted Talks, etc.)? In other words, what are your “go to” sources?
• Have you ever consulted a librarian for help with research without being required to do so?
• Are you comfortable approaching a librarian with research? Please explain.
• What would be an example, in your opinion, of the best type of research help you could receive?
• What has been unhelpful to you in the past?
• Please feel free to add any thoughts about the research process and your relationship to it.
I attempted to make the questions as open-ended as possible. While the responses varied, not a single student reported that they felt at all intimidated by approaching a librarian in the research process, though, not surprisingly, few reported that they ever felt the need to do just that. The students expressed an overwhelming sense of confidence in the research process, which did not surprise me. In my own experience, students tend to overestimate their ability to locate and evaluate sources and take a very distinct pride in being able to locate what it is they think that they need. But as I have stressed before: finding sources has never really been a problem.
Armed with the answers from the first blog post, I initiated conversation and gently challenged the class on some of their answers. For example, there was a distinct difference in the way they spoke about their own confidence in the process of what they called research and the difficulty many of them expressed in actually doing it. So, I wondered, which one is it? I felt compelled not to jump to my own conclusions which told me how mistaken they really were—that it was ego and age that led them to believe they knew, in every instance, what they were doing. Once we entered into conversation, slowly but surely what emerged was the fact that they really did not know what they did not know, though it was evident that they knew something—quite a bit, in fact, but they needed someone (librarian as mediator) to urge them along. To explain more clearly, they knew that there was a rupture somewhere along the line with the way they attempted research, but they simply did not know how to put together the pieces of their own understanding.
One student blurted out “Somehow, I know it’s not about the databases, but I really don’t know another way to begin.” Once that was out, we could really begin. The student seemed to feel validated by the nods and murmurs of assent that were filling the room. These thoughts need to get airtime, need to see the light of day where they can be dealt with. Another student explained how she usually is reluctant, for any reason, to change direction in a research process even when armed with new knowledge or perspective. I have stated before that I knew this to be true, but hearing a student say it out loud again helped us work out as close as we possibly could exactly why that was true. This led us to talk about the fact that amassing “information,” in fact, shoehorning information into your paper is not really research—or even inquiry for that matter.
The constructivist theory of learning has always greatly interested me and I could see that this theory of learning seemed apt to what was happening in this class. This theory puts forth two basic features: that we construct our own worlds based on our own experiences and perceptions and that “construction” entails the totality of a person, incorporating their “thinking, feeling and acting in a dynamic process of learning.”3 So while the students may have difficulty with concepts in the beginning, what we know is that we can tap into their thoughts and feelings, their tacit knowing, by beginning a conversation, which brings to light thoughts and ideas. In the thesis classes, I could clearly see how the students brought their entire selves into the process, most specifically since all of them had to choose a literary text to focus on and they often have very personal reasons for choosing a specific text. This text is almost always a piece of literature that resonates with them in very deep and specific ways, such as the student who wrote about Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar because her sister was depressed to the point of suicide several times, or the student who chose Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card because she questioned her own place in the educational process, mainly because her foreign-born parents compelled her to go to college at a time when she wondered what she really wanted to do or how she could possibly succeed in a field she had no interest in. To look at these students and think that they brought nothing to the table was inherently wrong and would be denying the totality of who they were and what they were capable of.
In fact, the actual conversation that we had in the third class of the semester very much modeled the beginning of the inquiry process. And I pointed that out to them. “This,” I said, “is how we begin the process: we talk and we think and we write, before we do anything else!”
Before the explosion of information, John Dewey,4 writing in 1933, identified what he termed five phases of reflective experience, which exemplify the process by which an individual gathers and uses information to learn. Thinking, in fact, conceptualization, and then the awareness of the process is integral toward learning and gathering information:
Suggestion: a new idea, incomplete
Intellectualization: beginning to conceptualize the problem
Guiding idea: beginning to interpret
Reasoning: interpreting armed with facts and information
Action: idea tested
Dewey recognized the stages of doubt as integral to the gathering information stage, and in the beginning I could see the uncertainty clouding the faces of the students before me. When they are told that their uncertainty, that their unknowing is a natural and expected part of a complex problem, they can take a breath and move to the next step. Telling them what they can expect greatly alleviates so much of the anxiety that they feel in approaching any assignment.
To be able to further the process outside of class, I assigned students as research partners. The paired-up students would meet regularly outside of class and grapple not only with the assigned work in class (discussion theorists and writing about theory), but they would also go through the steps of their inquiry process with each other and keep notes on those meetings. Not surprisingly, it was much easier for one student to see faulty thinking or a wrong-headed approach in a process that was not their own. They articulated what they were thinking, where they were going with an idea, explained how they got there, and allowed themselves to be challenged and supported by one of their peers. We would discuss these meetings in class. I wanted them to be fully conscious of the process, because it was working and I wanted it to continue to work. Eventually they began to see how one idea gave birth to another and they identified leaps in higher-level thinking as it pertained to their topics, but more importantly, discussion in class and with their research partners turned topics into issues. I had to be explicit in explaining the difference: you start with a topic and with inquiry that topic turns into an issue to explore.
I have discussed with my colleagues the fact that I use concept mapping as often as I can. Some did not immediately see the value, while others were reluctant to have students do anything that even remotely resembled the handing out of a work sheet to be completed. “I can hear the groans now,” one colleague said, tilting his chair back against the wall, rolling his eyes. As a rule, I don’t like work sheets, and find that the students find them particularly off-putting when asked by a librarian to complete them—I know, I’ve tried it a few times.
The best strategies are the simplest when it comes to process. I hand out a very simple template of a circle connecting to other circles. In fact, the whole page is filled with circles and lines connecting them one to the other. I only ask that they put their predominant subject in the big circle in the middle. In my class this might be the text they are using for their thesis or the issue they are grappling with in the text. So to use the same example, my student, Dana, who was firm in her resolve to simply explore gender issues in The Great Gatsby was urged to fill out the concept map and begin to make connections. Afterward, they would sit with their research partners and go over their maps with one another, tracing lines of thought and subtracting, adding, or correcting some circles as a way to begin to firm up and concretize their thoughts. The class was always very loud when I had them converse with their research partners, and I and the professor in the class would walk around and both join in and monitor the conversations so that we made sure the students were staying focused. I collected the concept maps to better understand where students were in their thinking processes and then copied each one for myself and gave them back. I asked the students to hold on to them and to refer to them as needed, which a few admitted to, was often. In fact, many students had more than a few concept maps in which they could trace the stages of their conceptualization process. This made so many of them down the road feel like they could see tangible progress in their thinking, what I like to call “getting from point A to point B”—movement that they often find hard to conceive of in the beginning, but when nurtured and encouraged in a thoughtful way happens quite naturally. When students experience small successes in thinking and process, it clears the way for more of the same. Students begin to build their knowledge base both alone and together and begin to see (however slowly) how their work contributes to a body of knowledge. They see that this is, in fact, how knowledge is created, how we make our contributions to cultural production and is, in the end, so much more than just a project or a paper or even a thesis. The concept maps, the conceptual work in general led them to interrogate their own preconceived notions, and instead focused them on issues that would be possible to explore further. The work, the process, becomes a meaningful activity; a means to an end.
The Burkean Parlor,5 put forth by Kenneth Burke as an apt metaphor for the way in which students enter into the conversation of research, exemplifies research as conversation, and is the ace in the hole for the embedded librarian:
Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. In fact, the discussion had already begun long before any of them got there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for you all the steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer him; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself against you, to either the embarrassment or the gratification of your opponent, depending upon the quality of your ally’s assistance. However, the discussion is interminable. The hour grows, late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress.
Perhaps everything that I have written thus far can be summed up by reading the above passage as nearly the perfect metaphor for what I am attempting to enact in the embedded classroom. You will be able to see that I come back to conversation over and over again, because I believe it to be the very foundation of all that we do with students. Sharing the Burkean Parlor with students allows them to see, in theory, what it is like to enter into the conversation of research and inquiry, and how, despite what they may feel in the beginning, it is an incredibly natural process that we all engage in, particularly when we are not focused on it. Consider how students might share details of their lives over the lunch table in the dining hall. Students challenge one another, add to the conversation, create allies of understanding, and shift their viewpoints or alliances based on incoming information or the changing of particular details. This is a natural approach that should not be at all foreign to students; in fact, they will recognize themselves in this process. It is essential that they know something of the topic before entering into the conversation—something, anything—and then listen well, an aspect of conversation that many are not yet good at. Listening well will help them to critically evaluate and to interrogate the claims being made. And it is important for them to know that the conversation is ongoing—in fact, it may lay fallow at times but it is always going on. Whether or not you, as the embedded librarian, are facilitating discussion or the professor in the class is, this conversation will allow you to pick up on weak points in critical thinking or gaps in how students begin the process of inquiry. To join in any conversation, one must have a frame of reference, otherwise everyone is just talking at cross-purposes, simply to hear the sound of their own voices.
In my own process, I am usually scribbling away during these conversations noting the following:
Is everyone engaged in the conversation? It is common for certain students to always monopolize the conversation. Every class has a firebrand, someone who keeps things lively. I note who is doing most of the talking, who is asking questions, and who is on the fringe of the conversation or not participating at all. Usually these patterns will reveal themselves early on. Once you identify them, you can break the patterns that don’t keep the conversation on point and moving forward. Moreover, you can encourage those who have not found their voice yet to participate by asking lead-in questions, bringing them off of the periphery. It makes the process more democratic and productive.
Are students bringing in sources or references to the conversation? While our in-class conversations will usually (but not exclusively) be based on assigned readings, it is interesting for me to note who students are bringing into the conversation—the expert(s) writing in the subject area, and so on. While not scientific by any means, this can be an indication that not only has a student paid careful attention to the readings, but the student is comfortable in sourcing them and referencing them for discussion. This is an important part of the process.
Are students getting “stuck”? Sometimes students will talk themselves into a corner and find it difficult to extricate themselves. This will often cause a break in the flow of conversation, though in and of itself, this is not necessarily a bad thing. I like to use the word grapple. A lot. If language shapes our conception of reality, by telling students that they will need to “grapple” with concepts this prepares them to do the “heavy lifting” that the inquiry process requires. I make note of this when it happens, because it reveals to me the way they are thinking about things. It is much better to get “stuck” in a class conversation, where someone is likely to pull you out, than at your computer, alone, your thoughts going around and around in circles.
Are students taking notes? I was very surprised when I began to take careful note of who was writing during class discussions—in fact, the majority of the students were. They were taking note of certain points, and in some cases, when I would randomly ask a student what he or she was writing down, the reply was that they were formulating their thoughts on something someone just said, and did not want to forget until they could enter the conversation. If you find that your students are not taking notes, it would be good to encourage them to do so. It will help them to see how thoughts and ideas take shape and give birth to better and more complex ideas.
My own note-taking process is one that I advocate any chance that I get. This process is highly reflective, in exactly the way the student process is. As an embedded librarian, so much of what we will try, in the beginning, may not work the way we thought it would. Taking notes during the process and reflecting on our practice later helps us, as co-educators, to better strategize in the classroom. For instance, one of the professors that I worked with liked to start the class with a critical question, something that tenuously reflected the theoretical readings that were assigned for each class (and which intimidated students to no end), but were broader in scope. The professor, a gregarious, though intellectually intense person, would pose the question and then ask students for their thoughts. One such question was: “Does the artist have a responsibility to the public to create morally and ethically responsible art?” For the first thirty or so seconds there was nothing but the sound of the proverbial crickets. Students shifted uncomfortably, hid behind their computer screens, and nervously coughed. Or shut down entirely. This exasperated the professor somewhat, but somehow, we managed to get through the first few minutes of what could barely be called a discussion. Then the class continued with instruction. A few days later, the professor said that she was concerned about the lack of participation in the class—how they seemed not to be able to orient themselves to the question.
Despite my own immediate impressions, my notes revealed a few things about what had taken place. Among other things, they were afraid to be wrong. I’d noticed the nervous gestures, the tentativeness. The more the professor prodded them for opinions or answers, the tenser the atmosphere became. This led me to the idea that she would let me know what the critical question she was going to ask was, and then I would fold that into the last few minutes of class talking about where and how they could find some background that would help them to contribute to the discussion. We conceptualized search terms together that would lead students to information they would need to parse, and that could help to enlighten them on the topic and ease their anxiety about jumping into a discussion that would now have some context.
The professor argued that while she had no real objections to what I wanted to do with the class, she felt that the theoretical readings, from which the question was formulated from, should suffice. I reasoned that maybe they should—but clearly, they weren’t. She shrugged, and told me we could take a “let’s wait and see” approach. This was the result of my attention to details in class, the notes that I took, and the post-reflection that became part of my practice as the embedded librarian in the classroom. This was another instance in which I could put forth information literacy strategies embedded in student process and model what really is inquiry.
Looking over my notes even now reveals several things to me, things that were successful and things that I probably would not do again. For all of its prescriptive advice on embedded practice in the professional literature, being an embedded librarian is a highly individualized process, not unlike the process each and every student embarks on in their quest for information. The librarian in the classroom is at a distinct advantage because we are able to both observe the class and the students (a luxury few faculty have) and be able to instruct, as well. And being able to truly facilitate that process is no small thing. In fact, it can and should be one of the cornerstones of what we do in the classroom.
• Begin with emphasizing that everything is a process; that the work for the class students are currently in is no exception.
• Equalize the process and the goal. I have, with anguish, watched students semester after semester make veritable grocery lists of the papers and assignments that need to be done (often at the last minute), and meanwhile that process, that wonderful concept that gets you to the finish line, is almost always obliterated. Implementing assignments similar to the ones in this chapter can take them through the process while still getting them to their goal. I like to say to students, “Yes, in the end you need to hand in a thesis, but the process is going to get you there.” It can be painful or it can unfold over the allotted time.
• Teach students to manage their time as a way of managing process. For instance, endless times over the years I have had to break the bad news to a student that a book or an article that they have requested on the same day as their paper is due was not going to arrive in time. Not even close! My mantra to students has become: “The work is worth it. Honor it by building in enough time to do it right.”
• Encourage mini-goals. For instance, in my thesis classes when we are in the early stages of information gathering (the easy part!), students often lose sight of the fact that they will then need to evaluate that stack of articles. Help them to set a deadline. Students have pushed against that approach by telling me, quite dramatically, that they simply don’t have time until ________________ (fill in the blank). I ask them to choose two articles, find forty-five minutes in the day (doable!), annotate, underline, highlight, and sum up. Then I ask them to meet with me to discuss. Forty-five minutes is doable. Soon, they are doing it on their own.
Everyone who is reading this book will have their own experience of process, or the steps taken toward an end goal. In fact, nothing can be completed without it. Some will argue that long before librarians were “embedded” in classrooms, students got along just fine. And that may be true. But the acceptance of librarians in academia (often as faculty) has moved into the mainstream, and the importance of information literacy is widely recognized not only as needed, but essential in a world teeming with information. The librarian in the classroom finally emerges as co-collaborator along with faculty, and then some.
Integrating information literacy skills in the embedded classroom directly affects and influences student processes, so that student learning in general and the research/inquiry process in particular is not the trial-and-error method used by a large majority of students, but one that is interventionist, inspired, directed, shared, and reflected upon. It is less stressful for students, too!
NOTES
1. Christine Susan Bruce, “Information Literacy Education,” in The Seven Faces of Information Literacy Education (Blackwood, Australia: Auslib, 1997), 42−62.
2. Ibid., 174.
3. Carol C. Kuhlthau and M. J. Bates, Seeking Meaning: A Process Approach to Library and Information Services (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1993), 15.
4. John Dewey, How We Think (Lexington, MA: DC Heath, 1933), 12.
5. Kenneth Burke, The Philosophy of Literary Form: Studies in Symbolic Action (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1941).
RESOURCES
Anderson, Karen, and Frances A. May. “Does the Method of Instruction Matter? An Experimental Examination of Information Literacy Instruction in the Online, Blended, and Face-to-Face Classrooms.” The Journal of Academic Librarianship 36, no. 6 (2010): 495−500.
Campbell, Kathy. “When a Librarian Enters the Classroom: My Experiences Teaching a Freshman Experience Class.” College & Research Libraries News 69, no. 10 (2008): 606−17.
Dweck, Carol S. “Motivational Processes Affecting Learning.” American Psychologist 41, no. 10 (1986): 1040.
Gokhale, Anuradha A. “Collaborative Learning Enhances Critical Thinking.” Journal of Technology Education 7, no. 9 (1995).
Hearn, Michael R. “Embedding a Librarian in the Classroom: An Intensive Information Literacy Model.” Reference Services Review 33, no. 2 (2005): 219−27.
Manus, Sara J. Beutter. (2009). “Librarian in the Classroom: An Embedded Approach to Music Information Literacy for First-Year Undergraduates.” Notes 66, no. 2 (2009): 249−61.
Marton, Ference, and Shirley A. Booth. Learning and Awareness. Hillside, NJ: Laurence Erlbaum, 1997.
McGuinness, Claire. “What Faculty Think—Exploring the Barriers to Information Literacy Development in Undergraduate Education.” The Journal of Academic Librarianship 32, no. 6 (2006): 573−82.
———. “Exploring Strategies for Integrated Information Literacy: From ‘Academic Champions’ to Institution-Wide Change.” Communications in Information Literacy 1, no. 1 (2007): 26−38.
Vincent, Annette, and Dianne Ross. “Learning Style Awareness.” Journal of Research on Computing in Education 33, no. 5 (2001): 1−10.
Webber, Sheila, and Bill Johnston. “Conceptions of Information Literacy: New Perspectives and Implications.” Journal of Information Science 26, no. 6 (2000): 381−97.