Resiliency through a social practice approach to information literacy: Exploration of a threshold concept in LIS education

This poster builds upon work presented at the 2020 ALISE conference that attempted to answer Todd’s (2017) call for future research to create a sustainable future of information literacy. The author’s proposed grounded theory emerged from 87 survey responses and 17 participant interviews which explored Lloyd’s (2010; 2017) concept of information landscapes in the context of postsecondary education. The proposed grounded theory found that viewing information literacy as a social practice was a threshold concept for librarians, and by extension library and information science education. Once in-service librarians crossed this threshold, they acknowledged that they could no longer view information literacy as skills-based. A social practice approach to information literacy positioned in-service librarians to recognize the strengths and resiliency in their students, actively shunning a deficit mindset. This in-progress dissertation study aims to build credibility for the proposed grounded theory by collecting additional data through both focus groups and participant diaries. Together these data hope to crystallize the affordances of the author’s theory, provide a thorough examination of the theory across multiple contexts, and refine the theory so that it may inform LIS education going forward. Specifically, this poster will provide emergent findings from the first set of focus groups as well as explore how this theory can help LIS educators inspire resilient in-service librarians