Framing the Talk: Scholarship as Conversation in the Health Sciences

Scholarship as Conversation, one of the threshold concepts in ACRL’s Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education, is and always will be an important concept for students to understand. The idea behind this frame has traditionally been introduced to students across the disciplines in the context of citing sources correctly, giving scholarly attribution, and avoiding plagiarism. These tenets are repeated in English class lectures, library orientations, as well as many other classes requiring research and writing. The Scholarship as Conversation frame continues to reflect these tenets in the knowledge practices; however, the frame has much broader implications that are crucial for students to employ as they continue their education and later when they enter their professions, such as following changes in scholarly perspectives over time on topics in their disciplines, seeking out different perspectives, and contributing to the scholarly conversation. If students fail to understand these broader implications, they are unlikely to find the idea of attribution important or meaningful