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This chapter examines the efforts undertaken to restructure the legal education system in South Africa and Nigeria. It investigates the connection between contextual influences and professional development, particularly with respect to the concept of legal information literacy and the value of acquired educational skills in the context of legal practice. The chapter provides insights to the needs and challenges for graduate requirement for legal information literacy skills in the effort to ensure productivity in the legal education system in Africa. Data were obtained using both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Outcomes from the study were supportive of the importance of information literacy as central to the development of professional competence. Findings also point to a need for greater collaboration between the legal education system and the legal profession in narrowing the gap between the teaching and practice of law specifically in the design and implementation of an information literacy framework for the legal education system.

Information literacy instruction in higher education tends to focus on a relatively small slice of the information literacy landscape: academic research skills. Students often fail to see the relevance of these sessions beyond the direct application to their assignments. In addition, while this type of instruction helps students succeed academically, it does not necessarily prepare them for their future careers, which can lead to a lapse in student engagement. A prior exploratory survey study among alumni of four bachelor of nursing programs provided insight into current information practices of professional nurses and how librarians could have better prepared them for their eventual workplace. This chapter outlines how this evidence informed a change in information instruction, now preparing nursing students for professional as well as academic success. This evidence-based approach has the potential benefit of making instruction more relevant and engaging to students, while at the same time expanding their information literacy skills. Teaching nursing students professional information literacy skills, in addition to academic information literacy skills, leads to better-prepared nurses which ultimately benefits their patients. The chapter provides several implementation examples but also addresses the challenges that librarians face when pursuing evidence-based practice to increase student engagement.

After an overview of the literature on challenges facing library instructors and their coordinators, the chapter describes how the communities of practice model relates to professional development in librarianship, specifically in the area of instructional development. A case study of a community of practice fostered by an instruction coordinator at an academic library is detailed. Academic librarians may encounter several challenges when entering the classroom as library instructors, and instruction coordinators seek to address these and other challenges as they build library instruction programs. By developing a community of practice, instruction coordinators can enable library instructors to learn together. The case study describes how the Instruction Coordinator cultivates library instructor development for members of the Teaching and Learning Team at Loyola University New Orleans’ Monroe Library through a community of practice model. The practical implications for this chapter are that instruction coordinators can establish instructional development opportunities that allow library instructors to enhance their teaching abilities and ultimately further library instruction programs. Communities of practice are well known in several fields and have been discussed in the library literature. This chapter provides additional value to researchers and practitioners through the discussion and application of the concept in the context of library instruction at academic institutions. The case study provides specific examples of how instruction coordinators at other academic libraries can apply the community of practice model and instructional development opportunities to a library instruction program in order to build and sustain a learning culture that supports library instructor development.

Bodies are central to the information experience, but are not often accounted for as a source of information, that is central to the information literacy experience. Based on research with emergency services personnel and with nurses, this chapter explores the role of the body as a locus for understanding and meaning-making. Drawing from a sociocultural perspective, the author suggests that the concept of information experience as a stand-alone conception is meaningless. A solution is to acknowledge the referencing of embodied experience against social conditions and ways of knowing that inform peoples’ experience of practice, as located within the body. Key questions for researchers considering an information experience approach are posed.

Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to assess the avenues through which traditional notions of information literacy skills shape oral communication curriculum and to identify steps that can be taken to transform the experience of students in the public speaking classroom so that they are offered an opportunity to develop understandings of how they use information to learn.

Approach – This chapter engages in an analysis of teaching materials and best practice scholarship used in the traditional college public speaking classroom. An informed learning perspective is applied to this corpus to identify the ways in which an information literacy skills approach is reflected in current practice.

Findings – The analysis highlights the prevalence of an information literacy skills approach throughout the oral communication curriculum. Textbooks, assignment types and guidelines, along with grading rubrics and instructor feedback all perpetuate a skills approach. Outside class support, including peer tutors and library instruction, also contribute to a focus on information literacy over informed learning.

Implications – Informed learners are better prepared to engage and apply information across contexts and to use information to continue learning. Informed learners are reflective on the knowledge they gain through information use. Therefore, this chapter concludes that public speaking courses, along with the communication centers and libraries that support oral communication instruction, should embrace an informed learning approach to the development of course materials, assignments, and teaching.

Originality/value – Suggestions for reframing public speaking curriculum and support from the informed learning perspective are provided.

This chapter reports a six-year integrated information literacy instruction program in Taiwan that brought together concepts from informed learning, especially the six frames, with inquiry-based learning frameworks in schools. A total of eleven inquiry projects have been implemented from grades 1 through 6. Six projects selected for each grade are explained in detail. The themes of the projects are designed based on the essence of six frames, each project involving one to three frames depending on the integrated subjects. Through the descriptions, we present how the information literacy instruction is integrated into various subject matters via the framework of inquiry-based learning, such as the Super3 and Big6 models. Students’ performances in subject content and information literacy of the six projects are delineated quantitatively and qualitatively.

Research and writing can be challenging tasks for undergraduate students, and evaluating online sources for use in papers can be especially difficult to do well. This chapter discusses a partnership between a library and a writing center to teach writing consultants the basics of the Information Literacy Framework and online source evaluation. This included providing additional education for peer writing consultants. Consultants became more fluent in the aspects of evaluation and provided perspective on how and why undergraduate students struggle with this in the research and writing process, establishing the value of assembling networked pedagogical models for teaching information literacy.

Public library workers (PLW) in the United States can use critical information literacy pedagogy (CILP) as a framework for working with people who are incarcerated to combat oppression. PLW who teach information literacy in any capacity in carceral settings should honor their involvement in pedagogy and follow Paulo Freire’s pedagogical philosophy by rejecting humanitarian postures in favor of humanistic approaches. This can be accomplished by aiming to have both PLW and people who are incarcerated reach an awareness of and critique multiple information literacies, and for PLW to situate themselves alongside, not above, people in jails and prisons in an effort to authentically empower the incarcerated to re-enter society. This practice promotes social justice because it challenges the idea that information literacies associated with dominant groups – and thus, groups who are in power themselves – are intrinsically more valuable than information literacies engaged in by groups that are systematically disempowered. The chapter will end with prospective examples of PLW who participate in CILP in carceral settings.

This qualitative case study explored the information literacy acquisition of 23 students enrolled in a learning community consisting of an advanced English as a Second Language (ESL) writing class and a one-unit class introducing students to research at a suburban community college library in California. As there are no other known learning communities that link an ESL course to a library course, this site afforded a unique opportunity to understand the ways in which ESL students learn to conduct library research. Students encountered difficulties finding, evaluating, and using information for their ESL assignments. Strategies that the students, their ESL instructor, and their instructional librarian crafted in response were enabled by the learning community structure. These strategies included integration of the two courses’ curricula, contextualized learning activities, and dialogue. ESL students in this study simultaneously discovered new language forms, new texts, new ideas, and new research practices, in large part because of the relationships that developed over time among the students, instructor, and instructional librarian. Given the increasing number of ESL students in higher education and the growing concern about their academic success, this study attempts to fill a gap in the research literature on ESL students’ information literacy acquisition.

Purpose – Academic librarians are well positioned to take on the role of the informed learning developer, working with teachers to design coursework in which students learn to use information as they engage with course context. This chapter aims to provide insights to academic librarians of how they may approach integrating information literacy into courses using an informed learning approach by identifying key aspects of this collaborative work.

Methods The literature on educational development, specifically outlining the core responsibilities, activities, skills, and models used by educational developers is reviewed and key aspects are identified and applied to describe the role of a developer working with teachers to foster learning through engagement with information in higher education.

Findings – Four key aspects of the work of educational developers are identified: collaborative, scholarly, contextual, and reflective. When adapted to describe the efforts of a developer focused on creating informed learning experiences for students, the four aspects include:

partnering with teachers to develop informed learning experiences by leveraging the expertise of the teacher and the librarian;

applying an informed learning pedagogic approach, and drawing from and sharing information literacy scholarship illuminating how information is used in the learning process;

creating informed learning experiences that are responsive to institutional and disciplinary perspectives; and

encouraging teachers to reflect on their intentions for content-focused learning and how learning outcomes may be shaped through interactions with information.

Implications – Drawing upon their expertise in how learners use information, academic librarians can use the findings to concentrate their consultative efforts to effectively partner with teachers to transform student learning experiences in higher education.