Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Foundational Assumptions In Threshold Concepts And Information Literacy, Patrick K. Morgan

Faculty Presentations

This is a critique of the threshold concepts at the heart of the new ACRL Framework.

Models are only tools, and like all tools, will inevitably perform well in certain contexts and poorly in others. Threshold concepts are exactly and only a model/tool, and far from useless.

In a late-January post on the ACRL blog, Lori Townsend and her colleagues responded to some of the negative press threshold concepts had been receiving; in it, we were reminded how productive threshold concepts-based approaches have been in a variety of learning contexts.

My objections can be roughly corralled into two broad criticisms: …

Pausing At The Threshold, Patrick K. Morgan

Faculty Publications

Threshold concepts are increasingly inescapable at library conferences and in general information literacy discourse, and this visibility will likely only increase as they figure so prominently in the Association of College and Research Libraries inchoate Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. Nevertheless, very little has been done to critically consider the wider intellectual ramifications of certain assumptions fundamental to their manifestation in library/information literacy instruction. This paper is an initial attempt to promote such discussions.

Liminal Librarianship: Transgressing The Threshold, Patrick K. Morgan

Faculty Presentations

Librarians have lately become enamored of threshold concepts. This enchantment is so compelling that the inchoate update of the ACRL information literacy competency standards--in which "standards" have apparently been replaced with a more flexible, concept-oriented framework--depends on them heavily. The appropriateness and feasibility of the ideas behind these terms, however, have been only weakly addressed. Certainly, it makes sense to take information literacy instruction beyond a focus on skill acquisition and into the realm of the conceptual, at least if teaching librarians want their work with students to be meaningful beyond the limited confines of producing "academic artifacts" of little …