Announcements

Bridge the Gap: Teaching, Learning, Practice, and Competencies

The goal of teaching and learning in our field is to educate and prepare students to become competent practicing information professionals. How do we, as educators, integrate practice and competencies into our pedagogy? Where do we make room for our students to learn how to become competent practitioners? As LIS educators who specialize in theory and research, what is our role in practical workforce preparation?

To use just the example of professional competency frameworks, these frameworks indicate a level of preferred performance within various sub-specializations of the information professions, as articulated by practitioners (generally). Numerous competency frameworks have been developed and/or updated for information professionals, from North American and international contexts, and from multiple information agencies: the American Library Association (ALA) “Core Competency of Librarianship,” Canadian Association of Research Libraries “Core Competencies for 21st Century Librarian,” Medical Library Association (MLA) “Competencies for Lifelong Learning and Professional Success for Health Librarians,” Australian Library and Information Association “Foundation Knowledge for Entry-level Library and Information Professionals,” Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals “The Professional Knowledge and Skills Base,” Archives and Records Association’s “Competency Framework,” ARMA International’s “Records and Information Management Core Competencies,” and “A Competency Model for Undergraduate Programs in Information Systems,” developed by the Joint Association for Computing Machinery/Association for Information Systems IS2020 Task Force. In recent years, there are emergence of new areas of competencies, including MLA’s data services competency (Federer, et al., 2020), NASIG’s (2020) “Core Competencies for Scholarly Communication Librarians,“ and ALA’s 2021 draft of “Core Competency of Librarianship,” which now includes a competence area in “Social Justice.” How do these frameworks influence our pedagogical and theoretical approaches to teaching? How do these frameworks inform and support our teaching and our students’ learning?

Other potential examples of connecting teaching, learning, practice, and competencies might include the role of internships and field experience, connecting theory with practice, and the boundaries between workforce development and master’s-level education. The theme of the ALISE 2023 Conference, “Bridge the Gap: Teaching, Learning, Practice, and Competencies,” explores the linkage between professional and educational practice of LIS programs or iSchool curricula. In identifying the synergy and gaps between professional competencies and LIS pedagogy and curricula, we hope to build a dialogue between practitioners and LIS educators and provide a platform for creating timely, relevant, and valuable education for our students. Papers or panel proposals pertaining to the wide spectrum of LIS education, including those focusing on information technology or data sciences, are welcome.

References
Federer, L., Foster, E. D., Glusker, A., Henderson, M., Read, K., & Zhao, S. (2020). The Medical Library Association Data Services Competency: a framework for data science and open science skills development. Journal of the Medical Library Association: JMLA, 108(2), 304-309.

NASIG. (2020). NASIG Core Competencies for Scholarly Communication Librarians. Available from: https://www.nasig.org/Competencies-Scholarly-Communication.

 

 

Conference Programing Planning Committee Co-chairs:

Denice Adkins, University of Missouri-Columbia

Sean Burns, University of Kentucky