Teaching Information Seeking

Teaching Information Seeking redefines how we approach research and information literacy in today's information-rich world, inviting teachers to re-imagine teaching research.

The book combines insights from fields such as library and information sciences, journalism, and media literacy to offer fresh strategies and perspectives for guiding students through evolving landscapes of information.

While a focus on concepts and skills has long been important in teaching research, this book integrates significant new understandings about the role dispositions play in how well students embrace and utilize skill-based knowledge. The book provides conceptual knowledge and learning activities that support writing teachers as they help students learn throughout the research or inquiry process of asking questions, finding information, and sharing their learning purposefully and ethically. Chapters with a pedagogical focus and approach include activities informed by the author?s decades of experience teaching writing. These activities are described in depth, including assignment prompts, sample work, and scripts for think aloud protocols and discussions the author has led that engage students in deeper learning around these critical skills and dispositions. Teaching Information Seeking serves as a comprehensive guide for educators looking to foster meaningful information literacy and critical thinking skills in their students.

This book is ideal for teachers and teacher educators who want to equip students with the skills and dispositions needed for effective research and information literacy. Readers will find teacher-friendly, research-grounded insights and activities that can be readily applied in the classroom.

"Teaching Information Seeking provides a wealth of advice for teaching students to see research as inquiry and information seeking. With a focus on bridging the gap between the personal and academic in students? relationship to information, transfer of learning, and inquiry-based alternatives to traditional thesis-driven research papers, Teaching Information Seeking is a practical resource for new pedagogical approaches to teaching information literacy and research projects."

Daniel Melzer, Professor and Associate Director, First-Year Composition, UC Davis

"Providing a contextual, nuanced definition of ?information seeking? that is interwoven with the writing process, Jon Ostenson describes how students can go well beyond the default of a simple web search and, instead, delve deeper to find and evaluate multiple, authoritative sources through their research. Describing them as ?threshold concepts in information literacy,? Ostenson?s approach combines perspectives from both composition and rhetoric as well as the library sciences to offer instructors many examples, assignments, and reflective questions. In this book, he has crafted a useful guide for those who want to coach students through an iterative, engaging information seeking process."

Troy Wayne Hicks, Professor of English and Education and Director of Chippewa River Writing Project, Central Michigan University