Reframing Information Literacy as Academic Cultural Capital: A Critical and Equity-Based Foundation for Practice, Assessment, and Scholarship

Abstract

Within the past decade, academic librarianship has increased its focus on criticallibrarianship and assessing student success, as well as undergoing a complete recon-ceptualization of information literacy. However, our assessment and scholarship re-lated to information literacy and student success largely neglects the persistent racialand social-class achievement gaps in American higher education. This article drawsupon a critical social theory commonly used in higher education research—culturalcapital—to consider the ways in which information literacy as threshold conceptsmay enable or constrain success for students whose identities higher education hastraditionally marginalized. Finally, Estela Mara Bensimon’s equity cognitive frame isintroduced to consider the ways in which we can ground our practice, assessment,and scholarship in our professional values of equity and inclusion.

Bibliographic data

Reframing Information Literacy as Academic Cultural Capital: A Critical and Equity-Based Foundation for Practice, Assessment, and Scholarship

External source

https://crl.acrl.org/index.php/crl/article/viewFile/17822/19663