Threshold Concept: Authority is constructed and contextual

Topic:  Midwifery

Materials needed

Textbook

Internet access

Participants: 4^th Year Nursing Students

Objective: To demonstrate that relevance of authority could be found in traditional and non-traditional scholarly sources of information

1.      The threshold concept authority is constructed and contextual proved challenging for me to fully grasp.  I come from an old school of thinking, and understood information to be   legitimate and credible only if it comes from a scholarly source, i.e. scholarly journals and textbooks.  After learning that authority is contextual and depends on the information need and usage, my perspective got changed. Experienced and novice researchers must be careful not to lose relevant information, by relying on traditional scholarly sources of information only.  Novices researchers must be trained to evaluate discern suitability based on use, and to learn that information may be packaged in formal and informal sources.

Users of information must use the librarians CRAAP test as a parameter to evaluate sources.

·         Currency: The timeline of the information

·         Relevance: Importance of the information for your needs

·         Authority: The source of the information

·         Accuracy: The reliability, truthfulness & correctness of the information content

·         Purpose / Point of View: The reason the information exists.

Learning Outcomes/ Knowledge practices
•      Students should be able to define different types of authority such as subject expertise (Scholarship), society position (public office or title), or special experience (participating in an historic event)
•      Use markers of authority to determine the credibility of sources
•      Recognise that authoritative content may be packaged formally or informally and may include audio, visual an non-print sources

Activity

·         Students to read a midwifery chapter in a  textbook, visit commercial midwifery website to learn to differentiate types of authority of each source

·         Students to create individual  blogs on midwifery, and to credit works of authors used within the blog

·          Students to open a Facebook page and Mendeley account, and invite other students to share knowledge, read peers work posts and to increase visibility of works produced.

·         Check for accuracy and issues of bias on the sources

·         Check for purpose or reason for information, i.e. for or for commercial reasons

Activity Link to Knowledge practice/disposition

•     Students to recognize that authoritative content maybe packaged formally and informally i.e blogs, textbooks
•     Students to learn to take responsibility when participating in communities of practice, i.e cite the works of others when blogging, share relevant and accurate information
•     Understand the role of the information ecosystem where authorities actively connect with each other and sources develop overtime  

Research as inquiry

This threshold concept sees research as iterative and depends upon asking complex or new questions whose answers in turn develop additional question or lines of inquiry (ACRL: 2015) Students or researchers must realize that research does not begin or end within a discipline but can extend further to the community at large.  It is also important to note that this type of research inquiry en-campuses a lot of debate, back to back dialogue for knowledge creation to occur.  Researchers or students must have attentive interviewing, listening and recapitulation skills to allow them to analyse and interpret what was shared to them and must adhere to research ethics and legal guidelines when acquiring information.

Today I carry on with my journey in understanding  Information literacy framework for Higher Education.   In my previous blogs I made mention of the 6 threshold concept that are pillars of this frame work i.e Authority is constructed and contextual, Information creating as a process, Information has value, Research as inquiry, Scholarship as conversation, Searching as strategic exploration. Last week I demonstrated Scholarship is a conversation in a lesson plan.  Today I will be designing yet another lesson plan, where will view Research as inquiry in a lesson plan.

Lesson Plan: Global warming 

Number of Students: 30

Duration of Exercise: 2 days

Stationery used

A4 Colored poster card paper
Coloring pens

Lesson Objectives

• Students will learn to formulate a research questions
• Students will learn to brainstorm and  mind map ideas
• Conduct research using various information resources and research methods
• Students will learn to to collaborate and work with others as a team

Activities

1. The teacher librarian will first do a topic ice-break/ teaser to determine how much the students know of the topic.  Online collaborative tools i.e todaysmeet, quiz-let, google chat would be use to stimulate the conversation as  they provide real time, instant communication
2. Students will be broken into 6 groups, to design an online or paper format poster of global warming and its effects
3. Students will be referred to the library to look at information sources i.e encyclopedia, books, you tube videos, interviews to collect more information on the topic
4. Students will be given time to put together group presentation of their posters, reflect and share on their findings with the class

Activity in relation to knowledge practice and dispositions

• Activity 1: As the teacher librarian is introducing the topic students will get an understanding of what has been done on the topic, will get to identify gaps and will follow up by reading what other scholars say of the topic
• Activity 2: on this activity the students will brainstorm and identify an appropriate angle or scope of investigation
• Activity 3: as students move from one source to the other they are in turn getting multiple perspective, which is a nice disposition to learning
• Activity 4:The last activity will allow students a chance to regroup and synthesize idea learned from multiple sources, they will also be able to draw reasonable conclusion on the topic based on their findings and analyses

Conclusion

In this lesson plan students will engage with each other, with the library, and with authors who have written on the topic.  They will get to ask questions among themselves, they will have disagreements and will maybe take the conversation further by speaking to community members,  farmers, industries, who might have felt the effect of global warming. All the elements of research as inquiry will come out as they engage, and learn how to ask pertinent questions, summarize whats been said to conceptualize and create new knowledge.

Scholarship as conversation

In the past week I have been reflecting  on the threshold concept scholarship is a conversation.  Today I demonstrate this concept by showing you how this concept could be seen in an assignment

platform; you must remember that when students begin research for a research topic or class assignment, they are entering into an on-going scholarly conversation. Have a look at this lesson plan and see how the knowledge practices and dispositions of scholarship as a conversation come into effect.

Topic

Discuss the challenges on the South African health system and give reflections on your experience as a nursing student.

Learning Outcomes

• To understand the South African  health system challenges, students will understand SA health by visiting literature written by previous researchers in the field,  they will learn to cite contributions of others in their information production. Knowledge Practice
• To identify and make connections between an individual's personal experiences and literature, when individuals reflect by sharing own experiences they are contributing the body of knowledge. - students will learn the responsibility that come with entering the conversation through participatory channels- Disposition
• To draw conclusions of the historical influence on the health system.  Students will learn to summarize and document changes in areas under investigations-Knowledge Practice

Activities

1. Read or visit at least 5 information resources, i.e journal articles, books, newspapers,and related health webpages to evaluate and gather information on the health care system in South Africa
2. Conduct an interview with a nursing unit manager to discuss the hospital role and to define challenges experienced when delivering service.
3. In your reporting, identify gaps on the health systems and reflect on areas that have shown great improvements

·        

Activity in relation to knowledge practice and disposition

• By reading or visiting at least 5 information resources on health care system- The students will critically evaluate contributions made by others and will cite their works. Knowledge practice
•  Conduct an interview with a nursing unit manager to discuss the hospitals role and challenges in delivering health care services- The students will seek out conversations taking place in their research areas by having conversation with professions in the field. Disposition

• Th students exploration on the previous and the current will allow them to summaries the changes in the field.  This will also allow the students to learn not to make judgments on a piece of information/ resource till the larger context of it is understood-Disposition

Scholarship is a conversation

To help me grasp the whole scholarship concept, I needed to dig deep to basic definition of scholarship including its synonyms.  I have always understood scholarship to be a form of a bursary, sponsorship that is awarded towards an educational fulfillment.  In academia, particularly at post masters level scholarship is an activity that updates or maintains ones knowledge and skills, using ones time to consult, read literature, attend conferences, whilst acquiring new skills. (TRAC guidance) This can be full time, where ones takes a sabbatical leave or on part-time bases.

An interesting definition that shook the world of academia's in the early 1990 came from Boyer  Earnest.  His approach looks at scholarship as a four way approach which includes discovery, integration, application and teaching.  Boyers argues that a scholarship is not just teaching but stems from curiosity, following a research process, commitment to knowledge, following the investigation where ever it may lead give meaning to the effort. He also says scholarship is integration, by making connections across disciplines creating synergies and learning together vs working in silos  is one way of learning , going into the field in the form of in-service training, sharing work-spaces with other disciplines, attending conferences and sharing new knowledge or discoveries. Scholarship is application, by identifying a problem, forming a hypothesis, following the research process and finding solutions, the more research areas get identified, the better  problem solving methods found in research can be applied.

It is evident from the above that scholarship is something ongoing, it is a discovery that is arrived at by getting into conversation with others, it could be peers in the same discipline, it also can be moved toward by others in other disciplines. In getting into scholarship conversations partipants either novice or experts in the field must be familiar with the sources and subject matter in conversation, must at all times cite the works of others in their works created, must recognise that a particular work on a topic may not be the only perspective.

For my B-Tech degree at 4th year, I had my first real test of research methodology.  In those days we were only exposed to print journals, books and newspaper articles.  To be quite honest back then for me, research was not seen as entering into an ongoing scholarly conversation, but more of a class chore for me to pass.  Later on in the world of work I then realize how important research is as a contribution to the body of knowledge  and  everyday problem solving, It started making more sense when content can only be deemed valid or credible if its is empirically.  Today I am happy to be doing research again for my post grad studies, with more zeal and more understanding.

Today's students or scholars of research have  more advantage to previous scholars, thanks to technology and its packages that allow collaborative learning and sharing of information.  Today's researchers have at their disposal technologies that allow all research processes  to begin with ease and at short periods of time, at the touch of a button one can access literature from across the world on a topic, test or gather data using social media packages or other google packages, present findings on a blog or on webinar, slide-shares etc.