Abstract

With the emergence of the digital age, and the convenience of producing, accessing, and disseminating information, information literacy (IL) has become a prominent topic in higher education, especially in First-Year Writing (FYW) classrooms. Although much research exists about students' struggle to acquire IL dispositions and practices, there is less scholarship about teachers' attitudes towards IL and how they implement IL concepts in the classroom. Rise Smith proposes that to ensure students master IL skills, higher education must ensure that instructors understand, value and apply IL in their teaching. Therefore, my study focuses on instructors' self-efficacy surrounding IL and how it impacts FYW pedagogy. Findings showed what IL concepts and subsequent strategies instructors prioritize and suggest possible reasons for these deliberate choices. The study also revealed that only half of the participants reported high self-efficacy in their own IL skills and in teaching IL competencies. Contributing factors to this confidence, which were revealed in the data, aligned with Bandura's factors of self-efficacy. This included mastery skill, vicarious experience, and social persuasion. The research suggests that as teachers practice IL skills personally and in their pedagogy, receive positive feedback from students, and have the vicarious experiences exhibited in IL professional trainings, they can gain stronger self-efficacy. And this in turn can benefit their IL instruction and students' learning experience.

Degree

College and Department

Humanities; English

Rights

https://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/