Evidence Summary Theme: Education

Heather MacDonald

Associate Editor (Evidence Summaries)

Health and Biosciences Librarian

Carleton University

Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

2022 MacDonald. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons‐Attribution‐Noncommercial‐Share Alike License 4.0 International (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly attributed, not used for commercial purposes, and, if transformed, the resulting work is redistributed under the same or similar license to this one.

DOI: 10.18438/eblip30161

The articles critically appraised in the evidence summaries (ES) of this issue focus on the domain of education. The education domain is defined by Koufogiannakis et al. (2004) as “incorporating teaching methods and strategies to educate users about library resources and how to improve research skills.” Education includes teaching information literacy as well as what it means to be an educator and developing as an educator.

The ES in this issue highlight a cross-section of studies that examine questions related to education. They bring a variety of different study designs, geographies, and perspectives to bear. Several of the ES have an academic setting. These ES critique studies investigating the use of a rubric for experiential learning in the LIS classroom, a librarian-led faculty learning community, the role of the librarian in online learning, factors that affect adoption of new teaching practices, and librarian perceptions of teaching identities. The final ES looks at a study on lifelong learning in public libraries. Regardless of the setting, education plays an important role in libraries.

Teaching requires constantly changing and adapting to new audiences, new technologies, and new modalities of teaching. This has been particularly true during the pandemic. Research and practice can help practitioners learn and grow as educators. The ES in this issue provide a summary and critique of some of the most recent research related to education in libraries. We hope you enjoy reading them and that doing so encourages you, the reader, to employ an evidence-based lens in your own teaching practice.

References

Koufogiannakis, D., Slater, L., & Crumley, E. (2004) A content analysis of librarianship research. Journal of information science, 30(3), 227–239. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0165551504044668