Teaching Teachers to Teach: Collaborating with a University Education Department to Teach Skills in Information Literacy Pedagogy

In June 2000, the Illinois State Board of Education adopted new state standards for all accredited teacher education programs. Professional certification programs must demonstrate compliance to the standards by July 2003. Library faculty at Illinois Wesleyan University partnered with the Educational Studies department to address the Core Technology Standards for information access, research, and information literacy through curriculum development. The program includes a combination of an information literacy pre-test, a self-paced, open source Web tutorial, traditional library instruction sessions, one-on-one student-librarian consultations with student teachers, and collaborative course design. The overall goal of the program is to improve librarian-teacher cooperation through instruction in the information literacy skills outlined in the Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education, and to mentor pre-service teachers in practical methods of integrating information literacy instruction in both their student teaching and their future professional lives.