As student enrollments in composition studies programs have grown, so too have compositionists’ discussions about how to best prepare students for entry to the discipline. For example, Louise Wetherbee Phelps has argued for the development of a graduate writing pedagogy, one that faculty can use “in teaching graduate students as prospective scholars how to engage in a postmodern rhetoric” (67). Janice Lauer has raised questions about whether students should be expected to become active members of the profession, even to publish, while they are still in graduate school. Karen Peirce and Theresa Enos have expressed concern that faculty who teach in graduate composition programs share little consensus about graduate curricula, including what kinds of writing assignments are required and what textbooks are used.
The issue of how best to facilitate students entering the conversation of composition studies is addressed most recently and comprehensively in the 2006 book Culture Shock and the Practice of Profession: Training the New Wave in Rhetoric & Composition, edited by Virginia Anderson and Susan Romano. In one essay from this volume, “Inviting Students into Composition Studies with a New Instructional Genre,” Sheryl Fontaine and Susan Hunter critique the “immersion approach to instruction” (198) that has been a mainstay of composition studies programs, whereby “students are expected to jump into the middle of the stream of expert-level discussions and, through a sink-or-swim process, come to understand the various arguments and their relation to one another” (198). Fontaine and Hunter argue that this approach, which may have questionable merit in any discipline, is particularly unsuitable for composition studies because nearly all students entering graduate composition programs have had little or no introduction to the discipline as undergraduates. Thus, students have no “knowledge-building schema” (203), no ready framework for judging the relative importance of what they read or context for interpreting the issues at stake. Fontaine and Hunter then build a case for a new instructional genre in composition studies, books that are written specifically for students entering the discipline, that “acknowledge [students’] position at the threshold of disciplinary knowledge and would actually prepare them to become expert learners in the field of Composition” (203). Such texts, say Fontaine and Hunter, should aim to teach students “the behaviors and practices of the discipline” (206) and should present “theoretical or practical concepts and methods of inquiry that could cross courses” (207), reflecting a “curricula whose rhythms draw on habits of mind much more than the replication of expert knowledge” (207).
To meet the need for texts in this new instructional genre, Parlor Press created the Lenses on Composition Studies series, and this is the first text to be published in the series. As a student beginning your training in composition studies, you’re crossing the threshold into the disciplinary parlor at an especially opportune time. As scholars in the discipline, we welcome you. We hope to make you more comfortable while you listen for a while, so when you’re ready you may join us in the conversation.
For Writing and Discussion
1. As a student beginning to learn about composition studies, what do (or did) you find challenging about reading scholarship in the discipline?
2. Prior to picking up this book, what, if anything, has helped to ease your entry to the composition studies parlor?
The Need for Bibliographic Instruction in Academia
In addition to answering a call for more student-centered introductions to composition studies, this book also answers a call from academic librarians for bibliographic instruction to be integrated into courses in the disciplines. Bibliographic instruction emerged as a distinct field for academic librarians, coincidentally, during the same period that composition studies was developing as a discipline (Fister, “Common Ground”). According to librarian Larry Hardesty, the modern period of attention to bibliographic instruction began in 1969 and “by the early 1970s, bibliographic instruction had emerged as an authentic movement” (340). In 1983, a scholarly journal devoted to the field was initiated, entitled Research Strategies. Shortly afterwards, bibliographic instruction became a priority of the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL), which is the major professional organization of academic libraries and is a division of the American Library Association (ALA). In 1987, the ACRL developed its first “Model Statement of Objectives for Academic Bibliographic Instruction.” As library resources became more prevalent online, librarians began to replace the term “bibliographic instruction” with the more comprehensive term “information literacy.” The ACRL then issued two additional documents meant to advance such instruction: “Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education,” approved in 2000, and “Objectives for Information Literacy Instruction: A Model Statement for Academic Librarians,” approved in 2001 as a revision of the ACRL’s earlier model statement of objectives for bibliographic instruction.
Bibliographic instruction, especially when defined more broadly as information literacy, trains students to do much more than locate relevant sources. The skills that comprise information literacy are best delineated in the following excerpt from the ACRL’s document “Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education”:
An information literate individual is able to:
• Determine the extent of information needed
• Access the needed information effectively and efficiently
• Evaluate information and its sources critically
• Incorporate selected information into one’s knowledge base
• Use information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose
• Understand the economic, legal, and social issues surrounding the use of information, and access and use information ethically and legally
Librarians hope that information literacy skills will be introduced to students in elementary and secondary schools, and that information literacy instruction and practice will be incorporated more fully into the higher education curriculum in all disciplines and at all levels, including graduate courses (Rockman). Such in-depth instruction is all the more necessary because in recent decades, academic libraries have undergone radical changes, largely because of technological developments. Not long ago, students and scholars who wished to research a topic needed to spend long hours physically in the library, sifting by hand through a card catalogue and annual bound volumes that indexed journal articles. Now, much research can be conducted from outside the walls of the library, through online catalogues and databases that allow users to conduct far more exhaustive searches and to do so far more quickly. Such ease in searching presents students with new challenges. As librarian Ilene Rockman explains, “the issue is no longer one of not having enough information; it is just the opposite—too much information, in various formats and not all of equal value” (1). Given such wealth of information, continues Rockman, “the ability to act confidently (and not be paralyzed by information overload) is critical to academic success and personal self-directed learning” (1).
Librarians are also adamant that bibliographic instruction be integrated into courses, not addressed solely by librarians in one or two class sessions. As Patricia Senn Breivik, past President of the ACRL and Chair of the National Forum on Information Literacy, states succinctly, “information literacy is a learning issue not a library issue” (xii). For this reason, librarians have expressed interest in forming more collaborative partnerships with faculty. For example, librarian Larry Hardesty has analyzed faculty culture to determine why faculty resist bibliographic instruction in their courses. After determining that the biggest obstacles to this instruction are faculty’s sense of inadequate instructional time and faculty’s reluctance to view librarians as peers, he concludes that librarians must take the initiative in forging better relationships with faculty through one-on-one informal contacts and