Teaching Information Literacy Skills to Prepare Teachers Who Can Bridge the Research-to-Practice Gap

This paper explores ways in which academic libraries can partner with colleges of education to prepare teachers who can apply research to their practice. Federal mandates such as No Child Left Behind (2001) and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (2004) require teachers to implement evidence-based practices in their classrooms, which presents a challenge to teacher preparation programs and raises important questions about the nature of evidence in education. We believe that information literacy (IL) skills are critical in preparing teachers who can thoughtfully, critically, and ethically implement evidence-based practices. We report the results of a study into the effectiveness of infusing IL throughout the coursework of a teacher preparation program at the University of New Mexico. We describe the collaboration between library and education faculty, the development of an instrument designed to measure IL skills, and results that revealed a statistically significant difference between the pre and posttest scores of teacher preparation cohorts. We conclude that the integration of IL into coursework is a key element for teacher preparation programs.