Aha Moments and Continued Confusion: An Analysis of Threshold Concepts through Student Reflections in the ACRL Framework

Abstract

With the advent of the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education in 2015, librarians everywhere have tried to adapt their existing information literacy sessions to incorporate the revised concepts. This article discusses how the librarian responsible for a series of four labs in a first-year course reformed the lab content around the six ACRL Frames. Student reflections from three semesters’ worth of classes were analyzed for content related to each of the six Frames, as well as for areas of enlightened understanding (evidence of crossing a threshold into higher understanding, as first outlined by Meyer and Land, 2003) and continued confusion, with applicability for all instructors trying to incorporate the Frames.