Grand Narratives and the Information Cycle in the Library Instruction Classroom: Reading 3

Grand Narratives and the Information Cycle in the Library Instruction Classroom by Sara Franks

The overall primary issue within Grand Narratives is the fact that despite whether or not the grand narrative is an effective teaching method it will be my job as a librarian to help patrons find their resources as well as how to critically think about the resources that they might find. It was the second part of this statement that caught most of my attention while reading the rest of the article. I am very interested in evaluation of sources

When I first began to read Grand Narratives, I realized that I was a product of both teaching styles and I found this to be somewhat enlightening. It shed light on some of the whys of my own teaching styles like “Why I am loathing to move away from strict lecture base classes sometimes?”  The answer that I came to as I reflected on this article was that as a student I had been exposed to both.  My educational background lies in history and many of my survey classes were based on the grand narratives model that Franks describes in her chapter. As I moved into my upper level history classes, I began to be exposed to the other side of Franks’ argument which looked at disciplines like history through individual or fragmented types of lens. Now that I am pursuing my MLIS degree, I have realized that I am now on the other side of the debate as a teacher who is trying to figure out the best way to help my patrons evaluate their chosen sources.

One thought on “Grand Narratives and the Information Cycle in the Library Instruction Classroom: Reading 3

  1. It’s interesting to look at the ‘narrative’ of library instruction, too! The obvious purpose of these readings is to help you guys grow and understand the narrative that you are now participating in- I think as critical thinkers, we should be informed of the traditional narrative, but it’s borders should be fluid so that we can move in and out of it as we focus on meeting the needs of our students.

Leave a Reply to sarawhitver Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *