Joan Kaplowitz, Transforming information literacy instruction using Learner-Centered Teaching. NY: Neal-Schuman, 2012.

Joan Kaplowitz, Transforming information literacy instruction using Learner-Centered Teaching. NY: Neal-Schuman, 2012.

Kaplowitz brings an evangelical focus to bibliographic instruction, and in so doing, delivers a message that is more widely applicable than her chosen audience. She believes that we learn best when actively participating in the process, and uses the example of a typical library-based research class to show a wide variety of methods for giving CPR to our teaching.

CPR actually describes the student’s role in her education: Collaboration, Practice, and Responsibility. Kaplowitz shows how working in groups--collaboration--reinforces learning, how practice makes the skills more permanent, and that responsibility for one’s learning leads to better outcomes. One of these is not like the other, though, and a more appropriate R would be Reflection--another technique she discusses, and an act, rather than an attitude, thus more in keeping with the other two legs of her acronym.

But that is picking nits. The message is well supported by both research and anecdotal experience, and the methods for moving from an information-transfer approach to an information application approach begin with small steps. Kaplowitz argues convincingly that we can, and should, make the move to more active classrooms.