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Library Research Methods: Scholarship as Conversation

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Framework Defined

Scholarship as Conversation refers to the idea of sustained discourse within a community of scholars, researchers, or professionals, with new insights and discoveries occurring over time as a result of competing perspectives and interpretations.

Consider: In your program/course, how do students interact with, evaluate, produce, and share information in various formats and modes?

Scholarship as Conversation Graphics

Scholarship is an Ongoing Conversation Process

Searching for information is often nonlinear and iterative, requiring the evaluation of a range of information sources and the mental flexibility to pursue alternate avenues as new understanding develops.

The act of searching often begins with a question that directs the act of finding needed information. Encompassing inquiry, discovery, and serendipity, searching identifies possible relevant sources and the means to access those sources. Experts realize that information searching is a contextualized, complex experience that affects, and is affected by, the searcher’s cognitive, affective, and social dimensions. Novice learners may search a limited set of resources, and experts may search more broadly and deeply to determine the most appropriate information within the project scope. Likewise, novice learners tend to use few search strategies; experts select from various search strategies, depending on the sources, scope, and context of the information need.

Knowledge Practices/Dispositions

Learners who are developing their information literate abilities

  • cite the contributing work of others in their own information production;
  • contribute to scholarly conversation at an appropriate level, such as local online community, guided discussion, undergraduate research journal, conference presentation/poster session;
  • identify barriers to entering scholarly conversation via various venues;
  • critically evaluate contributions made by others in participatory information environments;
  • identify the contribution that particular articles, books, and other scholarly pieces make to disciplinary knowledge;
  • summarize the changes in scholarly perspective over time on a particular topic within a specific discipline;
  • recognize that a given scholarly work may not represent the only or even the majority perspective on the issue.

Learners who are developing their information literate abilities

  • recognize they are often entering into an ongoing scholarly conversation and not a finished conversation;
  • seek out conversations taking place in their research area;
  • see themselves as contributors to scholarship rather than only consumers of it;
  • recognize that scholarly conversations take place in various venues;
  • suspend judgment on the value of a particular piece of scholarship until the larger context for the scholarly conversation is better understood;
  • understand the responsibility that comes with entering the conversation through participatory channels;
  • value user-generated content and evaluate contributions made by others;
  • recognize that systems privilege authorities and that not having a fluency in the language and process of a discipline disempowers their ability to participate and engage.

Scholarship as Conversation Videos

Research 101: Scholarship is a Conversation

Research 101: Scholarship is a Conversation For the complete Research 101 toolkit for librarians and instructors, visit http://guides.lib.uw.edu/research/UWr... (1:58 min.)

Research is a Conversation - Questions