“In the Greater Context of the Field”: What Undergraduate Reflections on
the Research Process Tell us about Information Literacy
Madelaine Vanderwerff
Sara Sharun
Christopher Thomas

Abstract
This study examines research practices of undergraduate students, as described in reflective essays
submitted in applications to a Library research award. Thematic analysis of 24 student award essays
identified three strong themes in student reflections on their research experiences: Students experienced
research as a social process, made meaning closely tied to disciplinary ways of knowing and practicing,
and underwent transformation through the research process. Through a discussion of these themes, the
authors highlight implications for information literacy instruction and suggest this instruction be
connected more strongly to disciplinary practices in order to develop information literacy in
undergraduate students.

Introduction
The discourse of Information Literacy (IL) instruction in higher education often describes the purpose of
teaching IL and critical thinking as developing students’ metacognitive abilities and lifelong learning
skills. 1 However, meaningfully assessing and evaluating the evidence of that learning and development is
an ongoing challenge. Much of what librarians have as evidence of student learning comes from
snapshots of skills, attitudes, and knowledge from in-class assessments which often assess the impact of
IL instruction sessions more effectively than actual student learning. 2 IL assessment is commonly
quantitative in nature, which can measure what students can do and how well they can do it, but provides

Final manuscript version of article. Copyright © 2024 by Johns Hopkins University Press.
This article first appeared in portal: Libraries and the Academy, 24:2, 2024, 405-426. Reprinted
with permission by Johns Hopkins University Press. https://doi.org/10.1353/pla.2024.a923712

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limited information to help librarians understand students’ information behaviors and experiences of
research, or the larger context in which they perform that research.

Much rarer are qualitative librarian assessments of deeper learning that might be evidenced in student
essays and other finished research products that are separate from a one-shot IL session or course.
Librarians seldom have access to these finished projects for assessment or analysis, which can potentially
provide deeper evidence of student learning. 3 Research assignments alone often do not allow instructors
to access and assess learners’ feelings and attitudes, changes in which are important learning outcomes
and a common goal of IL instruction. Indeed, some of the Association of College and Research Libraries
(ACRL) Framework’s threshold concepts, such as “searching as strategic exploration” and “research as
inquiry” are difficult or impossible to assess from research products without a reflective component. 4
However, research logs, journals and other artifacts of student reflections on the research process are
valuable information sources for librarians and other instructors who teach research. 5 This type of
evidence of learning is especially beneficial for librarians whose information literacy instruction is
primarily in the form of one-time workshops or individual research consultations. Assessing students on
their process instead of their product through reflective activities can be more instructive by uncovering
the student experience -- not only the cognitive tasks but also the emotions, attitudes, behaviors, and
practices that go along with those tasks. Reflective essays, diaries, logs or journals can show us where and
how and why students struggle or succeed in research, which can provide evidence to inform library
instruction, services, and resource provision.

Having served on adjudication committees for their institution’s Library Awards for Research Excellence,
the researchers recognized the potential insights into student learning that could be gleaned from the
qualitative data provided in these award submissions. Through reading the reflective essays that were part
of these submissions, the authors discovered that students who are given an opportunity to reflect on their
academic research journey and provide rich, detailed descriptions of their experiences can tell us not only

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what and how they learned but also about what fostered, encouraged, inhibited or challenged that
learning. Of particular interest was the fact that although the award was sponsored by the library, these
reflections did not require applicants to mention specific library services or resources, and thus would
provide authentic, unmediated descriptions of student research experiences that could inform library
instruction and service provision.
This study asks: how do students describe their learning experiences during a specific research project?
What do their reflections tell us about the context and conditions of their learning that can inform
approaches to information literacy instruction and library services?

Literature Review
Student Reflections about the Research Process
Outside of an information literacy context, many scholars have utilized student reflections through
surveys, interviews, or written reflections to examine how students perceive the research process, how
they develop as researchers and how that data can inform pedagogical response. 6 Courtney Faber et al.’s
study addressed students' perceptions of the research process and connections between those perceptions
and how they see themselves as researchers. They found that individuals’ identities as researchers are
intertwined with previous experience and knowledge of research and researchers.7 The research practices
and social interactions that students experience during research help them to develop epistemic ways of
knowing about how research works, who a researcher is, and what researchers do. Anesa Hosein and
Namrata Rao, through the analysis of reflective essays, found that student-centered pedagogies afforded
opportunities for students to understand the research process as well as their own research identity and
socialization into the research processes of their discipline. 8 Likewise, Rachel Wishkowski et al.
collected data from undergraduate students through a longitudinal survey, and found that students went
from seeing researchers as people who could only be “highly educated professionals”, to seeing research

4
as an individually satisfying and socially meaningful process, and began to see themselves more as active
participants within their disciplinary discourse. 9

Reflections as Pedagogy in Information Literacy Contexts
Much has been written about the intentions behind, and outcomes of, reflective exercises for students
learning about research. In their review of the evidence for using research journals in IL instruction
Louise R. Fluk identified a number of ways researchers have described the impact of these reflective
activities on student learning and metacognitive development: they help students make sense of,
illuminate, map, shape, make visible, engage with and structure the research process. 10 Fluk’s review
concluded that evidence shows reflective and descriptive research journal assignments can promote
students’ affective as well as cognitive development, and contribute to the development of IL among postsecondary students.

Pamela McKinney and Barbara A. Sen also reviewed the research on the use of reflection in IL
instruction contexts, and effectively summarized a body of literature that has found positive associations
between the practice of reflection and the development of “advanced” and “higher order” IL
competencies in post-secondary students, aspects of which include problem solving, deep learning,
advanced search strategies, and an increased understanding of the value of IL. 11 A common conclusion
about the value of reflective journals, research logs, and other such activities for students -- and one that is
most significant from a pedagogical perspective -- is that authentic, reflective practice allows students to
see research as a process rather than a product. Reflection also allows students to grapple with threshold
concepts in information literacy. Developing this understanding in students and helping them push
through these thresholds is difficult in the skill- and process-based activities often presented in standalone

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sessions and workshops. 12 Moreover, the potential benefit of facilitating reflective activities as part of IL
instruction exists not only for students, but for teaching librarians as well.

Analyzing student reflections
Analysis of student reflections can provide insight into the “behaviors and meanings ascribed to those
behaviors by the students themselves”, allowing one to identify the variety and nature of resources
students draw upon and the barriers they face during the research process. 13 Reflective essays can
provide a lens to view the ways that students internalize and apply the skills, knowledge, practices and
attributes that define information literacy and can inform approaches to information literacy instruction.
Previous research has demonstrated the benefit that analyzing student research narratives has on
designing and delivering library instruction, services and resources. Similar studies of student narratives
provide insight into teaching methods, curriculum development, instructional technology design, and
pedagogy. 14 Additional studies of undergraduate students’ reflections on the research process have been
conducted in first year writing courses, Liberal Education courses, honors students, and Education
students. 15 These researchers have mapped ACRL concepts to the student experience in order to see how
students utilize resources, how students conceptualize the process, and how confident they feel about their
research abilities. In general, their studies have contributed to developing a rich description of the student
experience of research, including thoughts and feelings about the “meandering process of library and
archival research” and the value of scholarly networks, for example. 16
The present study builds on a smaller body of research that has examined library research award
applications. Jennifer Bonnet et al. describe how their library’s award prompted students to “describe the
ways in which sources and research shaped each other.” 17 They analyzed student essays in conjunction
with their bibliographies, and were specifically interested in how students described the sources they used

6
and their engagement with those sources. The authors described their award applicants as advanced
undergraduates with a “more sophisticated disciplinary background” and saw these highly engaged and
motivated undergraduate students as the library’s “core constituency” and the ones for whom services,
programs and instruction should be planned. More specifically, they drew lessons from this group for
approaches to teaching emphasizing particular ACRL frames.
Sophie Bury et al. looked at undergraduate research award submissions to examine how “IL skills and
conceptions” of “high achieving undergraduates” are reflected in their research accomplishments. These
accomplishments were closely tied to library-centered concepts: identifying search tools, applying search
strategies, evaluating info, and using library resources, tools and services. 18 They found that students rely
on a small number of familiar tools and used simple searches, but also that they were strongly interested
in their topics and engaged in the research process. From their findings, they recommend shifting library
instruction away from “the mechanics of searching and retrieval” and building higher order IL
competencies. 19 Like Bonnet et al., Bury et. al also advocate for engaging students at multiple levels, to
provide for the novices, apprentices, and advanced undergraduates. Both studies concluded that students
should be taught that research is a non-linear and iterative process, and that higher order IL skills like
understanding scholarly communication networks and strategic searching should be incorporated into IL
instruction. 20
The current study builds on these findings by using a broader lens on the student experience of research
than previous studies, and diving deeply into themes relating to multiple ways that research is experienced
by the students, rather than exclusively focusing on what students did and how they felt about it. The
authors argue that additional questions can be asked and more can be discovered from student narratives
of the research process. Through an openness to seeing and understanding research as an experience
rather than a process, this experience can be described through three main themes emerging from analysis
of student reflections -- becoming, identifying, connecting -- that can offer ways of seeing academic

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research to help us understand our students' needs and inform the supports, resources, and services that
academic libraries provide.

The Research Study
Setting, Participants and Sampling
This study took place at an undergraduate university in Alberta, Canada (Treaty 7 Territory) with an
enrollment of just over 10 000 full time learners. The university’s commitment to supporting and
promoting undergraduate research is a central mission and value as reflected in academic, research and
institutional strategic plans. The Library Awards for Research Excellence is one of many opportunities
offered to support and celebrate undergraduate researchers on campus.
The Library Awards for Research Excellence was initially established at Mount Royal University in 2012.
Award categories and requirements have evolved over the years, and currently awards are given to
celebrate research excellence in both individual and group projects. The projects are adjudicated in the
Spring semester by two committees, each composed of two faculty members from the Library, and three
external members representing disciplines from the faculties of Business, Arts, Health and Sciences.
Students are required to include a copy of a project that has been completed through credit coursework or
a university sponsored research program (this could be a paper, poster, audio/visual project or any other
format that demonstrates evidence of a research component), a bibliography, an instructor support form
and a reflective essay. Human Research Ethics approval was granted to collect and analyze the reflective
essays from students who agreed to participate in the study.

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Since the focus of qualitative research is the “in-depth exploration of a central phenomenon” and not
about generalizing to a broader population, the researchers used purposeful sampling to select the
necessary participants. 21 Purposeful sampling is the intentional selection of participants to understand the
phenomenon under study. The type of purposeful sampling used in this study is theoretical or concept
sampling, where the concepts or theories are generated from the “constant interrelation with data
collection and data analysis”. 22 The researchers identified applicants to this award as a group of
individuals who had recent experience undertaking the phenomenological question at hand (the research
project or the task of doing research) and who could be willing to participate in our study. 23 Once
institutional Human Research Ethics approval was granted, recruitment materials were included in the
award application information and applicants providing consent became participants in this study.

Data Collection
Data was collected over the course of three years in three rounds of award competitions from May 2019
to May 2021. Over this three-year period, 24 of 78 total award applicants (30.7%) provided consent to
participate in the study. Descriptive statistics were not collected, but the discipline of the originating
assignment that prompted the submission was indicated in all award submissions. Table 1 (below) shows
the disciplines represented.

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Data Analysis Approach
After adjudication processes for the awards were complete, consent forms and reflective essays were
released to the researchers and were then anonymized and randomized. A thematic data analysis
approach was applied to this data set in order to organize the reflections into meaningful and manageable
codes, categories and themes. Coding began with randomly selecting six papers to develop initial
categories. Initially identifying codes from the data through descriptive/ in vivo coding, three categories
were developed (practices, experiences and resources), and several subcategories began to emerge from
the reflections (evaluation, strategies, synthesis, cognitive, effective and use of tools/resources). Through
multiple subsequent rounds of iterative, comparative coding, the researchers developed additional subcategories that included both the concepts they defined and those described by the students. Following a
four-step thematic analysis process outlined by Saldana as well as Gibb, the researchers established codes,

10
created higher level categories, developed analytic codes, and reviewed and synthesized the codes to
develop overarching themes. 24 Three themes emerged through this iterative process of describing,
comparing, and identifying relationships among these categories (see Figure 1).

Figure 1

Note: The above figure illustrates the process of data analysis for this study; first descriptive codes were
applied to each student reflection, forming three broader groups of understanding (resources, practices
and experiences). Also emerging from the data were rich descriptions of categories which contributed to
the development of 3 themes; identifying, connecting and becoming.

Findings
In their reflective essays, students wrote not just about what they did, but how they perceived their actions
and the outcomes of their actions. Their experiences of research were expressed both as inward-looking,

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individual realizations related to their cognitive development, and as outward-facing observations about
learning rooted in interactions with people and resources in their environment. As students described their
research experiences in terms of their intellectual and emotional journeys, they made clear that they also
experienced and were affected by external forces that impacted the direction of their projects. Analysis of
these reflective essays reveals information literacy as an experience strongly dependent on the
disciplinary context of students’ learning in which they concurrently: connect with particular ideas,
sources, and audiences; identify with disciplinary ways of selecting, evaluating, and using information
sources; and become researchers through transformative research experiences. These three distinct aspects
of learning -- connecting, identifying, and becoming -- emerged as dominant themes in these reflections.

Connecting: Students experienced research as a social practice, one that was impacted by people around
them, the tools and resources available to them, and the connections they made to both previous
experiences and anticipated future activities. These connections were evident in writing about their
choice of research topic, research dissemination venues and formats, and audiences with whom they
planned to share their research.
Identifying: Students identified with and engaged with the tools, practices and processes of research in
their disciplines. They recounted their experiences of finding and utilizing the right tools and types of
evidence appropriate in their disciplines, and uncovering scholarly conversations and disciplinary knowledge
about their topic.

Becoming: Through the application of the tools, processes and practices of research they described,
students became aware of themselves as researchers and members of a discipline. They related emotional,
transformative research journeys and awareness of their own contributions as researchers to their disciplines

Connecting
LIS researchers have demonstrated that research is a social act that requires interaction not only with text,
data or sources, but engagement with experiences and people who shape those interactions. Specifically,

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studies of students as apprentice researchers have shown how students connect to scholarly communities
of practice guided by local campus community experts like librarians and instructors. 25 Similarly,
students in this study experienced research as a social practice that required them to connect and
collaborate with others.

Connecting to experts
Students described the connections to scholarship they discovered through their coursework and
assignments. Most students mentioned specific coursework or course themes that piqued their interest in a
broader topic and described a process of building their research project based on those interests. Several
described connecting with course instructors in various ways: forming ideas inspired by or building upon
existing research programs of their professors, developing relationships with honors project supervisors,
experiencing research opportunities as a research assistant, joining professional associations, attending
conferences, and completing research ethics applications. Students also made connections with librarians
and archivists, both from their own and other institutions. Several students described their liaison
librarian brokering external relationships with librarians with specializations specific to their needs (data,
GIS) or with specialized collections (court house, government and external academic librarians) within
the community. Lastly, students described a variety of physical spaces as helpful to their projects
including academic writing centers, research centers and institutes, and accessibility offices.

Connecting to experiences
Students consistently reflected on how their personal experiences influenced their choice of research
project and how they engaged with their project. For example, one student wrote that their sibling’s longterm illness inspired them to focus their project on mobility devices. Other students applied their
experiences as volunteers, research assistants, and field school students to choose research topics.

13
Engagement in the research process also shaped how students connected to their topics, whether through
experiences presenting their work to peers or seeing fellow students participate in university-wide and
faculty-specific undergraduate research events. Students also made connections to their future anticipated
experiences, leveraging their projects for careers and graduate study pursuits.

Connecting to an audience
Students from all disciplines were aware of their audiences and were intent on sharing their research in
meaningful ways with those audiences. Several students described the purpose of their research product,
and articulated how the purpose impacted what sources they searched for, selected, and applied.
Knowledge translation projects (such as conference poster presentations, podcasts, community-partnered
projects, and journal articles) seemed to encourage students to reflect on how knowledge is disseminated
and the real-world applications of their research. One group of students reflected that “as broadcasting
majors, it was then our main focus to translate this into something we found interesting, engaging, and
entertaining. Not only for individuals well-versed in the world of anthropology and science, but for
people new to the topic as well. It was important to us that our final project be universally accessible."
Another student wrote, "I do not think my thesis would have been as relatable if it only revolved around
statistics and graphs. Having an individual explain their experience can provide a deeper influence for
readers who might be skeptical about restorative justice practices." Students had audiences in mind as
they shared their thoughts about the potential impact and purpose of their work. Many of them articulated
a sense of purpose that connected the research process to the results and the presentation of those results.
One student commented, "learning all of these tools and resources [...] enhanced the research experience,
[and my] ability to present research findings to various audiences in different formats."
However, the initial connection was described, it is apparent that students relied heavily on establishing
social connections to disciplinary norms, tools and communities in order to complete their projects and

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connected their research practices and products to an awareness of audience, impact, and potential uses
for their research.

Identifying
Students identified with the tools, practices and customs, describing how they applied appropriate
research tools to find information. They practiced disciplinary approaches to critically appraising
information, recognizing types of evidence used in their field, and understanding the scholarly
conversation around their topic.

Identifying tools and resources
The award application (see Appendix A) instructions prompted students to explicitly describe their search
strategy, and their essays illuminate a variety of strategies and processes to find, acquire, assess and apply
information sources in their research projects. Previous research has discussed the nature of student
researchers’ strategies and their use of resources. 26 Like the participants in those studies, these students
used familiar tools and proven strategies and identified reliable or valuable sources, 27 and they did so with
a disciplinary lens. For example, history students used online digital archives while criminology students
navigated case law and primary legal sources. Seeing source identification in the context of students’

identification with disciplinary practices shines some light on the cultural context of their search
strategies. Their frequent reference to “root sources,” -- key texts and seminal works often introduced to
them by instructors or other scholars -- shows how these key sources that directed or defined their
research process also shaped the connections they made to other scholars’ work, the conclusions they
drew about their topic, and their understanding of the research process. 28

Many students recounted their experiences seeking and acquiring the “right'' discipline-specific tools and
information sources. As Rempel et al. have observed, students unfamiliar with disciplinary tools often

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struggle and fall back on generic tools that have given them some success in the past; in this study,
students who used generic tools like Google or the library search field described different material and
emotional outcomes from those who used discipline-specific resources. 29 For example, a Criminology
student who relied on Google was surprised at how difficult it was to find the specific type of information
they were looking for, while another student in the same program who made use of discipline-specific
tools “obtained far too much information and eventually deleted several pages worth of non-

pertinent data to keep the project as brief and relevant as possible.” Strong connections between
positive emotions and student’s ability to connect to discipline specific tools and research
methods were seen in most of the essays, such as a burgeoning historian recalling the feeling of a
“breakthrough” when discovering the right primary source to support their project, and an
anthropology student describing their pride in locating a root article that was essential to their
topic.
Identifying value - source evaluation
Their discipline-specific perspectives on research tasks were also reflected in the distinct and concrete
ways they evaluated sources. They not only validated what they found with corroborating literature, but
also established the relevance of sources in terms of their knowledge of how research evidence was used
in their field. For example, a group podcast project led the students to reflect on the need “to research
around the story” which

led to a very broad range of articles and papers to investigate. The researchers needed to pinpoint
[information] that would fit within our story, while not losing the scientific conclusions behind
them. It was additionally difficult […] to find sources that included both important evolutionary
information and information that would be easy to write into an audio script. …it was so
important to us that our sources were scientifically significant but also easy to translate into our
story.

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This particular group of students not only connected their research practices to their current information
needs, but to their future work as professional communicators.
The disciplinary context in which students wrote about comparing the value, nature and content of
different sources, identifying gaps and unanswered questions, and reflecting on agreement and
disagreement among sources was clear in their essays. Students also demonstrated awareness of
limitations on knowledge about a topic, based on the availability and nature of sources found in the
scholarly discourse of their disciplines. For example, a History student articulated an understanding of
primary and secondary source types:

two sources provided opposing perspectives, a trend followed by all the sources I found –
secondary sources were largely sympathetic to the miners, whereas primary sources often took
the side of the police and the mine owners. … In the absence of primary sources from the miners’
perspective, I instead decided to draw upon [secondary research].

Likewise, an Anthropology student wrote, "When I found one area of my project was lacking research or
had a multitude of conflicting sources … I would scale that aspect of the project down to what was truly
known about tuberculosis." Here, the student demonstrates this awareness of the limitations of
knowledge in a particular area while also acknowledging that sources may not come to the same
conclusions.

Students provided insight into the thought processes, tactics and approaches they used to make sense of
and evaluate the sources they found. They clearly identified with disciplinary approaches to research
through the way they described their evaluation strategies. They evaluated the sources they found in
relation to sources they had already seen or read and to assumptions about their topics, their disciplinary
values, and to the outcome/purpose of their projects. For example, a History student expressed pride in

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unexpectedly finding a historical map, and with their instructor’s guidance, evaluating information from
that primary source that “worked harmoniously with the rest of [their] argument.” An Anthropology
student likewise reflected on a decision to reject some initially promising articles because “attempting to
integrat[e] this information into my research would have resulted in a weak connection of data and
therefore weak research.”

LIS research has shown that students can apply evaluation criteria to sources and know how to identify
characteristics of “scholarly,” “credible” or “authoritative” sources. Similarly, these essays show us that
some students did apply generic concepts like “scholarly rigor” and “respected journals” to their
evaluation efforts. What was more interesting, however, and perhaps more instructive, was that almost all
students wrote about evaluation not in these generic terms but explicitly in the context of their projects.
They revealed how their personal attachment to their research topic and their identification with their
discipline impacted the source evaluation process, and that the process was not simply intuitive for them.
A few students wrote about attachment to topics so deep that they found it challenging to stay true to the
evidence and grudgingly changed direction when the evidence didn’t support a strongly held conviction.
As one student stated, "Letting go of an early research direction proved to be more difficult than I could
have imagined" but going through the research process allowed them “to let go of an idea to find focus in
the data.” As this quote suggests, students described learning as experiencing the processes through which
their research questions evolved, and being aware of how their selection, assessment and application of
sources evolved along with their questions.

Becoming
Students’ self-identification as researchers and as members of a disciplinary community was evident in
how they wrote about their place in a community of scholars or professionals. Participants’ descriptions
of emotional journeys through the research process indicate their transformation from beginner to

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apprentice researchers and show how they perceived the impact of their research projects as potential
contributions to their disciplines. Comments ranged from idealized visions of scholarly work like "this
project reaffirmed the fact that I stand on the shoulders of giants" to very pragmatic needs of practicing
researchers, such as "finding a niche for our own findings in the greater context of the field." Prompted
by the reflective essay guidelines, students wrote about how and why they would do things again in the
future, and how their research transformed their understanding about a topic. They also reflected on
disciplinary ways of knowing and on the impact of knowledge translation and scholarly communication
on their imagined futures. Students wrote about how both the process of research and the content of their
research topics would inform future research and practice as lawyers, entrepreneurs, nurses, historians,
and graduate students. They frequently described their future aspirations for professional work or
graduate school as motivating their works on these projects.

Several students seemed to accept and even appreciate the iterative process of research. As one student
put it, “with information comes the acknowledgement that more must be discovered and investigated in
this area to grasp a more complete understanding of the topic". Other students came to significant
realizations about their education and their life through research. One student began their essay stating
they had wanted to “drop out of university” but then involvement with a professor’s research project
caused them to see "for the first time [...] how my degree applied to my life". Others were more
pragmatic. Many talked about doing research as part of becoming something else. For example, a
Business student wrote about the research project as a professional skill building exercise, reflecting on
the opportunity to work “with different professors, individuals, and companies on the project as well as
building my network” and to add research “as an interest and proficiency to my resume.”

Previous studies of first year and other “novice” researchers contain a common thread regarding the
affective aspects of research and students’ overall negative feelings towards research.30 By contrast, the
students in this study had positive feelings about research. Even though many wrote about the process

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with the words frustrating, arduous, overwhelming, discouraging, and draining, these same students
wrote about breakthroughs, inspiration, understanding and rewards gained through patience, persistence
and resilience. The motivation of these students was clear in their choice of words: enthusiasm,
dedication, aspiration, curiosity, desire, growth, and appreciation. Some students reflected that they
themselves caused the frustration, difficulties, or stress: "even though my self-imposed high threshold for
reliable source material made the research process frustrating at times, it paid off in the end.” A few
students reported on explicit prompts, directives, and insights gained from interactions from professors,
librarians, and writing strategists, but very few of them referred to assignment requirements or directives
on source types, writing formats, etc. This suggests that the students internalized the task and were
motivated by things other than meeting grading requirements. As has been found elsewhere, students
expressed feelings related to confidence and self-efficacy as well as. 31 Their essays also revealed the pride
they felt and the struggles they overcame:
“From getting a C in [a third-year biology class] and not understanding how to even navigate any
academic databases, to finishing my B.Sc. and [the independent studies course] with an A+ with
an abundance of tools at my disposal, I can honestly say that I have learned so much from my
research experience.”
Students who had the most transformative experience were those who identified and crossed thresholds
through the research process to understand what it means to do research and how to see themselves as
researchers. This kind of transformation is evident in statements about appreciating the nature of scholarly
research (“This process has been long and tedious …reading and re-reading papers, scouring for the
smallest details that the original authors may have failed to consider, and how other works and the
findings of my own research might resolve those details”); about overcoming bottlenecks (accessing
datasets “taught me a lot about how data is collected and distributed” and “was a crucial step in my
research journey”); and making mental processes explicit (“I learned in this process that historians do not
just analyze sources, but that they are also needed to create a story within their own research”). Becoming
knowledgeable about disciplinary tools and ways of knowing developed students' confidence and pride in

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their projects, ushering them through the transition from novice researchers to scholars and members of
their disciplines. One history student remarked, “Having completed the arduous probe, I feel as though
my researcher's eye has gained a new lens, allowing for even sharper focus when embarking on new
research projects in the future." A Biology student also outlined future directions for the research started
during this project: “This is just the tip of the iceberg in my exploration of human physiology. … I was
accepted into a M.Sc. program… to continue working on related research.”

Recognition of the impact of their research on academic communities made them feel they had made a
transition from student to practitioners. One student described how their “understanding of the literature
allowed me to assist other researchers at the Experimental Biology conference poster presentations in
designing their own experiments on related topics,” while another student described their project’s
potential practical impact on the broader community:

“I am planning to apply for my Masters in Social Work … to expand my research that I have
completed in my undergrad and take it a step further by doing primary research for a longitudinal
study…. I want to discover if implementing this [framework] will decrease the amount of
bullying in schools and allow the students to develop healthier strategies to understand the
damaging effects that bullying has on a person’s mental health long-term.”

The insights shared through these reflections reveal that exposure to disciplinary communities, processes
and tools can cultivate researchers and motivate learners to pursue future academic aspirations as well as
prepare them for their future careers. Students demonstrated that their projects inspired them to further
contribute to their disciplinary fields and that navigating through their projects from beginning to end,
although sometimes challenging, proved to be an enriching and rewarding experience. In most cases a
clear transformation occurred, where students moved through roles of observer and information gatherer
(connecting, identifying) to becoming those actively participating within their scholarly community.

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Discussion
The reflective essays examined here reveal behavioral, cognitive and emotional aspects of students’
learning experiences and also shed light on the context and conditions that shaped those experiences. The
interconnected themes that emerged in these student narratives add some depth to our understanding of
how students develop IL in academic contexts and provide evidence to inform critical approaches to IL
instruction and support for learners.

Contextualizing IL
Robert Farrell and William Badke argue that “[b]y privileging librarian-defined research competencies
and decontextualized critical thinking skills, we have neglected to develop the kinds of learning
opportunities that position students as apprentice practitioners of the disciplines.” 32 Our study found that
students do see themselves as apprentice practitioners, as well as aspiring scholars and future
professionals; this leads librarians to consider how we approach IL instruction to support students to
develop metacognition, recognize transferable skills for future endeavors, and engage meaningfully with
information in context.

Although there is evidence that a significant amount of information literacy instruction still relies on
generic shortcuts and checklists to teach evaluation, researchers and educators are beginning to advocate
for more nuanced approaches to teaching information evaluation and use based on the reality of the
information environments students encounter. 33 One reason for the persistence of de-contextualized
information literacy instruction in academic libraries may be the timing of that instruction. Evaluation
checklists are often presented to first year students who are learning to do research before they learn about
their discipline. Previous research has found that students follow a “predictable information-seeking
strategy” that “appears to be learned by rote and reliant on using a small set of resources nearly each and

22
every time and this may be in part because of the way IL is often taught as a distinct, process-oriented set
of skills divorced from the context of disciplinary approaches. 34 The students in this study identified with
the sources, questions, methods and perspectives of their discipline, and did not make strong associations
with generic IL concepts. The researchers saw pragmatic, pertinent, and contextual evaluation practices
among students rather than responses to a checklist of generic source characteristics. In other words, these
students did not see evaluation as value neutral or objective. Rather, their reflections provide evidence
that disciplinary ways of knowing shape students’ information environment (the sources, tools and
experts around them) and that their personal identification with those ways of knowing impacts how and
why they employ IL skills and knowledge in that environment.

Leveraging student motivation
These student essays reveal the nature of the association’s student researchers make with their research
topics, methods and epistemologies. Their narratives provide proof that research skills should not be
separated from a larger learning process and that librarians “must move away from our often-fragmented
approaches and enlist the aid of metanarratives based on the way scholars in disciplines actually think
about and perform research to further knowledge.” 35 Badke argues that metanarratives about a discipline
help students understand the “why” and “what for” of research, and without embedding IL concepts in
these metanarratives, instruction that focuses only on the “how” of research may fail to engage students or
help develop their critical thinking skills. In addition to the disciplinary context in which IL skills are
taught, librarians can also pay attention to the social context of learning, particularly who supports and
enables students, who and what sparks their curiosity, and why. For the students in this study, the origin
and direction of many of their research projects were guided by personal and sometimes idiosyncratic
reasons, but almost all of them described their actions in relation to the intended purpose and audience for
their work. In IL classrooms and around campuses, librarians can leverage the interest students have in
the purpose and outcomes of their research and advocate for different kinds of assignments beyond the
research paper and promote and celebrate the variety possible in both student research experiences and

23
outcomes, including knowledge translation products like journal articles, posters, podcasts or videos that
can help illuminate the “why” and “what for” of students’ research efforts.

Grounding IL in disciplinary discourses
Like previous studies have shown, our students were typical in their reliance on professors to be “research
coaches'' and guides to generate ideas, identify starting points and confirm appropriate paths in their
research journeys. 36 However, this study also shows how and why they depend on their professors: desire
and motivation to impress, to do research properly in the manner of their discipline, to be “like” a
historian or an anthropologist, and to have an impact in a field, a community, or a particular audience.
This understanding can have implications for approaches to IL instruction as well as reference services,
programming and user engagement in libraries. Students’ statements about research revealed their
feelings of disciplinary inclusion and belonging; this suggests it is important for librarians to ground
themselves as both research experts and cultured in disciplinary ways of knowing when designing
instruction and learning materials, in order for students to recognize information literacy within their
disciplinary language. Specifically, librarians can use this insight to shape communication and
collaboration with faculty to more effectively incorporate IL instruction into students’ programs and help
them associate librarians with disciplinary research expertise. This might mean librarians function more
as curricular consultants to disciplinary faculty, helping faculty understand how IL can fit into
disciplinary discourses. This avoids the need to translate and map IL standards or frameworks for
disciplinary faculty and can position disciplinary faculty as the information literacy experts themselves, as
socio-cultural theory supports, and see the disciplines as owners of not one, but multiple kinds of
discipline-specific “information literacies.” 37

Limitations
The purpose of this study was to examine reflective essays of award applicants, however, not all award
applicants chose to participate in the study. Our population of study, therefore, is only those applicants

24
who consented to be part of the study. The implication of this is that the researchers cannot extend our
conclusions to the slightly larger group of award participants. It is possible, for example, that only
students who related to their discipline through their experience with the research process consented to
participate.

A second limitation is the honesty and truthfulness of the student submissions. In their study of
physiotherapy students, Stephen Maloney et al. found that only 20% of the students surveyed declared
that they were 100 percent truthful in their reflective essays. The authors found several reasons for this
including, the influence of assessment on task performance, misremembering events, and discomfort in
writing about emotions. 38 Although this reflective writing task was not graded, either summatively or
formatively, which Jo Anne Genua suggests influences student responses, 39 it was submitted to be
evaluated for a student award and may have influenced the full truthfulness of their reflections.

Conclusion
Students’ descriptions of how they connected research activities to their lives, identified with disciplinary
approaches to research, and experienced transformative learning through the process tell us much about
aspects of learning that librarians do not often get to see and assess. Their reflections provide evidence of
competencies beyond library-specific IL skills (i.e. skills deemed the purview of librarians to teach) and
allow us to see where, how and for what purpose they develop and practice these competencies. These
narratives provide form and substance to “the typically inaccessible nuances of experience” that are so
valuable to understanding student information literacy. 40

The qualitative research methods used in this study allowed the researchers to find patterns and themes in
the data that would not have been found through attempts to measure or quantify. In these reflective
essays, students described what resonated with them about research in their own words. Their silence

25
about certain topics was also instructive, and allowed the researchers to identify significant patterns in
undergraduate student research experience that would not have surfaced with quantitative approaches
aimed at measuring pre-determined categories or assumptions about IL imposed by the researchers. “The
complex and in-depth nature of the qualitative research process,” as Annemarie Lloyd has demonstrated,
“may result in smaller-scale studies, but this allows researchers to focus on understanding the layered
fabric of the practice (how it is shaped and the conditions that enable or constrain emergence) or
interrogating the practice to develop deeper understandings of the meanings that information literacy has
for people”. 41 Further research engaging different student populations (graduate students, or a sample
taken from a broader undergraduate student population) could further the findings of this study and also
delve more deeply into student reflections on specific disciplinary research pedagogies or particular
curricula.

Undergraduate students experience research as connecting, identifying, and becoming. These experiences
offer clues to improving information literacy instruction for undergraduates through contextualizing
research behaviors to identify and position information literacy practices meaningfully within different
disciplines. Librarians may see benefit in revisiting library instruction that balances a generalist approach
to information literacy with further integrating disciplinary pedagogies and perspectives on becoming
information literate in order to support students’ learning journeys as developing practitioners or scholars
in their fields or disciplines. Future research may further explore the librarian’s role in developing
students’ identities as researchers and how they are enculturated into disciplinary ways of knowing
through research.
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29

Appendix A
Reflective Essay Guidelines
The following questions are provided only to help you reflect on aspects of your research process. DO
NOT feel that you need to answer every one in your reflective essay! For one thing, not all of them may
apply to your work, for another it would take much more than 1000 words.
Research question: How did your research question evolve? Did it narrow or broaden or change as you
worked? What caused the changes?
Library/Information Research process: How did you determine what information you needed? How
did you find what you needed? Which strategies worked, which didn’t and why? Did anything in the
process surprise you? Which tools were most useful and why? Did you learn to use new tools – and how?
Finding, evaluating and using information: What information did you find easily and what was more
challenging to track down? What information are you most proud of locating? Were there challenges in
determining if the information you found was reliable or suitable for your project? Were there any
challenges in integrating the information you found into your work?
Overall reflection: What did you learn about information in your field? About research? Which parts of
the process did you enjoy and which were more of a struggle than a joy? What has this experience
brought you that you will use in your studies, your profession, and/or your life? What will you do
differently in your next research project?