Strand Two is informed by the belief that change occurs throughout the learning process as a natural, inevitable and sometimes challenging aspect of learning. Building on the transitional issues identified in Strand One, Strand Two positions the concept of ‘learning to learn’ as a lifelong framework for encountering, evaluating and assimilating new information, including evidence that conflicts with or challenges the learner's beliefs and world view.

The concept of the autonomous learner is fundamental to this vision. Rather than endeavouring to teach students how to deal with every kind of information, this strand aims to facilitate their emergence as individuals capable of generating strategies for dealing with new information contexts as required, at every stage in their lives.

Geoff is a well known researcher and practitioner in the information literacy field, and a member of the RIN Working Group on Information Literacy. He has written and published widely in the field as well as conducting doctoral research, and took part in the ANCIL expert consultation.

We are delighted that Geoff 's colleague Jamie Cleland, a senior lecturer in Sport Sociology at Staffordshire University, has co-authored this chapter, making it an outstanding example of interprofessional collaboration.

Institutional context and module development (Geoff)

This chapter will draw upon six years’ work carried out in collaboration with academic colleagues in Sport and Exercise Science at Staffordshire University, especially Dr Jamie Cleland, who also contributes to this chapter. The specific focus is a core first-year module called Research and Professional Development (between 120 and 160 per cohort). Before the module leader and I became involved in this particular module it was notoriously unpopular amongst students, who found it boring, unnecessary and full of material they ‘knew already’ because they had ‘done it all at college’. Yet these students, who, according to their own informal self-assessment, seemed to have arrived at university with a complete set of study skills and with claims that suggested they were at the highest levels of information literacy, produced essays and other assignments that told a very different story.

It is perhaps unsurprising that the narrative from the module leader and his team was one of frustration: students produced essays with poor sentence structure, could not argue effectively, and used inadequate, often internet-based resources found via the first page of a two-keyword Google search.