From competencies to threshold concepts through the information literate university. A faculty's perspective

Abstract

This article explores the perceptions of social sciences professors in Spanish universities on a series of variables concerning the Information Literate University, and information literacy competencies and threshold concepts. The aim is to determine faculty's levels of agreement with such variables, how they cluster, and what the relationship between clusters consists in. Factor analysis and structural equation modeling methods are used. The accepted ILUCC-FP model structures the causal linkage between the constructs of IL Competencies, Information Literate University, and IL Concepts, and measures how they relate to the variables. The construct on faculty's attitudes toward the Information Literate University plays a key mediating role. This attitudinal, causal, bidirectional, flexible, and transferable model allows stakeholders -mainly faculty and librarians- to detect the current status regarding faculty attitudes, thereby providing them with the opportunity to promote attitudinal improvement initiatives with positive consequences for their levels of knowledge and skills. The model could be applied in different academic contexts.