This chapter provides a case study of teaching an Honors Freshman Seminar at Georgia State University. The pedagogical goals for this course were: (1) to push the boundaries of the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education; (2) to engage students in applying critical-theoretical and social-justice frameworks to the course topics via dialogic, problem-posing learning; and (3) to expand and challenge the students’ perceptions of librarianship by elucidating the role librarians play in social justice and democratizing efforts related to information access.
Twelve students consented to content analyses of their assignment texts. The content analyses were conducted using Strauss and Corbin’s (1998) grounded theory methodology primarily, but also drew from Krippendorff’s (2010) content analysis framework. The analyses were facilitated by QSR International’s (2011) NVivo9 qualitative research software. The content analyses were primarily focused on gauging: (1) students’ affirmation and/or challenging of the critical-theoretical and social-justice frameworks; and (2) whether and how students discussed librarians and libraries as social justice and/or democratizing agents.