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Unpublished Paper
“You’ve Been Down This Road Before”: Framing Foreign LL.M. Students’ Navigation of the Acculturation Process as an Effective Model for Library Research Instruction
(2019)
  • Jennifer Allison
Abstract
IN PROGRESS, DO NOT CITE WITHOUT PERMISSION.

This Article presents a discussion of how academic law librarians can conceptualize, frame, and offer effective research instruction to foreign LL.M. students.  It begins by presenting an overview of the American law school as an institutional and cultural paradigm into which foreign students insert themselves.  Then, it provides an overview of student sojourners: their motivations and goals, their issues with culture shock, and their acculturation strategies and processes.  This is followed by a discussion of the cultural aspects of academic law libraries in the United States, which present foreign LL.M. students with a unique set of acculturation challenges and opportunities.  A foreign-student-focused analysis of selected aspects of research instruction follows, including information literacy; developing a research plan that accommodates researcher uncertainty; and contextual, intersubjective information processing.  The Article concludes with practical advice that academic law librarians can offer, as guidance and encouragement, to foreign LL.M. students who are required to complete a major research project, such as an LL.M. thesis.
Keywords
  • foreign students,
  • international students,
  • research instruction,
  • academic libraries,
  • information literacy,
  • acculturation,
  • culture shock,
  • uncertainty,
  • research plan,
  • non-native English speakers,
  • master of laws,
  • law school,
  • law libraries,
  • research project,
  • scholarly research,
  • legal research,
  • culture,
  • law school culture,
  • socratic method,
  • non/native speakers
Publication Date
2019
Comments
I will be workshopping this article at the Boulder Conference at the AALL Annual Meeting in Washington DC in July 2019. Since it is still in progress, please do not cite it without permission. Thank you!
Citation Information
Jennifer Allison. "“You’ve Been Down This Road Before”: Framing Foreign LL.M. Students’ Navigation of the Acculturation Process as an Effective Model for Library Research Instruction" (2019)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/jennifer_allison/61/