“You Can’t Learn It in School”: Field Experiences and Their Contributions to Education and Professional Identity / «Ça ne s’apprend pas à l’école » : Les expériences de terrain et leur contribution à la formation de l’identité éducationnelle et professionnelle

Abstract

Field experiences are uniquely positioned at the intersection of education and the workplace, making them key sites for the development of professional identity, which results from socialization processes that occur in both education and work environments. To explore how field experiences complement, diverge from, and intersect with classroom experiences, this research analysed interviews with and reports of Canadian library and information science students who did coop placements in academic libraries. The findings confirm that field experiences are important for linking classroom learning to practice and that they help illuminate the realities of librarianship and clarify the implications of classroom learning for practice.

Training for Future Information and Documentation Professionals at the Carlos Iii University of Madrid Through Internship in Libraries, Archives and Document Centres

“…Internships have been routinely researched and are increasingly deemed a valuable tool for affording students a sense of professional identity, self-confidence and the capacity to adapt to and socialise in real working environments [3][4][5]. They play an indisputable role in curricular restructuring, opening up new lines of research and adjusting training to societal needs [6,7].…”

The role of communities of practice in the professional education of academic librarians

“…Hoffmann and Berg [18] interviewed students who took part in field experiences, looking 8 specifically at the impact on students' professional identity. Students described the placements as a way to see how "puzzle pieces" learned in a classroom setting could fit together and show "what it means practically to be a librarian."…”