Analysis of Organizational Barriers to Collaborative Teaching of Information Literacy in Libraries in Chinese Higher Education Institutions (HEIs)

Abstract

Practice has proved that the information literacy collaborative teaching model has good teaching results. Mature experience has been accumulated abroad, while relevant practices in China have not been popularized. Existing research mainly focuses on teaching models but lacks the analysis of deeply influencing factors. This study aims to explore the key organizational elements that hinder the collaborative teaching of information literacy in the libraries of higher education institutions in China through interviews. The research finds that the core obstacles include the following three aspects: (1) structural inertia, systematic lack of top-level design and resource guarantee; (2) cognitive inertia, deep-rooted professional bias; and (3) political inertia, inversion of incentive mechanisms. The obstacles to collaborative teaching are deeply rooted in the fabric of the organizational system, and behind them is the conflict of institutional logic. Solving the dilemma requires intervention from four aspects: formulating top-level design, unifying cognition and identity, pilot practice, and technology empowerment, aiming to provide theoretical and practical enlightenment for relevant research. Viewed from the perspective of artificial intelligence (AI) applications in education, these findings explain why the institutionalization of AI-related information literacy teaching depends not only on digital tools but also on organizational conditions that support curriculum integration, cross-departmental coordination, and responsible pedagogical use. 

Received: 26 December 2025 | Revised: 1 April 2026 | Accepted: 13 May 2026 

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest in this work.

Data Availability Statement

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in figshare at https://figshare.com/articles/dataset/Raw_data/32130100. 

Author Contribution Statement

Shanfang Qin: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Data curation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Project administration. Ap-azli Bunawan: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Visualization, Supervision. Nor Erlissa Abd Aziz: Conceptualization, Software, Resources, Data curation, Writing – review & editing, Visualization, Supervision.