It Doesn’t Matter How Many “Doses”: One-Shots Aren’t Cures

Abstract

Drawing from Wendy Holliday’s use of metaphor to generate exploration around information literacy discourse, we pose some preliminary ideas about mapping a vaccination metaphor onto one-shots. We do so to offer another lens through which to explore the mechanisms and implications of one-shots being viewed as common-sensical and unassailable. Thus, we apply the timely vaccination metaphor to dig deeper into damaging assumptions about one-shots investigated in Pagowsky’s “The Contested One-Shot.” These assumptions include the claim that more sessions circumvent the problems of one-shots and that one-shots create transferable knowledge for learners. Finally, this article considers how these assumptions inform and are informed by prevalent understandings of how misinformation works.