Introduction

By now it will be apparent that across the landscapes, information literacy is multifaceted, many layered, and more than just a set of skills to be mastered. This complexity is further compounded by diverse views about information literacy—what it is, how it should be researched and what are the most effective ways to teach the practice. In the tertiary education landscape, and here I include formal vocational training, there is on the one hand a strong and prevailing tendency for information literacy to be viewed as a competency and skills-based literacy, one that will produce a checklist of measurable and assessable information skills and attributes. On the other side of this landscape (and in opposition to the skills-based approach) another view clearly links information literacy with the different ways of interacting and experiencing information (Bruce et al., 2007; Lupton, 2008).

In the workplace, our understanding of how information literacy contributes to practice and participation in working life is still emerging. However, the research that has been undertaken suggests that even though a skills-based view is prevalent, here too, other views and ways of thinking about information literacy are also emerging. These views contribute to a richer understanding of how workplace learning occurs and identify the socio-cultural dimensions that influence an experience with information and thus inform information literacy practice. This work is of particular relevance because it has the ability to inform and transform educational practice (Harris, 2008; Lloyd, 2006b; Hepworth and Smith, 2008). These alternative non-library-centric views highlight the collaborative nature of the workplace and its specific discourses and practices that shape the circumstances and conditions through which information literacy is made visible.

The most complex and difficult landscape to characterize is that of the public and community sectors, primarily because of the many settings and interests involved. Again, in this landscape further research is required. It appears, however, from the research that is available that a library-centric view of information literacy still prevails, which is reduced even further to focus on information literacy, as it is constituted through information searching and use of information and communication technology and computer literacy. In this sector, the perception of information literacy is underpinned with: (1) tensions relating to the role of the public library as a centre for learning that is often found in many peak bodies’ aspirational documents; (2) a high level of reflexivity by librarians in this sector about their ability to undertake the teaching of information literacy; and (3) questions from other stakeholder groups (e.g. teachers) about whether this is really the public librarians’ role.

This chapter will explore further the concept of an information literacy landscape that was first introduced in Chapter 2. It will be used to explain complexities of information literacy by illustrating its holistic and collaborative nature. A central thesis of this book is that as researchers, educators and practitioners we need to understand how information literacy practices occur in other contexts so that our own pedagogical practice prepares our users for the transition from one landscape to another.

Information literacy landscapes: a general overview

Physical landscapes are structured and characterized by different topographies, climates and complex ecologies. Depending on how a person interacts and experiences them, these landscapes can be perceived and subsequently interpreted in many different ways. Every landscape has a distinctive shape and features that are specific to it. The shape of the landscape is influenced over time by many interrelated processes, such as climate, erosion, deposition, tectonic forces or volcanic activity. All these activities in turn shape the complex ecologies that exist within the landscape and provide the conditions for the existence of living things.

Similarly within human contexts, discourse, social order, and an array of practices structure and shape the information landscape, giving it a specific character and agreed ways of performance. The structuring of an information landscape enables access to certain types of information while constraining the influence of other sources. Inhabiting a landscape, allows members to engage with information and to learn about how the site is heritaged, its social formation and arrangements, to gain knowledge about its patterns and cycles and to develop subjective positions in relation to it (e.g. librarian, teacher librarian, public librarian). Over time, people learn to read their landscape by developing specific and appropriate information practices, often embedded within other practices and skills that allow them to interrogate it, and to use its resources. Through information practices they develop ‘understanding and intelligibility’ (Schatzki, 1996, p. 12), which leads to a shared sense of meaning, of place and identity. They develop ways of talking about the landscape, of passing on its history, traditions and practices. Over time certain people become in essence, indigenous to particular types of landscapes, constructing their own identities in relation to place. By situating themselves within the landscape, people engage and interact with its complexity, developing appropriate practices, strategies and skills that will enable them to mine the richness of the environment. People also learn to protect their landscape and its traditions, by creating barriers that can make it difficult for outsiders to enter.

All information landscapes are constructed and grounded through collaborative practice and maintained through membership. Consequently, they are socially produced and while they may appear less tangible than a physical landscape, the act of being in it is just as real. Like a physical landscape, an information landscape can have a varied topography, and can be inhabited by a number of groups who while sharing a central language and narrative have specific information and knowledge that make them unique subcommunities.

When we first engage with an information landscape (through an occupation, education or circumstance, i.e. health or even sport) we need to learn about it, to understand the powerful forces that shape its structures and influence its flow. We need to develop practices that will allow us to map its resources, to interpret its language and nuances and to understand the social, historical, political and economic trajectory and imperatives that have shaped it along with the practices, including the information practices, and skills that are sanctioned within it. As part of this we also need to understand what practices, skills and knowledge must be developed to equip us as we journey through the landscape.

For the less well travelled, a landscape may seem unfamiliar, formidable, difficult to traverse, inhospitable, and ultimately difficult to know. Without assistance it may be easy to get lost along the paths or within nodes, or go beyond the edges of the landscape. However, for those with appropriate knowledge and understanding of how to read the landscape and with the help of some guides and landmarks, the terrain may take on a different character and become knowable (Lloyd, 2006b).

Because of the varied nature of landscapes, different skills, practices and affordances are required to make the information and knowledge within them accessible. In some cases where learning is formal and structured, the application of these skills requires a good deal of specific conceptual knowledge (know-why or propositional knowledge). At times and where learning may be informal and unstructured, the skills required might be drawn from embodied experience (know-how or practical knowledge). While at other times a combination will be required. The types of skills, practices and affordances that are valued within a landscape will be underpinned by the nature of the discourse that gives it character and influences the methods used to explore it (Lloyd, 2006b).

Information landscapes are not solitary places, but are full of other people who are connected through the same context. We recognize their membership because they tend to speak a similar language to us, and to share a similar understanding about the nature of the landscape and the practices that constitute it. To do this they need to develop an intersubjective understanding of what constitutes information and what information is recognized by the group as making a difference (Bateson, 1972). Our culturally adapted way of life depends on negotiation, contestation and agreement in order to develop shared meanings, shared concepts, and on the shared modes of discourse for negotiating difference in meanings and interpretation (Schwandt, 2003). Interacting with, and attending to, information in uniform ways enables the building of shared focus. It also establishes co-presence and permits the construction of mutually recognizable identities (e.g. as a student, a nurse, a librarian, a welder or a painter) and later on, our transformation to a collective identity within a professional workplace group.

However, when we first engage with our information landscapes we do so as novices or newcomers and others recognize us within the landscape as such. Over time information is used to draw us into a collective practice from the boundary to which we have been brought by our training or education (Lave and Wenger, 1991). Consequently when we first enter the landscape we need some kind of map, and this can be provided by preparatory education and training.

Over time, as we journey through the landscape, establish ourselves within it and develop our expertise, we undergo a transition, from being newcomers to becoming ‘old timers’ (Lave and Wenger, 1991). ‘Old timers’ are fully engaged with the landscape and because of their expert knowledge are able to move outside it, to create distributed networks in their search for salient information. Information that is drawn from distributed networks can then be used to further enhance and deepen their own practice and the practices of others within their community. This process of engaging with information, and developing the skills and competencies that facilitate engagement, also shapes our identities, which are produced and reproduced as we accumulate skills and knowledge. Acting as information guides, the members of the group will guide newcomers through the landscape providing them with the scaffolding required to understand which sources of information are legitimized and which ways of knowing sanctioned. Over time and with the help of our information guides, we find that the map of our information environment becomes more familiar, and we are able to read the changes and nuances of the landscape. In effect we become indigenous to it and the map we initially used will no longer be required.

However, engaging with an information landscape and learning to read and interpret it, can be problematic. Information landscapes can be closed to outsiders and only fully accessible to those whose membership is recognized. The creation of epistemic barriers can affect the information flow with a landscape, creating small communities with vested interests.

In summary, as a collaborative construction, all information landscapes are prefigured by historical, political, material and economic dimensions. These dimensions have been laid down over time and sediment as knowledge features that are shaped and reshaped through collaborative participation. When people connect to a landscape they connect with sources of information through a range of practices, all of which are sanctioned by the community. In connecting with members, and practices, the newcomer also connects with information that may be socially nuanced and embodied as a result of practical experience, or textual, relating to the codified rules and regulations that explicate the community’s identity to the world. Creating this connection enables the newcomer to develop their identity within this community and to gain a sense of place. Over time these meanings are reproduced as experience of the landscape and the information within it deepens.

By using this analogy of landscape and how people come to know place and space, I hope to convey some of the complexities we face when trying to understand information literacy as a holistic socio-cultural practice and how this practice is manifest in a particular landscape.

Features of information literacy in the educational, workplace and community landscapes

Workplace landscape settings

The characteristics of information literacy in a post-Fordist workplace are less systematic, more complex and less measurable than they are for the education landscape. By nature, workplaces are complex, messy places where information and knowledge are highly contested. Becoming information literate is not an individual process in this context. Rather it is a holistic and collaborative process that requires practitioners to be reflective and reflexive, to develop skills and competencies that are relative and framed by the intersubjective understanding of which information, knowledge and practices are sanctioned and those which are not.

In this setting, when information literacy is viewed from a library-centric perspective, it is framed by the development of information skills, as librarians understand them. This approach does not take into account that becoming informed about the sources of information is more than a process of applying information skills to facilitate engagement with formal written sources of information. It is also a process of engaging with the social narrative and knowledge of the collective and corporeal sites that produce the embodied sources of information and knowledge. In this respect the nature of information literacy is best understood as a practice that is culturally shaped and one that reflects the situated nature of interaction between people engaged in a common endeavour.

It is from this workplace setting that another view of competence has also been framed, one that emphasizes the collective power of learning and draws from the work of practice theorists discussed in Chapter 2 of this book. In this more holistic view, competence is constructed and therefore relational (Beckett and Hager, 2002; Hager and Smith, 2004). This suggests that in order to understand information literacy as a competence, or even a meta-competence, as I suggested in 2003 (Lloyd, 2003) we need to understand it as a situated practice, one that is shaped by cultural determinants (e.g. values, beliefs, rituals and conventions) which are specific to the setting and prefigure the practices within it, including information practice and skill. In higher education settings, for example, value is placed on the written word and the verification of source veracity through a systematic evaluation of authority. In contrast to this, in the emergency services studies described in Chapter 4, value as a cultural determinant is placed on the tacitly disseminated embodied knowledge. This is judged through observation of other workers’ practice (doing) and through the socially sanctioned and valued story telling (sayings) as a way of imparting embodied know-how and reinforcing cultural consensus.

This suggests that in a workplace landscape, information literacy is more than just the development of generic behaviour, skills and cognitive processes in an individual and something that can be transferred from one setting to the next. Competence is situated within the social settings in which a person enters and operates. Sandberg (2000, p. 55) suggests that ‘although an individual’s competency is central in performing an organization’s tasks, it is above all in the interaction with others that the task can be performed in an acceptable way’.

Therefore, it is the collective that defines and determines which types of knowledge, skills and attributes are appropriate for the performance of context-specific practices. This determination will be influenced by the types of information modalities deemed important for practice and performance within a setting, with which a person must connect. Consequently in this view of competence, the skills are grounded in the practice and performance rather than within the person, and it is by engaging with the practice that a person becomes competent.

By adopting this more holistic view of competence we can take into account other forms of learning. In particular, the embodied practical understandings that are brought to the forefront when we think about workplace learning, one that is often more organic than the structured formalized learning that occurs in preparatory training contexts. This type of organic learning often goes beyond the technical, but focuses on learning to be part of a team, situated problem-solving and planning and most importantly the construction of new knowledge that is often brought about by practice understandings and reflection on action (praxis).

The collective view allows us to question the focus on information skills. The idea of information literacy as a generic competency with a set of transferable skills assumes that information skills exist as a separate and distinct competence. This view fails to acknowledge the importance of the context and its actors and the role each play in valuing, maintaining and sanctioning specific competency and skills. The ability to develop strong information-seeking skills is highly valued as part of the reference process by librarians in the education sector. However, in the workplace, the ability to learn effective information-seeking skills will depend on the value that is placed on this activity by the seeker in relation to the overall task of which information seeking is a part. Consequently, any argument about skill development must recognize that what constitutes a skill is a construction that is validated by the field in which the skill is practised.

Community landscape

The aspirational discourse constructed by the peak bodies for information literacy has created a landscape that is unmatched by funding that would enable information literacy to be effectively promoted or to develop programmes at community levels in order to meet the needs for learning throughout life. In this landscape the narrative focuses on information literacy as an empowering practice, a core literacy and prerequisite for lifelong learning, the key to economic success and a basic human right in a digital world (Garner, 2006). In this respect the community landscape is without doubt the most important; however, it is also the most contested and is marked by a difficulty in articulating information literacy beyond the library-centric information skills approach. This approach reflects the search process but fails to account for other aspects of information literacy, in particular, evaluation and critical thinking around information. It also assumes that information and communication technology is the dominant tool of the information literate practitioner. Across all landscapes the perception that information literacy equates to developing good information and communication technology and digital information literacy skills has also come into question. Bundy (2004b, p. 4) argues that this has resulted in a misjudgement that the ‘key educational issue and investment of the information age is information technology’. While information technology is an important feature and developing information technology skills are critical to effective socio-technical practice, they are not the sum of information literacy practice. It does not take into account other sources and ways of knowing that may better reflect how information literacy actually occurs in community-based settings. This is not to say that information and communication technologies and information skills are not important, they are critically important, but they do not constitute the sum of information literacy practice, nor do they represent the needs of all groups within a community. In communities with a strong oral tradition and/or with limited resources, information and communication technology may not play a major part in information literacy. Information literacy practice will therefore take on a different form, and as a consequence, educational programmes will need to be developed that focus more on communication and critical thinking around other forms of information access and dissemination (Catts and Lau 2008).

Noteworthy in the public sector, is the high level of reflexivity that exists among librarians about their own teaching and pedagogical skills, or lack thereof. In addition, librarians in this sector recognize that information literacy has been thrust upon them, with little empirical evidence (apart from aspirational statements) that might provide guidelines or training for the development of best practice.

Conclusions

When an individual engages in information literacy practice they are not simply engaging with formal modes of learning and associated skills. They are simultaneously engaging with a social world that is shaped by specific discourses and discursive practices, which affects the ways in which information is understood, shared and sanctioned.

The broad spectrum of information literacy that I have described in the last few chapters illustrates that the practice can be conceptualized and operationalized in a number of different ways. This has led to different, and often contested, understandings of what information literacy is and what elements constitute the practice and activities of information literacy. It also illustrates that at the present moment, there is no general theory of information literacy in the sense that Socrates, Kant or Descartes argue for, because as we have seen, there is great variation in the way information literacy manifests. This variation in itself precludes universal theorization, in the positivist sense, because to be thought of as theory requires a comprehensive account for all domain activity and clearly not all domains and not all activities are the same. The approach in this book departs from a positivist framework and adopts a constructionist approach; therefore, theory is understood as a general and abstract account of information literacy as it is understood and described within each of the landscapes rather than being characteristic of all three. For this to occur the research gaps for information literacy in the workplace and community contexts will need to be filled thus enabling contested views of information literacy practice to be examined and reconciled.

Having said that, I will propose in the next chapter an architecture for developing information literacy theory that takes into account a number of dimensions that may act as a foundational step towards theorization as more research into the complexities of the phenomenon is undertaken.

References