Bruce

Bruce’s (1997) phenomenographic doctoral research, while being reported mainly in relation to the higher education sector (see Chapter 3), drew on the experiences of effective information use among knowledge workers such as librarians and IT professionals, academics, and staff in the higher education workplace. The outcomes of this published research known as the Seven Faces of Information Literacy identified seven different ways of experiencing information, which Bruce then extrapolated into the experience of information literacy in an educational workplace. According to Bruce (1999, p. 35), knowledge workers experienced information literacy in their workplaces as:

Bruce’s (1999, p. 46) conception of information literacy focuses on ‘peoples’ ability to operate effectively in an information society’. This author suggests that learning organizations should require their employees to possess a suite of information-based abilities in order to operate effectively. She lists this suite as: critical thinking, the ability to identify an information need, awareness of personal and professional ethics, and, the ability to evaluate and organize information and to use information effectively in problem solving. Bruce (1999) suggests these experiences should influence how information literacy is taught in professional education programmes. She warns against decontextualizing information literacy skills, arguing that they will have a ‘short shelf life’ and will fail the individual in the workplace unless they are learned in the context of workplace competencies and expectations.

Cheuk

The picture of workplace information use developed by Cheuk (1998) focused specifically on an activity of information literacy within a professional context, i.e. the information seeking and use processes of auditors. Working from a user-centred perspective, Cheuk (1998) identified that the information seeking process was largely individualistic and often unpredictable. The outcome of this research was a two-stage model described by Cheuk as information consumption and information supply. Cheuk’s research contrasts with the systemic and prescriptive skills-based approach identified in the library literature, in that it illustrates that the information-seeking process and experience within the workplace may be viewed as an unstructured, cyclical and repetitive process of information seeking. In this research Cheuk claims a constructivist perspective, and employs a qualitative method of sense making derived from Dervin (1992) to develop a model of information literacy for internal auditors.

Cheuk (2000, p. 178) defined information literacy as ‘going through an information seeking and use process to acquire new meaning and understanding’. This definition was extended by her for workplace contexts as ‘a set of abilities for employees to recognize when information is needed and to locate, evaluate, organize and use information effectively, as well as the abilities to create, package and present information effectively to the intended audience’ (Cheuk, 2002, intro, para 1). Cheuk’s research has illustrated common information-seeking and use processes within the workplace that share similarities with educational conceptions of information literacy as a skills-based literacy. These include the need to plan the processes of seeking information, gathering of information (information consumption) and presentation of information (information supply). This study emphasized the diverse activities that characterize information seeking, and use processes in the ‘real life practice in handling information at work’ (2000, p. 183). These were described by Cheuk (2000, pp. 183–184) as follows:

Cheuk’s research also raises questions relating to whether alternative models of information literacy are required for the workplace. In particular, the assertion that information seeking is not always necessary, nor is it an individual activity, has been supported in other recent studies (Lloyd-Zantiotis, 2004; Hepworth and Smith, 2008). This view appears contrary to the understanding that prevails in the higher education sector that to be information literate a person must recognize that they need information and have developed the ability to find information.

While Bruce and Cheuk focused their research efforts on knowledge workers or workers employed in the higher education sector, I have shifted away from these sectors and grounded my research in vocational and paraprofessional settings. My work explores the nature and manifestation of information literacy as a collaborative practice in settings where the focus is primarily on informal learning related to the performance and practice of work.

Lloyd

My doctoral research (Lloyd-Zantiotis, 2004) and more recent work within the emergency services sector (Lloyd, 2007), has focused on workers who could not be classified as knowledge workers. The results from my study reveal another side to information literacy as a socio-cultural practice, one that informs learning about workplace practice and is in turn informed by it. A practice where the activity of sharing and interpreting information is just as important as the activities that enable access (Lloyd-Zantiotis, 2004). Drawing from socio-cultural and workplace learning theory, I recognize information literacy as a holistic practice, one where the focus is not on the individual’s experience of information but on the individual’s experience of information in consort with others. In fact, the way in which information literacy emerges as practice will be influenced by the discourse of the setting, which sanctions and legitimizes information modalities and information-related activities. Information literacy produces a way of knowing about the practices and processes that inform learning about context. This will be explored in more detail later in this chapter.

While the three large studies by Bruce, Cheuk and my own, briefly described above, have been influential in the illustration of information literacy in the workplace, other smaller studies have also been conducted that focus on the individual developing skills to use information. This view is similar to the prevailing education view of information literacy as a skills-based literacy or competency, one that is generic and transferable from one context to another.

 will include measurement against an independently agreed set of criteria;

 must be able to be demonstrated; and

 is a definition of satisfactory performance.

 an awareness of the range of information resources available through a wide variety of information providers;

 a sound grounding in research process methods;

 a sound knowledge of how information and information resources are organized; and,

 students being confident, competent users of information resources.

 formulate and analyse the information need;

 identify and appraise the worth of likely sources;

 trace and locate individual resources;

 examine, select and reject individual resources in the light of the information need;

 interrogate resources to isolate required information;

 record and store information;

 interpret, analyse, synthesize and evaluate the information gathered;

 present and communicate findings; and

 evaluate the conduct of the process.

It is not enough to show students how to use a particular library or where to find the books they need. By definition, if the skill is taught and understood then it becomes an employable skill. Students will then be able to relate finding information to their everyday working environment and to their adult life in general.

 a lack of consensus about the term information literacy;

 a narrow conception of the practice that focuses on skills;

 the operational boundaries in which TAFE librarians are required to work, time constraints within the already packed vocational curriculum, which limits opportunities to effectively embed information literacy practice;

 lack of resources to support the development of information literacy programmes;

 users’ attitudes towards learning about information literacy skills until the point when they need it;

 the barriers presented with language and PC skills of clients; and

 teachers’ failure to understand the information literacy concept and how it could benefit students were also identified a barrier.

Successful business people have long known that having certain types of information conveys a significant strategic advantage to a company. Also new is the importance of information literacy in the new global marketplace. Information literacy was always important to businesses, but now it takes on a new importance because of the changes wrought by the new network technologies. When businesses are connected to each other, information becomes especially valuable.

 a need for information;

 the resources available;

 how to find information;

 the need to evaluate results;

 how to work with or exploit results;

 ethics and responsibility of use;

 how to communicate or share your findings; and

 how to manage your findings.

 people must be recognized as a legitimate source of workplace information;

 information literacy must be highly targeted;

 skills audits are required before designing information literacy training programmes;

 there is widespread understanding of what constitutes information literacy, but this understanding is implicit rather than explicit.

Placing your initiative in the silo of your group will not work. Success is more likely when you tie information literacy to internal employee development and compensation plans. The reality is, the ‘what’s in it for me’ factor is a much stronger incentive than any other benefit your group can describe. This needs to be explained to management, potential internal partners, and individual employees (para 20).

 lack of familiarity with the terminology related to the concept of information literacy;

 differing mindsets between the workplace and education settings, in particular, a change in corporate culture towards valuing innovative thinking and problem solving; and

 the expectation that employees come to the workplace with information literacy skills already established, which results in these skills not being promoted in the workplace.

 training on optimizing new technologies that manage information;

 including information literacy into the curriculum of continuous education and training schemes;

 increasing employee awareness about the fact that they are knowledge workers that access and use information in their day to day work;

 recognizing information literacy as a critical business skill and equally as important as communication or presentation skills; and

 recognizing the achievements of employees who create quality information.

Industry today focuses on speed, flexibility, and innovation; expertise is viewed not as a product but as a fluid process. Knowledge is developed within globally spread communities of practice that are embodied in organizational, intellectual, social, cultural and material interactions among members with a range of tools and technologies. New workplaces have a greater need for people who are good at collaborating and sharing knowledge than for smart individuals who, when they leave the enterprise, take their skills and expertise with them (p. 48).

 time management and information overload, which require judgement skills;

 the need for social networking skills (internal and external to the institution) including; ‘the ability to identify and connect with other people; and, ask precise and accurate questions in order to elicit the required information were significant and necessary skills’.

 listening and having the ability to sift through information and make judgements about relevancy were also considered important; and

 development of team-working skills, primarily because information expertise and skill is normally spread across a team rather than just located.

 manifests in the process of learning about sociality of the workplace as an intersubjective space; and

 enables the development of practical understandings about the performance of work.

 an intersubjective accomplishment because workplaces emphasize the importance of teamwork and collaboration:

 dependent upon the opportunities (affordances) offered to newcomers by experienced practitioners within the community of practice;

 a transformative process, in which the new worker’s engagement with information facilitates over time the transition of workplace identity from novice to experienced worker;

 a constellation of social, physical and textual practices, which enables knowing about work practice and facilitates the development of a workplace identity;

 a connector to learning about workplace practice and profession by facilitating the engagement between information sites that relate to conceptual knowledge and information sites that relate to embodied knowing.

 situational and driven by the need to access information contained within the symbols and artefacts and obtained through interactions; these are central and significant to the shared understanding, meaning and expression of identity, practice and profession; and

 a problematic and often highly contested practice, because information landscapes are socially, politically and historically constituted and this influence shapes information and the type of knowledge and information behaviours and activities that are valued.

Two themes emerge from Lloyd’s work

Two major themes emerged from the emergency service studies. These themes reveal the similarities of experience and use of information in the workplaces of frontline emergency services practitioners and the power of information literacy to act as a transformative practice. In the first theme, learning to act as practitioner, outcomes of an experience with codified sources of information (e.g. text) are illustrated. The second theme learning to become a practitioner illustrates how the changing experience with information occurs when the novice moves away from the context-independent safety of the training context and towards contextual engagement with the workplace community and the information modalities and information activities it sanctions.

Learning to act as a practitioner

In their preparatory training both fire fighting and ambulance novices must undertake formalized competency-based training, which is assessable against the specific standards of each of the employing service organizations. In this early stage of workplace learning, the information environment of novices is deliberative and protective (Flyvbjerg, 2001) and is removed from the realities and uncertainties of actual workplace practice. The context independent nature of this preparatory environment centres on codified sources of information with a focus on individual attainment of skills and competency. Information in this environment is abstract, generalizable and can be reproduced and restated and is, therefore, assessable. Novices learn to recognize factual information and adopt information behaviours that are relevant for the acquisition of skills and competencies they are required to pass. However, because preparatory training occurs away from the workplace, in training centres or vocational colleges, this recognition and experience of information occurs without reference to concrete situations. Novices engage with this organizationally provided information in order to learn the rules, regulations, procedures and sanctioned practices of their service organization. Performance is evaluated against the existing statements described by rules, regulations, training manuals, policy and technical documents and competency-based assessments. The outcome of this engagement is the development of a subjective workplace identity, which can be recognized by the organization and by other practitioners and places novices on the periphery of the community of practice (Wenger, 1998).

Connecting with this type of information assists the newcomer with the construction of individual subjectivity, a sense of self and an understanding of their relationship to the formal organization and its agreed practices of work (Weedon, 1997). By engaging with information from these sources, newcomers are also positioned in relation to the power structures within the institutional discourse. In effect, engaging with codified sources of information allows the novice to become an effect or product of the discourse and is recognized by the workplace community (Morris and Beckett, 2004).

By engaging with institutional modalities of information, novices learn to act as practitioners, and develop the ‘know-why’ of knowledge (Billett, 2001, p. 85) but they cannot become practitioners because they are removed from the reflexive and reflective embodied experiences and tensions arising from practice. They are also removed from connecting with the community of workplace practitioners whose nuanced understanding of work performance is embedded within the social narratives of practice. In preparatory training, corporeal information prepares the novice’s body for routine work through the rehearsal of procedural practice, but cannot prepare the novice body for the actual performance of real work because it is removed from the uncertainties of actual practice.

Similarly, while in training there is limited engagement with social modalities of information that will produce the level of intersubjectivity crucial for learning team performance and engaging with the shared sense of meaning, which is fundamental to the development of a professionally recognized identity. In the preparatory stages, social connections are made with trainers and educators whose primary role is to afford opportunities for novices to engage with the workplace-training environment. Trainers mediate and influence the novice’s information engagement towards the epistemic understandings of practice that will produce successful assessable outcomes. However, once novices are assigned to workplaces, these understandings are often contested, because they may not reflect the nuanced or embodied workplace understanding, which is gained through actual work and engagement with members of the community.

This preparatory stage is important for novices because the modalities of information that are engaged with in the training centre, although abstract, allows them to develop a workplace identity that is recognizable, in organizational terms, and brings them to the periphery of actual practice. However, it is not until they engage with the community that they begin the process of developing a full workplace identity and can become an information literate worker.

Becoming a practitioner

On being assigned to their stations, novices commence the process of engaging with information from an altered discourse, one that reflects the collective perceptions of practice, profession and competency, cultural values and group history. This discourse is collective and has been constructed and agreed upon through access to everyday experiential and social information. Experienced practitioners expressed the importance of social and physical information experiences as critical in providing information that is central to the development of their performance and understandings of professional practice. One study has argued (Lloyd and Somerville, 2006) that as an intersubjective experience, workplace learning must include recognition of the body as a central information source, which facilities reflection and reflexivity. In addition the socio-cultural practices of the workplace are also recognized by practitioners as critical information sources that connect workers through shared experiences and render shared understandings about place and practice.

The acquisition of this type of information is largely informal, acquired through participation or communication between members and constituted through the development of social relations that underpin teamwork. For novices and experienced officers the value of social information lies in its application and use. By engaging with the conversations of collective practice, novices are able to move towards developing an intersubjective understanding of information that facilitates a collective view of work and of workplace practice. Learning about this source of information and how to access, interrogate and evaluate it is largely ‘invisible work’ and enables learning to occur ‘on the job rather than off the job’ (Eraut, 2004, p. 249).

Becoming a practitioner is not only achieved through the acquisition of codified or social information. It also requires the coupling of these forms of information with physical information. Coupling is central to the transition from novice to experienced practitioner. It is the process whereby information accessed from textual sites, from social sites and from the physical experience of authentic practice is drawn together, rendering the recruit in place. Therefore, physical information is central to becoming information literate in this workplace.

Physical information is central to the developing relationships between novices and experts. As a source of information, bodies provide their novice owners with a collection point for sensory information gained through actual experience. Importantly, bodies provide a narrative of this experience or lack of experience for others to see; therefore, they become an important source of information for others as well. Experienced workers observe novice bodies for information gaps and then use their own bodies to fill those gaps in, by demonstrating the missing information.

Practitioners, through their experience, recognize that the textual site is important for developing a preparatory framework for practice. However, once engaged with actual practice, these sites are deemed less important and can become contestable against the information experiences of embodied performance and the development of real workplace relationships. The relationship between people in the information literacy process is illustrated in Figure 4.1.

In the preparatory stage of training, the information environment is driven by codified sources of information in which the rules, regulations, policies and procedures for practice are outlined for the novice by the institution. Engaging with epistemic knowledge allows the novice to be positioned by the institution through the formation of institutional identity. Information practice is mediated by experienced trainers who guide the novice to appropriate sources of information that enable them to pass the competency-based training requirements. As part of the mediating role, information is also interpreted by experienced trainers on behalf of novices who, because of their lack of experience, are yet to contextualize their practice. In the transition to the workplace, novices engage with an environment that has been altered through the embodied knowledge that can only be gained through the experience of practice and long association with the culture. Apart from the codified sources, the information modalities are broadened to include social (tacit information that is nuanced towards the collective interpretation of practice and profession) and physical information, which is gained as part of the performance of duties (and includes the routine as well as the unexpected). Experienced officers act in a mediating and interpreting role, providing affordances for novices to engage with the culture of practice, and with the embodied knowledge that comes from long exposure to workplace situations. It is through this interaction, that novices’ professional identity is reshaped to better reflect the nuanced understanding of the collective. This engagement, while reinforcing institutional understanding, acts to reposition novices towards the socially shared mutual understandings of the group and the culturally shared understandings of the emergency service culture. The development of effective information skills is also directed by the collective, who sanction particular forms of information access while disputing the veracity of other forms.

Such practices (although the term information literacy practice is not used) are also evident in the first piece of research into the information practice of a blue-collar worker, a vault worker in a Canadian power company (Veinot, 2007). Social practice theory was used to ‘understand the social organization of workplace actions’ (p. 159). Similar to my own work, Veinot used the concepts of embodiment and the situated context to understand the information practice of this worker. Different from my work, Veinot’s worker creates ‘boundary objects’ that provide information for other administrative and maintenance workers that guide them to take actions. These ‘boundary objects’ connect and coordinate ‘a range of organizational activities, thus satisfying a range of organizational information requirements’ (p. 162). In discussing this, Veinot states that ‘Kelly’s (the vault inspector) reports act as a tool that co-ordinates the works of others, data for statistical analysis, a basis for planning new vaults, and a resource for resolving problems of equipment failure’ (p. 172).

As such, Veinot (2007, p. 172) sees ‘vault inspection work as an information practice’. The range of activities that this practice encompasses includes: situated judgement (using judgement in relation to rules and regulations based on previous experience and knowledge); educated perception (of the visual environment); finding and navigating to the locations; and classification (using situated judgement and knowledge to ascertain the degree of problem discovered, or lack thereof). For example:

Exploring the nature of information practice among nurses in Sweden, Johannisson and Sundin (2007) draw on the concept of neopragmatism in order to advocate information practice as a social practice. The authors acknowledged the relevance of ‘communicative participation’ between participants given that library and information studies research is based on communication. Nurses in this study were seen to have ‘context bound dealings’ (p. 200); this reflects much of the literature on workplace information literacy as being context specific. Nurses discussed their, and other nurses’, information use, seeking, evaluation and in some instances production of text, irrespective of format (e.g. documents, articles, books and websites) but one within the context of being a professional ‘community of justification’, i.e. one that is ‘permeated by power relations’ (p. 204) and ‘making specific knowledge claims as to what should be included or excluded from the specific area of expertise’ (p. 203). The authors’ analysis revealed at least two levels of discourse that promoted specific interests of the profession: ‘… the science-oriented medical discourse and the more holistically oriented nursing discourse were two tools employed in the nurses’ accounts of their attitudes toward the production and use of professional information (Johannisson and Sundin, 2007, p. 215).

Commenting on the relationship between medical and nursing knowledge, the authors see the specific positions of nurses and doctors are fixed according to a specific knowledge hierarchy.

The research of the above authors demonstrates that research into information literacy can extend beyond the skills-based approach. However, further work is needed in this area in order to develop the rich descriptions that lead to conceptualizing information literacy practice as a complex process that extends beyond experiencing information through text.

… there is a gap between librarians’ and LIS academics’ conceptions of the skills associated with information literacy that stem from the school and higher education context and the experience of information literacy in the workplace. This is partly because the terminology we use is unfamiliar to people in the workplace but also because of the hierarchical and collaborative nature of work which means that information literacies may be distributed among the work group.

Use of information literacy standards and guidelines

While no specific information literacy standards have been developed for the workplace, some attempts have been made to adapt the education standards and guidelines to the workplace. Kirton et al. (2008) found that special librarians showed that they ‘recognise the published (ANZIIL) standards of information literacy’ (p. 252). In particular, Standards One (recognize need), Two (find information), Three (critically evaluate) and Six (understand the social and legal use of information) were included in the authors’ analysis of information literacy. However, with Standard Four (manages information) and Standard Five (constructs new knowledge from new and prior) there was a more varied response, possibly reflecting the nature of the workplace.

Comparing the ACRL standards with information literacy needs in the workplace, Cheuk (2002) argues that business leaders and policy makers might find the standards useful to promote the practice in the workplace. In presenting this argument Cheuk compared the standards and lists of information literacy skills lacking in the workplace. However, this comparison is only aimed at tertiary-trained employees and reflects the higher education discourse that centres information literacy practice around the research process and the individuals’ ability to develop skills that will enable access to objective knowledge through print or digital-based technologies. While this may be suitable for knowledge workers, it does not account for information literacy practice as it is realized by workers without tertiary education. For example, the notion that being information literate requires the ability to identify an information need, is without foundation in the workplace as the majority of workers will have their information needs determined by more experienced practitioners or supervisors. Similarly the notion of plagiarism, while an important scholarly issue and relevant for knowledge workers, is largely unrecognized in other workplace sectors that rely on collaborative thinking and the sharing of ideas often without concern for provenance. The reified and abstract portrayal of information literacy in educational settings is incongruent with the actual account of the practice of information literacy in the workplace and this issue requires urgent attention from researchers, especially if educational settings are serious about preparing people for the workplace.

Characteristics of information literacy in the workplace

The workplace landscape is complex and messy and research relating to information literacy while still emerging in this sector has begun to illustrate features of information literacy not identified in the educational setting. As in the education sector, the prevailing and current focus of information literacy research is still centralized around information skills, which also indicates the influence of the educational discourse across sectors. However, it also suggests that more research is required in order for information literacy to be fully understood. None the less, the education sector also benefits from a more sociological approach to their understanding of information literacy, which has drawn on research into workplace learning in order to frame the practice for this sector.

In reviewing the literature related to workplace information literacy a number of themes could be seen to characterize this landscape, each relating to ways in which information and knowledge are perceived. When information and knowledge are understood to be external and objective, information literacy practice manifests in this sector as:

However, when information and knowledge are seen as a construction and are relational to the ongoing collaborative practices of people who work in consort with one another a number of other features are revealed. These challenge the prevailing concept of information literacy as skills-based literacy and illustrate the complexity and depth of the practice. This understanding of information literacy practice is not focused on how information literacy is operationalized but why. When information literacy is understood from this perspective a number of other features are revealed, which are a recognition that:

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