Integrating theories of learning, literacies and information practices
Literacies and information literacies
Information literacy provides a central scaffold to participation and learning in all areas of work, education and everyday life. The purpose of this book is to showcase new research in the field of information literacy, with a special focus on academic and empirical research on learning practices. While there exists a large corpus of published literature on information literacy,1 information literacy teaching and research in the pre-Internet era were mainly advocated and discussed by library and information professionals. This book presents information literacy research as belonging to the dynamic and emerging interdisciplinary research on new literacies.
As they emerged in 1990s, theories of ‘new literacies’ and ‘multiliteracies’ (Street 1995; New London Group 1996; Cope & Kalantzis 1999; Barton, Hamilton & Ivanic 2000; Gee 2004) posed profound challenges to traditional conceptions of literacy. Our conventional everyday understandings of’literacy’ mostly stem from pre-digital text-based contexts and from specific linguistic and cultural environments. With the multiliteracies concept, the challenges posed by technology to our basic assumptions about information, reading and writing practices became evident. Web-based digital information resources and document genres can be profoundly different from traditional print-based genres in their interactivity, modifiability and multimodality (the combination of text, sound and image). The multiliteracies theory emphasized that there is an endless number of different literacies associated with different domains of life and knowledge. It recognizes subcultural diversity in communication, reading and writing practices, and in ways of using and producing texts, representations and information resources.
As literacy originated from text-based information environments, so too did information literacy as a teaching project, stimulated especially by the availability of reference databases and other finding aids in libraries.2 Information literacy was first understood as ‘systematic research’ skills and, more specifically, ‘library-based research’; the term was initially used in connection with bibliographic instruction. Later in the 1970s, information literacy came to mean, more generally, the techniques and skills needed for identifying, locating and accessing information resources by using information tools in a variety of contexts, including workplace contexts. In the 1990s, information literacy became more widely understood as a concept. This is because it became associated with computer literacy and the ability to use the Internet. Information literacy came to be understood as a key skill of the Information Age.
The information literacy concept was at first, therefore, tightly intertwined with library tools and resources, reflecting the skills that librarians possessed in these areas. Later this link loosened and information literacy became synonymous with searching skills, especially systematic keyword searching and the application of Boolean operators. When information literacy as a concept became linked with information society discourses, it came to mean the abilities needed for lifelong learning and the skills of learning to learn. In the 1990s, there were two powerful ways of thinking about information literacy. The first was the idea of empowering individuals through teaching and adoption of information acquisition skills and computer competencies. The second emphasized that the nature of modern societies requires individuals (as workforce) to possess skills, abilities and competences such as information literacy, information technology (IT) literacy, media literacy and network literacy (Talja 2005).
The dual emphasis on the empowerment of individuals, on the one hand, and the need to respond to society’s demands, on the other, has prevailed in most policy programs and state-level definitions of literacy and information literacy until today. The information society, or workforce, viewpoint on citizens is, however, often more pronounced in definitions of information and information and communications technology (ICT) literacy than in definitions of traditional literacy. The new literacies movement shifted the viewpoint from individuals’ empowerment and from the workforce viewpoint on learning requirements to local situated practices and literacies—to the concrete sites where people in tandem ‘with words, deeds, objects, tools, symbols, settings, times, and ways of being, doing, thinking, and valuing work out their projects, as well as work on and rework the projects that flow at and to them’ (Gee 2000, p. 194).
Fundamental terms such as literacy and information literacy are thus approached and interpreted very differently in diverse contexts and by different schools of thought. We could not function efficiently in everyday life if we did not simply assume that the content of these terms is established and agreed upon. Meanings that are taken for granted enable and support stable practices of formal education and training. When the ‘new literacies’ and ‘multiliteracies’ theorists challenged traditional conceptions of literacy, they wanted to foreground, in theory and in practice, the diversity of literacy practices and to bring the literacy practices in the world outside schools and literacy teaching in formal education more closely together. Thus we now prefer to talk about literacies and literacy practices rather than about literacy as something that an individual either possesses or does not possess. Similarly, we speak of digital literacies rather than digital literacy.
The time has also come to start speaking of ‘information literacies’, rather than information literacy. This book advocates the view that information literacies vary according to context and ultimately take their form and meaning within the cultural and historical context in which they are applied. Information literacies share boundaries with many practices and are informed by a variety of ways of knowing and doing.
Sociocultural learning theories
In presenting information literacy research as a fundamentally interdisciplinary endeavour, the most significant aspect of this integrated research approach is the firm foundation of empirical research and professional practice on sociocultural theories of learning (for example, Lave& Wenger 1991; Wertsch 1998; Säljö 2000). The sociocultural approach and its emphasis on the existence of multiple different local and situated forms of information and digital literacies underpin this book.
As the sociocultural theory of learning is a family of theories rather than a single theoretical or methodological approach (Gee 2000), we may best characterize what the shift towards a more sociocultural understanding of learning and information literacies means by briefly reviewing criticisms of information literacy standards that have been designed as guidelines for formal information literacy education.
The most important and widely cited publications on information literacy have come from library associations, for example, American Library Association (ALA 1989), Society of College, National and University Libraries (SCONUL 1999) and Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL 2000). For Sheila Webber and Bill Johnston (2000), information literacy standards represent ‘shopping lists of desired behaviours’. Johnston and Webber (2003) argue that information literacy standards were limited in their view of information literacy as an acquired personal attribute. In their view, the prescriptive approach adopted in information literacy standards trivialized human information practices and was, therefore, likely to lead to de-contextualized, artificial information literacy instruction. Information use and evaluation were seen as comprising of generic skills, independent of content and context—of the subject matter, practices and discourses of different domains and activity settings.
Sociocultural learning theories assume that all human practices, including information practices, are fundamentally social and bound to a specific context and activity setting. The sociality of practice is based on two premises: 1) that a common sense of what constitutes competent practice originates not from the heads of individual actors but among members of a community of practitioners; and 2) that practice is always organized in relation to some ‘significant others’—even in circumstances where one individual seemingly carries out a task alone.
Community of practice is the phrase coined by Lave and Wenger (1991) to describe the context in which learning and knowledge production take place. Authentic and efficient knowledge creation and learning is deeply embedded within specific work and leisure practices and interpersonal exchanges. Communities of practice are groups of people sharing similar goals and interests, in pursuit of which they employ common practices, work with the same tools and use a common language. Communities of practice evolve in circumstances where people have common concerns, when they engage with the same subjects or content, when they perform similar activities and when they develop shared understandings about their practice and its meaning.
The sociocultural approach places emphasis on shared ways of interacting and communicating and sees literacy as something that develops in social contexts and is specific to a particular community. The overarching aim in promoting such an approach is that it may help in developing educational practices that move learners to the centre of educational practice and enable them to take responsibility more fully for learning and knowledge-building in the communities that they participate in.
While accepting the broad framework of socially contextualized learning experience, it is also important to consider the perceptions and experiences of individual learners. In schools and formal education contexts, learning has traditionally been understood as an individual process. The broad theoretical perspective offered here, however, is that discourse, literacy and learning are embedded in social practices. Therefore, a central challenge for information literacy research is to more clearly articulate the relationships and links between individual learners’ everyday experiences and wider socially and historically constituted institutions and structures.
Thus, when information literacy is seen as a sociocultural practice, the foci of research will differ, depending on researchers’ viewpoints, allowing some researchers to understand information literacy from inside the experience of single actors, while maintaining that each individual actor is still a social actor in a social environment; other researchers, however, will concentrate on social settings and the effect that these settings have on the way information literacy is understood, spoken about and practised.
The chapters
Information literacy emerges as a part of formal and informal learning in education, workplace and everyday settings. This volume brings together contributions that focus on a variety of contexts such as schools, workplaces, lifelong learning, leisure activities and community participation. In addition to conducting research in new contexts, the authors consider and interrogate new epistemologies, concepts and methodological approaches, including ethnography, phenomenography, constructivist grounded theory and video analysis.
Part I. Theoretical perspectives
Mandy Lupton and Christine Bruce provide an in-depth discussion of different perspectives on literacy and information literacy. First, these may be seen as generic basic functional skills; second, they may be seen as situated, social practices; and third, they may be seen as transformative skills, both for the learner and for society. Lupton and Bruce reframe existing discussions by explaining the logic and limitations of each ‘window’. They suggest viewing generic, situated and transformative (GeST) skills as necessarily complementary. They explain how the GeST model can be used in higher education so that courses include elements of each. The GeST model can also be used to assess existing courses and curricula and to design new ones.
Writing about the workplace context, Annemaree Lloyd considers the relationship between information literacy and workplace knowledge. Drawing from sociocultural and practice theory and from workplace learning, Lloyd discusses the information modalities with which learners must engage. She demonstrates that the corporeal modality has a critical role to play in formal and informal learning. This information modality and the concepts of embodied information and embodied knowing have long been absent in learning and information practice research, which has focused primarily on codified sources of knowledge. Reintroducing the body as central to information literacy inquiry expands avenues for research. It allows us to explore how the body is rendered a cultural artefact through access to information and brings into consideration corporeality as an information source and legitimate source of learning in both formal and informal settings. Lloyd’s chapter also raises questions about how the body has become separated from the learning process and the implications of this separation.
Lasse Lipponen examines the widely cited definition of information literacy by the American Library Association and notes that it is based on the acquisition theory of learning, rather than on a participation theory of learning. Lipponen suggests that information literacies should be seen as situated and distributed, rather than understood as individual expertise. The sociocultural perspective views all human activities as distributed over individuals and the tools they use. Cognition and knowledge are similarly distributed over individuals and their environments. Lipponen proposes that information literacy is a result of a dynamic and locally established process that is constructed and reconstructed within community and evolves in a reciprocal relationship with practices and technologies.
Part II. Practising information literacy in formal learning contexts
Päivi Hakkarainen and Sari Poikela discuss the success and outcomes of integrated, embedded information literacy teaching, grounding their discussion in close observation of a university course. In that course, problem-based learning (PBL) was used as the teaching method. Problem-based learning is often understood solely as a teaching method or a curricular innovation. Hakkarainen and Poikela stress that PBL is an overall general approach to teaching and learning, an educational philosophy with its own epistemological and ontological commitments. PBL also entails a specific conception of the requirements and characteristics that ensure meaningful learning of information literacy. Their findings suggest that PBL does support the collaborative development of information literacy, so that determining the extent of information needed, acquiring knowledge, and evaluating and using information become collaborative and conversational processes. The downside of a process that is collaborative is that the teacher can miss some of the critical moments that offer the opportunity for closer scrutiny of information literacy practices. Hakkarainen and Poikela conclude that PBL tends to support students in developing a conscious reflected understanding of the nature of information literacy and of their own competence.
Heidi Hongisto and Eero Sormunen report findings from an observational study in a secondary school classroom, describing novice learners—14-year-old students—working on their first large independent learning assignment, a geography research paper. Their learning assignment integrated learning of content and learning of information and computing skills, as well as other research skills such as planning a large assignment, scheduling work and writing a report. Hongisto and Sormunen focus on the challenges and problems faced by the students through a detailed analysis of their problem expressions, and, through observation of interaction in the classroom, they analyze the types of support given by the teacher and fellow students. Though the course exhibited features of inquiry-based learning, problems with the more technical, practical and basic aspects of the assignment were overwhelming and inhibited interaction regarding research questions or information content, and subsequently, the learning of higher level information skills. Hongisto and Sormunen’s chapter offers an in-depth discussion of the possible methods and practices that would help teachers to manage the big leap to combining information literacy teaching with meaningful reflective learning of subject content.
Leena Rantala also focuses on classroom activity during a learning assignment involving information seeking and preparing a presentation. Rantala focuses on one episode, where the class community works in the computer class, and closely follows the activities of one 13-year-old student, Laura, as she performs the given learning task. Rantala’s interest is in how the digital literacies learned outside school intertwine with the doing of digital literacy in the school context, analyzing the constraints and possibilities for doing digital literacy in the classroom. She calls the digital literacy practice that evolves in the formal school setting as ‘schooled digital literacy’. Schooled digital literacy is not about critical evaluation of information or creative production, which, following the notion of knowledge-producing schools presented by Lankshear and Knobel, would be the most important aspects in promoting digital literacy in schools. Rantala argues that, although schooled digital literacies are different from out-of-school digital practices, there is, nevertheless, room for creativity, collaborative activity, reworking and recontextualization of texts within the formal school task. She points out that youngsters are capable of doing and learning different digital literacies and information literacies in different contexts.
James Herring’s chapter examines the experiences of Year 12 students and the students’ views of their own information literacy skills as they complete a physics assignment. Herring finds that students’ work on the assignment involves a series of constructions on assignment parameters, on relevant concepts and on the information environment. Importantly, students also construct an image of themselves as researchers and an interpretation of the transferability of their learning and skills to other contexts, based on their understanding of what they would be expected to do at university. The school environment encourages students to develop a particular view of learning transfer. Herring points out that there is very little literature about the issues of learning transfer, especially in the light of learners’ expectations.
Part III. Challenges in information literacy teaching
David Woolwine’s research focuses on whether the issues that are generally considered critical for learning in information literacy courses in higher education—namely, evaluation of the credibility and reliability of information resources, assessment of relevance and timeliness of information, source criticism, and detection of potential bias—are understood as the core issues and given equal weight by faculty members. Woolwine’s study shows that different disciplines tend to have different positions regarding these criteria, which are tied to the specific and unique practices and contents of disciplines. Woolwine concludes that each discipline possesses its own subtle information and evaluation practices that are not easily transmitted. He states that students do need more than ‘point and click’ instruction on searching skills. Choosing the right information resources and the search strategies best suited to subject content require a disciplinary environment and an understanding of a discipline’s social and intellectual organization.
Mikko Tanni tackles the issue of how teacher education helps teacher trainees to incorporate information literacy instruction into their teaching practices. Tanni’s research into trainee teachers, who, as members of the new generation of digital natives, are considered to be Internet savvy, identifies a number of important issues in relation to their ability to transfer these skills into classroom instructional models. Tanni’s research suggests that the conception by teacher educators that trainee teachers are able to transfer their information literacy skills to the classroom has meant that little has been done in relation to providing the educational scaffolding that trainees need to be effective as information literacy educators in the classroom.
Vesa Korhonen explores the question of how to change teaching and learning practices in schools to better cope with literacies and learning practices needed outside school. Korhonen outlines the principles of dialogic literacy as a basis for pedagogical thinking in teaching, learning and schooling. Korhonen argues that competencies that are related to learning to adopt shared thinking and cognition, creative joint inquiry, collaborative ways of working and joint responsibility are the central requirements in Information Age professions. Social capital and managing interaction and discourse practices in socially useful ways are needed to build meaningful connections between school practices and out-of-school worlds and communities.
Part IV. Contexts and conceptions of information use
Jarkko Kari and Reijo Savolainen analyze varying definitions and conceptions of the relationship between information use and learning from a corpus of studies from information research. They identify five qualitatively different ways of understanding the relationship: learning is a part of information use;; information use is a part of learning; learning affects information use; information use affects learning; and information use and learning interact. The studies they analyze approach information use and learning almost exclusively from a cognitive perspective and from an individual’s angle. Affective, physical and social facets are rarely foregrounded in these studies, which Kari and Savolainen suggest is necessary to make research designs more realistic and significant.
Kirsty Williamson’s research focuses on the ‘know how’ of online investors in their information seeking and use. Good information use skills are extremely important for safe online investing, as many investors invest without advice from professionals. Dealing with information overload, the need for quick delivery of information, and the need to make considered decisions in complex, multifaceted information environments pose challenges in online investing. Information literacy in this context means, among other things, patience in building knowledge to avoid making decisions based on the most readily available and speedily deliverable information. In this context, questioning and rechecking information that is encountered is an essential skill, not only for web-based information but also for information acquired from other people.
Using phenomenography as their research method, Helen Partridge, Sylvia Edwards and Clare Thorpe explore variation in information professionals’ concepts of evidence-based practice. Not only is there considerable variation in conceptions of needs for information and information use among the professionals, but there is also variation in what is seen to constitute acceptable or appropriate information or evidence. Although in some situations information professionals prioritize formal information stemming from published research, benchmarking and standards, especially to convince or influence decision-makers, in other contexts they favour less formal forms of information, gut-feeling, hunches and anecdotal evidence. The authors conclude that evidence-based practice can be seen to represent professionals’ enactment of information literacy in the workplace, but that it has many more layers and dimensions than are recognized in prevailing discourses.
Part V. Multicultural and gendered aspects of information literacy
Saraleena Aarnitaival’s research is ethnographical and focuses on learning situations in which Kurd and Russian immigrants received instruction in information seeking and computer use. She tells the stories of three women, Anna, Svetlana and Farida, as they struggle to enter the working life of their new home country. Of particular interest are situations in information literacy training and encounters with representatives of formal organizations and associations where ‘worlds collide’ and where unconscious and cultural values, norms and assumptions hinder learning and collaboration. Aarnitaivai is especially interested in how social networks help immigrants navigate their new information landscape. She concludes that work life information can be mediated in various ways which are equally valuable. Neither the medium nor the form of the information provided is essential. There are no high-quality information resources or right ways of seeking work life information.
Suzanne Lipu notes that, despite the sociocultural paradigm shift in information literacy research, feminist theories have rarely been applied. She makes a distinction between gender-focussed information literacy research and feminist information literacy research. The former is concerned with the issues of equality, especially in relation information access and ICT skills. Feminist research, however, is based on feminist epistemologies, distinct theories of knowing, information, agency and technology. Lipu presents findings and approaches from feminist gender and technology studies that are directly relevant to research into information literacies. Lipu goes further to discuss the spectrum of feminist theories and epistemologies, especially those that are sensitive to issues of race and ethnicity and offer critical research positions that challenge naive understandings concerning the relationships between information and empowerment. She concludes that feminist research into information literacies also entails many dilemmas and difficulties, especially with respect to choice of voice, ways of representing differences, reflexivity, positionality and participatory ethics.
1More than 5000 publications dealing with information literacy and library user instruction, published between 1973 and 2002, were reviewed by Hannelore Rader (2002).
2The term information literacy was coined by Paul Zurkowski (1974), who was concerned that workers needed to develop skills in the use of information tools that would help them solve workplace problems. The concept was then adopted by librarians who translated it into library-based information skills.