Information Literacy Landscapes: Information Literacy in Education, Workplace and Everyday Contexts

By Annemaree Lloyd

Drawing upon the author’s on going research into information literacy, Information Literacy Landscapes explores the nature of the phenomenon from a socio-cultural perspective, which offers a more holistic approach to understanding information literacy as a catalyst for learning. This perspective emphasizes the dynamic relationship between learner and environment in the construction of knowledge. The approach underlines the importance of contextuality, through which social, cultural and embodied factors influence formal and informal learning. This book contributes to the understanding of information literacy and its role in formal and informal contexts.

• Explores the shape of information literacy within education and workplace contexts
• Introduces a holistic definition of information literacy which has been drawn from empirical studies in the workplace
• Introduces a range of sensitizing concepts for researchers and practitioners

• Language: English
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Release date: Feb 19, 2010
• ISBN: 9781780630298

Book preview

development.

1

Introduction

Information literacy has been described as a core literacy and a prerequisite for lifelong learning in the twenty-first century (Garner, 2006). However, what is information literacy and how is it understood and played out in the multiple information settings that people are engaged in? Does being information literate in one context automatically mean being information literate in all? Can the complexity and richness of information literacy be described so that education, workplace and community sectors understand the processes that enable information literacy to occur?

Over the last 30 years our understanding of information literacy has developed generally within the context of formal learning. Here it is viewed as the users’ relationship with text and technology (i.e. print and information and communication technologies literacy). However, as our research into information literacy proceeds and as we seek new landscapes to increase our knowledge of this phenomenon, we are increasingly beginning to understand that the practice of information literacy is not confined to formal learning information environments but is part of human activity in every landscape or context. Consequently, to understand information literacy requires more than an understanding of the student research process or the development and application of information skills, it requires a deep understanding of the complex social processes and arrangements that shape information and how it is used within any given context.

I believe that information literacy is a socio-cultural practice, one that is embedded and interwoven through the practices that constitute a social field (i.e. a context) and as such is subject to collaborative arrangements and activities. It is constituted by a set of interwoven understandings that guide interaction and is linked to the activities around information and knowledge sanctioned by any given setting. For example, the sayings and doings that order, enable and sometimes constrain activities will affect the way information is understood and shared in the construction of knowledge.

As a socio-cultural practice, information literacy is part of the ability of a fire fighter to ‘speak a fire’ or an Inuit to understand the complexity of the word ‘snow’. It is also:

 the ability of an experienced artist to mix and remix colours to suit the palette of a masterpiece or of an ambulance officer to use his gut instincts built up over time to deal with a different or unexpected situation;

 understanding the technicalities of childbirth before it happens, but then really knowing it after;

 knowing the rules for soccer but not really knowing the game until you have played it.

 knowing what sources of information are relevant and necessary in developing the know-how or practical knowledge to perform a task and understanding the implications of this information experience after it occurs;

 knowing what co-participatory practices will inform your own performance in the workplace, and understanding what sources of information will shape your identity as a practitioner.

Information literacy acts as a catalyst to all types of learning, but the process of becoming information literate requires the whole person to be aware of themselves within the world (Csordas, 1994); to experience information through the opportunities that are furnished by the landscape or context; to recognize these experiences as contributing to learning; and, to take into account how the context and its sanctioned practices, sayings and doings enable and constrain information use. Information literacy gains its meaning not in the definition of its skills but through the way it manifests as a socio-cultural information practice in relation to the way people experience information and create meaning about this experience.

Becoming information literate requires a person to engage with information within a landscape and to understand the paths, nodes and edges that shape that landscape. Information landscapes are the communicative spaces that are created by people who co-participate in a field of practice. As people journey into and through these landscapes they engage with site-specific information. This engagement allows them to map the landscape, constructing an understanding of how it is shaped.

It is through this engagement that people, situate themselves within the landscape. In order to do so they develop information practices and undertake a range of activities that allows them to interrogate the sources of information within a setting. To undertake this journey into one’s information landscape and to come to know it requires the act of becoming informed; i.e. to form an idea about the processes, practices and activities that are relevant to the learning that is required for that setting. Further, being informed allows members to understand and make judgements about these activities in the context of what is considered acceptable practice by others who share the same contextual space (e.g. a workplace or a classroom). All of these activities are significant for constructing knowledge.

Information can be explicit or it can be tacit. It can be accessed socially, corporeally (through the body) or through the written word, so that the person experiences, accesses and engages with different types of information in relation to the activities that are undertaken, e.g. reading, observing, talking, listening, reflecting, thinking or just doing. Over time, as these forms of information and ways of accessing information coalesce, this helps to fill in the framework for knowing about the nature of information within a particular setting. It helps explain how and why it is produced and reproduced, authorized, sanctioned, nuanced, applied and most importantly experienced.

The nature of this book

This book is for information literacy researchers, librarians and for educators who are interested in the ways people experience an information environment. It explores information literacy from a socio-cultural perspective as a situated ‘informing’ practice. In doing so, it draws from research in higher education, workplace and community settings for guidance about how information literacy occurs. It then uses this understanding to develop an architecture of information literacy practice that may be employed to inform research and pedagogy in educational, workplace and community training settings. This holistic approach allows us to conceptualize information literacy as it happens outside of preparatory settings rather than as often librarians and educators suppose it happens. It allows a rethinking of information literacy as a situated practice, one that treats not only the written word and codified knowledge as the legitimate sources, but also social and corporeal sources of information as central to becoming information literate. This approach conceptualizes the practice of information literacy as part of an integrated process that informs other practices, including learning the practice, and one that is in turn informed by it.

Therefore, information literacy can be considered as a meta-practice, one that occurs within social sites, which by its very nature is formed over time by collaboration with others. This produces shared practical understandings that are rich in historical, social, political and economic heritage. As a meta-practice information literacy needs to be analysed through the fields of practices that constitute a social site, suggesting that information literacy is context dependent. To understand this phenomenon, and to subsequently develop effective research architectures and pedagogy means that we need to identify the activities that constitute information practice. We need to understand how these activities are shaped and become integral to the setting through which they occur.

Aim of this book

The aim of this book is to encourage researchers and librarians to consider information literacy in broader terms, not only as a skill but in terms of how and why those skills manifest in specific ways as part of information practice. Information skills are not context-independent; they are established and sanctioned as part of the broader socio-cultural information practices of a community. Therefore, what this book attempts to do is to provide a framework for thinking about information literacy as a practice that enables people to engage with information in ways that will draw them into their communities.

Structure of this book

The idea that information literacy is a meta-practice is influenced by social and practice theory. In Chapter 2 these theories are briefly described and explored in order to orient the reader and to make the case for information literacy as a socio-cultural practice. The work of Theodore Schatzki (2001, 2002) provides the social ontology for this book, arguing that the social is ‘a field of embodied, materially interwoven practice centrally organized around shared practical understandings’ (2001, p. 3). This is an important underpinning for understanding information literacy as practice that is made visible according to the shared understandings of a community about what constitutes information and knowledge and which practices are considered legitimate. This section also introduces the work of Gregory Bateson (1972) who has argued that information, in order to be understood as information, has to be perceived by the user as making a difference. This understanding of information fits well with a socio-cultural perspective that focuses attention towards the way people make meaning through their interactions with others and in the context of their settings.

The scope of research that has been conducted in the higher education, workplace and community landscapes will be discussed in Chapter 3 (higher education), 4 (workplace) and 5 (community). It will be evident from each of these chapters that there are different ways of thinking about information literacy. This serves to illustrate that the practice has a deep and rich level of complexity driven by complex social factors that give the settings their shape and character. These factors need to be removed in layers so that we can understand why the practice manifests itself in different ways in different contexts.

Chapter 6 will continue to explore the concept of an information landscape in relation to the three landscapes that have been discussed.

An architecture for information literacy practice presented in Chapter 7 is the first step towards this understanding. This chapter will also present a number of sensitizing concepts that encourage researchers and practitioners to think about information literacy holistically in each of the settings, rather than as a skills-based literacy. Thereby an understanding will be achieved of what drives information literacy practice in each of them. The idea that information skills are generic and transferable is debatable. Studies in the workplace (Lloyd, 2005, 2007; Hepworth and Smith, 2008) have begun to demonstrate that they have different requirements to higher education where information literacy is generally taught as part of the student assignment and/or research process. By understanding what drives a setting, we are in turn in a position to understand what skills are common and what skills are specific to each sector. A recent skills survey for Microsoft (Swabey, 2007) reported in Information Age indicates information literacy and information and communication technology skills are currently ranked seventh of 12 in those skills required by business. This will rise to second place by the year 2017. This is a sobering figure, one that we need to pay full attention to if we are going to prepare people to be effective workplace practitioners and full participants in civil society. However, while we continue to impose a library-centric view on the information literacy skills debate, we will find that we continue to lack relevance to the world outside of