Information Literacy: research perspectives

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Information Literacy research perspectives

• Professor Peter Brophy
• Manchester Metropolitan University

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The JISC Information Environment
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Literacies from A to Z

• Adult
• Basic
• Business
• Childrens
• Computer
• Early
• Emotional
• Family
• Financial

• Functional
• Health
• Information
• IT
• Media
• Numerical
• Technological
• Visual
• Workforce

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Information literacy

• is described as the overarching literacy
  essential for twenty-first century living
• is conceivably the foundation for learning in
  our contemporary environment of continuous
  technological change.
• is generally seen as pivotal to the pursuit
  of lifelong learning
• Bruce, 2002

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Information Literacy

• to be information literate, a person must be
  able to recognise when information is needed and
  have the ability to locate, evaluate and use
  effectively the needed information ultimately,
  information literate people are those who have
  learned how to learn
• American Library Association, 1989

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The business of human learning

•   "I want a poor student to have the same means
  of indulging his learned curiosity, of following
  his rational pursuits, of consulting the same
  authorities, of fathoming the most intricate
  inquiry as the richest man in the kingdoms."
• Antonio Panizzi, 1836

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Pedagogical models 1

• Objectivism views the world as an ordered
  structure of entities which exists and has
  meaning quite apart from the observer or
  participant. Much of science and technology has
  traditionally been taught on this basis what
  needs to be achieved by learning is a closer and
  closer approach to complete (and thus correct)
  understanding.
• Brophy, 2001
• In this understanding the goal of instruction
  is to help the learner acquire the entities and
  relations and the attributes of each - to build
  the correct propositional structure.
• Duffy and Janassen, 1993

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Pedagogical models 2

• Learning is a constructive process in which the
  learner is building an internal representation of
  knowledge, a personal interpretation of
  experience. This representation is constantly
  open to change, its structure and linkages
  forming the foundation to which other knowledge
  structures are appended. Learning is an active
  process in which meaning is developed on the
  basis of experience. This view of knowledge does
  not necessarily deny the existence of the real
  world .. but contends that all we know of the
  world are human interpretations of our experience
  of the world. learning must be situated in a
  rich context, reflective of real world contexts
  for this constructive process to occur.
• Bednar et al., 1993

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Knowledge and meaning

• any expression of knowledge is couched in
  language and is therefore a statement of meaning.
  
• One of the central problems of philosophy is
  
• to concentrate on understanding how meaning
  takes place and therefore, en passant, how
  knowledge is expressed.
• Sotiriou and Gilroy (In the press)

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Language
Let us imagine a language ...The language is
meant to serve for communication between a
builder A and an assistant B. A is building with
building-stones there are blocks, pillars, slabs
and beams. B has to pass the stones, and that in
the order in which A needs them. For this purpose
they use a language consisting of the words
'block', 'pillar', 'slab', 'beam'. A calls them
out - B brings the stone which he has learnt to
bring at such-and-such a call. - Conceive of this
as a complete primitive language. Wittgenstein
Philosophical Investigations (1965)
Meaning is embedded within a social context and
so finds expression through the use made of
particular terms. Sotiriou and Gilroy (In the
press)
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Standing outside,looking in ?

• we need to understand the practices of these
  communities before we can effectively teach
  information literacy
• Tuominen et al., 2005

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The challenge for IL .

• An academic discipline is not primarily
  content, in the sense of facts and principles. It
  is rather primarily a lived and historically
  changing set of distinctive social practices. It
  is in these practices that content is
  generated, debated and transformed via certain
  distinctive ways of thinking, talking, valuing,
  acting and, often, writing and reading.
• Gee, 2003