Theorising information literacy: Exploring different expert views and reflections and different national / cultural perspectives

Sheila Webber, Olivier Le Deuff, Bill Johnston

September 2017, ECIL, St Malo

Theorising information literacyExploring different expert views and reflections

and different national / cultural perspectives

Outline of the session

• Introduction of the panellists

• Presentations from the panellists

– Information Literacy as a discipline

– Information Literacy theory

• Questions and open discussion

Webber, Le Deuff & Johnston, 2017

Sheila Webber (Senior Lecturer, Information

School, University of Sheffield)

Bill Johnston (Honorary Research Fellow,

University of Strathclyde)

Olivier Le Deuff (Assistant Professor in information

science and communication studies, University of

Bordeaux Montaigne)


Information Literacy as a

disciplineWebber, Le Deuff & Johnston, 2017

Sheila Webber & Bill Johnston


Benefits

• Locates a home discipline for PhD study,

researchers: common touchpoints, language,

understandings etc.: helps the field move forward

• Acknowledging a theoretical base can strengthen

argument for IL meriting attention from academics in

other disciplines

• Provide a theoretical and evidence base for practice

beyond the academy


Evidence

• Dedicated journals, associations, and conferences; Graduate research; international community

• IL literature base increasing, becoming more scholarly, taking more prominent place in the field (Sugimoto & Cronin, 2012; Pinto, Escalona-Fernandez & Pulgarin, 2013; Sproles, Detmering & Johnson, 2013)

• IL is subject of scholarly debate

• “Sub-disciplines” of IL mentioned at this conferenceSee Johnston and Webber, 2006; Webber and Johnston, 2017


Reservoirs of knowledge resources shaping regularized behavioural practices, sets of discourses, ways of thinking, procedures, emotional responses and motivations. These provide structured dispositions for disciplinary practitioners who reshape them in different practice clusters into localized repertoires. While alternative recurrent practices may in competition within a single discipline, there is common background knowledge about key figures, conflicts and achievements. Disciplines take organizational form, have internal hierarchies and bestow power differentially, conferring advantage and disadvantage

(Definition of a discipline: Trowler, 2014, p.9)

What is a discipline in the 21st Century?


Organisational form …

A group of scholars - but does it have to be a

university department?

What are the internal hierarchies at this conference,

for example… (UNESCO identified ECIL as the

key IL organisation…)


Olivier Le Deuff


What is discipline?

• Discipline … and punish (Michel Foucault)

• Discipline as a method of control

• Discipline as a method of learning and teaching


IL a school discipline?

• Discipline for teaching (Evolutions de la

documentation : Naissance d'une discipline

scolaire, Frisch, 2003)

• Pedagogy for IL (for French teachers-librarians,

professeurs-documentalistes)

• Didactic of information (Duplessis and GRCDI :

group of research about didactic and cultures of

information)


• Library and information science

• Communication studies

• Education studies

• Documentation or documentology (Paul Otlet)

• Media and Information Literacy

• Transliteracy

Relations with other fields?


What “theory” means and how

Information Literacy might be

theorised


Olivier Le Deuff


What “theory” means and how IL might be theorised

• Need to understand concepts [and teach with concepts]: what is information, what does it mean to be an author; work that can be used by professeurs documentalistes

• Need theory not just practice - know the concepts and that

they can change


Sheila Webber & Bill Johnston


Bates (2005)

“.. for most purposes the core meaning of theory centers around the idea of a developed understanding, an explanation, for some phenomenon” (p2)

In science: description, prediction, explanation

Sees research models particularly helpful in describing and predicting

“most of “theory” in LIS is really still at the modelling stage” (p3)


Working towards theory:

Phenomenography

• Research approach which determines • The type of question (What are the varying ways in which

people conceive of or experience a phenomenon)

• Data collection

• Way findings are presented

• Therefore more valid to compare across studies in

different countries and contexts

• Just beginning metaanalysis: studies of adult

populations: looking at categories of description


Sources conception of IL

• Teaching IL to first year UGs: USA (Dawes, 2017): “Critical selection: teaching how to develop strategies for managing and finding relevant sources for specific purposes”

• IL of nurses: UK (Forster, 2015) “Passive minimalist” gathering or absorbing facts, basic clinical knowledge

• Uni students learning IL: Australia (Diehm & Lupton, 2014): “Learning to find information”

• IL of academics/professionals: Australia (Bruce, 1997) “IL as finding information from appropriate sources”

• IL of academics teaching English: UK (Boon, Johnston and Webber , 2007). “Accessing and retrieving textual information”

• IL of school librarians: Syria (Salha, 2010). “IL as using textual information to solve practical problems” (main focus on finding)

Higher order conception/experience:

growth and change• Teaching IL to first year UGs: USA (Dawes, 2017): “Behavioral

change: teaching how to use information to develop new understandings that change behavior or impact society”

• IL of nurses: UK (Forster, 2015) “Leader, philosopher and strategist” e.g. IL as a means to facilitate change

• Uni students learning IL: Australia (Diehm & Lupton, 2014): “Learning to use information to grow as a person and to contribute to others”

• IL of academics/professionals: Australia (Bruce, 1997) “IL as using information wisely for the benefit of others”

• IL of academics teaching English: UK (Boon, Johnston and Webber , 2007). “IL as becoming confident autonomous learners and critical thinkers”

• IL of school librarians: Syria (Salha, 2010). “IL as Living Successfully”


Questions


Prompt questions for discussion


• What needs to be done to develop the IL theory

base?

• Are there issues specific to particular countries or

cultures?

• How can we enable/benefit from cross-cultural

engagement with IL?

• How can practice inform theory?

• How can theory support practice?

Olivier Le Deuff.

Maître de conférences en SIC.

Laboratoire Mica. Université de Bordeaux Montaigne

Responsable du DUT. Information et communication option

Information Numérique à l'IUT Montaigne de Bordeaux.

0687653127.

www.guidedesegares.info, www.okonok.fr

Sheila Webber

Information School

University of Sheffield

[email protected]

Twitter: @sheilayoshikawa

http://information-literacy.blogspot.com/

http://www.slideshare.net/sheilawebber/

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Bill Johnston

Honorary Research Fellow

School of Psychology and

Health Sciences

University of Strathclyde

[email protected]

References• Bates, M. (2005). An introduction to theories, metatheories and models. In K. Fisher, S. Erdelez and

L. McKechnie.(Eds.) Theories of information behavior. (pp. 1-24). Medford, NJ: Information Today.• Boon, S., Johnston, B., & Webber, S. (2007). A phenomenographic study of English faculty's

conceptions of information literacy. Journal of Documentation, 63(2), 204 -228.• Bruce, C. (1997). The seven faces of information literacy. Adelaide: Auslib Press. • Dawes, L. (2017). Faculty perceptions of teaching information literacy to first year students: a

phenomenographic study. Journal of librarianship and information science. (Early online publication). • Diehm, R. and Lupton, M. (2014). Learning information literacy. Information Research, 19(1).• Forster, M. (2015). Six ways of experiencing information literacy in nursing: the findings of a

phenomenographic study. Nurse Education Today, 35, 195-200.• Johnston, B. and Webber, S. (2006). As we may think: Information Literacy as a discipline for the

information age. Research strategies, 20 (3), 108-121.• Larivière, V., Sugimoto, C. and Cronin, B. (2012). A bibliometric chronicling of Library and Information

Science’s first hundred years. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 63(5), 997-1016.

• Pinto, M., Escalona-Fernandez, M.I. & Pulgarin, A. (2013). Information Literacy in social sciences and health sciences: a bibliometric study (1974-2011). Scientometrics, 95, 1071-1094. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-012-0899-y

• Salha , S (2011) The variations and the changes in the school librarians' perspectives of information literacy. PhD thesis, University of Sheffield.

• Sproles, C., Detmering, R. & Johnson, A.M. (2013). Trends in the literature on library instruction and information literacy 2001-2010. Reference Services Review, 41(3), 395-412.

• Trowler, P. (2014). Disciplines and interdisciplinarity: conceptual groundwork. In P. Trowler, M. Saunders & V. Bamber. (Eds.), Tribes and territories in the 21st Century: Rethinking the significance of disciplines in Higher Education.(pp.5-29). London: Routledge.

• Webber, S. and Johnston, B. (2017). Information literacy: conceptions, context and the formation of a discipline. Journal of Information Literacy,11(1), 156-183
