LILAC 2006

Information Literacy: research perspectives

Professor Peter BrophyManchester Metropolitan

University

LILAC 2006

The JISC Information Environment

LILAC 2006

Literacies – from A to Z• Adult• Basic• Business• Children’s• Computer• Early• Emotional• Family• Financial

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

LILAC 2006

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

LILAC 2006

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

LILAC 2006

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

LILAC 2006

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

LILAC 2006

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

LILAC 2006

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)

LILAC 2006

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)

LILAC 2006

Standing outside,looking in ?

“we need to understand the practices of these communities before we can effectively teach information literacy ”

Tuominen et al., 2005

LILAC 2006

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