Whitworth Radical Information Literacy

Reclaiming the Political Heart of the IL Movement
1. Auflage 2014
ISBN: 978-1-78063-429-6
Verlag: Elsevier Science & Techn.
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 244 Seiten

Reihe: Chandos Information Professional Series

What would a synthetic theory of Digital, Media and Information Literacy (DMIL) look like? Radical Information Literacy presents, for the first time, a theory of DMIL that synthesises the diversity of perspectives and positions on DMIL, both in the classroom and the workplace, and within the informal learning processes of society. This title is based on original analysis of how decisions are made about the relevance of information and the other resources used in learning, showing how society has privileged objective approaches (used in rule-based decision making) to the detriment of subjective and intersubjective perspectives which promote individual and community contexts. The book goes on to analyse the academic and popular DMIL literature, showing how the field may have been, consciously or unwittingly, complicit in the 'objectification' of learning and the disempowerment of individuals and communities. Alternative ways of conceiving the subject are then presented, towards a reversal of these trends. - Synthesises key theorists of digital, media and information literacy and information behaviour - Includes the field of 'community informatics' - Conducts a bibliometric analysis of a broad spectrum of writings on digital, media and information literacy, analysing the connections between them and the frames of DMIL within which they are located

Andrew Whitworth is Senior Lecturer in the School of Education at the University of Manchester and Programme Director of the MA: Digital Technologies, Communication and Education. He has written many chapters and articles on DMIL, and was the author of Information Obesity with Chandos Publishing. He has presented the ideas surrounding A critical theory of information literacy in keynotes at various conferences including Creating Knowledge VI, Information literacy: A way of life? and the IFLA/UNESCO conference in Moscow which led to the Moscow Declaration on Media and Information Literacy. His Media and Information Literacy course at Manchester was named as an exemplar of the field by the Learning Literacies in a Digital Age project and he was also the only European winner of a Blackboard Catalyst award for his work with distance learners.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Whitworth, Andrew

Leseproben

Introduction
This is a work of social, political and educational theory that critically explores, and then contests, the field of information literacy (IL), by attending to its relationship with power and authority, and how these shape the generation of knowledge. The central argument of the book is that, since its emergence in the 1970s, IL has constructed and then institutionalised itself around a monologic approach that stands in a fundamental tension with the dialogic nature of learning, knowledge-formation, and the use of language (Linell 2009). This argument is based on a more expansive view of IL than is typical, one that addresses issues of dialogue, discourse, power, and authority over information exchange, and that has, as its field of interest, the collective creation of knowledge. Individual literacy – facility with information – is at the root of this, but this is always manifested within technological, organisational, social and linguistic structures that already exist and which impose cognitive authority (Wilson 1983) over information. This authority often goes unscrutinised. This book will argue that institutionalised, monologic forms of IL do not permit scrutiny of cognitive authority, but only reinforce it in ways that ultimately weaken the quality of collective decision making and knowledge formation in communities, in organisations, and in society. Hence, the need for a ‘radical information literacy’: the application of principles of informed, direct democracy to the scrutiny of information exchange within organisations and communities. Radical IL does not attempt to annul authority, but nor does it simply reinforce what cognitive authority exists; rather, it explores ways to more widely distribute authority over information practices. To develop and justify radical IL, attention must be given to how IL has so far been theorised. It is theory, not practice, that the IL literature is lacking (Lloyd 2013; Bruce 2013). IL is supported by theories developed elsewhere, but not yet synthesised into a theory that IL can call its own; a philosophy of not only IL but also information science (Tomic 2010). Presently, IL finds its principal theoretical bases in: library and information science (LIS), and the design of information systems (e.g. Zurkowski 1974; Saracevic 1975; Breivik and Gee 1989); sociocultural practice theory (e.g. Lloyd 2010b; Limberg, Sundin and Talja 2012); personal construct psychology (PCP) (Kuhlthau 1993); phenomenographic studies of education/phenomenographic pedagogy and variation theory (e.g. Bruce 1997; Bruce et al 2006; Edwards 2006), and finally, albeit less influentially, critical theory (e.g. Andersen 2006; Elmborg 2006; Whitworth 2007; 2009). This book reviews the contributions of each field to IL. To this mix is then added Mikhail Bakhtin’s theories of discourse. His theories permit a fuller exploration of the notion of authority. It is authority which pulls together the other theories, and the forms of IL derived from them. Ultimately, IL must attend to the ways in which cognitive authority becomes embedded in information systems, organisations, texts, and language itself. Through exploring the links between the various fields of IL mentioned above – particularly phenomenography and practice theory – this book describes how IL can help social actors discover in practice, and not just in theory, their own potential to democratically transform structures of authority over information exchange, and then maintain scrutiny over this authority. *** Chapter 1 outlines the key concepts which will drive the argument, principally the notion of dialogism, and why this demands constant attention to contexts. It is in local contexts, or "information landscapes" (Lloyd 2010), that cognitive authority is determined by the various communities that reside within, and are constantly constructing, these landscapes. Chapter 2 then explores the origins of IL, and suggests that at these early stages, IL potentially had a sensitivity to literacy’s political nature, and the role of information in both empowerment and disempowerment, that has since been lost. More precisely, it has been obscured by other, contemporaneous perspectives on the subject. Understanding why the political heart of IL was lost reveals biases in the systems used to organise the production and consumption of information in society, including the educational system. These systems are based on a particular notion of authority; that it is centralised, exclusionary and unitary, instead of distributed, participatory and polyvocal (many-voiced). These alternative forms of authority provoke not only the need for individuals and groups to learn about the patterns of information exchange and cognitive authority within their landscapes, but also how to transform these and maintain vigilance over authority. The seed of such an alternative view of IL is visible in a paper by Hamelink (1976), but its potential is undeveloped. Chapters 3 and 4 investigate how IL did develop, both as a field of academic study and in practice. These chapters offer a brief political history of IL, with particular attention to the contributions of LIS, PCP, and phenomenography. The latter offers a very well-developed view of IL as learning – that is, something which changes the way we become aware of and experience our world. But most IL is taught, practiced and studied in limited ways, and chapter 4 presents evidence for the institutionalisation of a monologic view of the subject. Institutionalisation is a key contributor to the lack of scrutiny of cognitive authority: thus, it is opposed to direct democratic practice. Therefore, this institutionalisation, and its consequences for practice, must be specifically addressed by a radical IL. Chapter 4 also notes that the most well-developed architecture, not only for understanding the contexts within which people experience information, but also for transforming these contexts, comes from those applying practice theory to work in IL. These authors include Lloyd, particularly her work on information landscapes (Lloyd 2010), and others, largely based in Scandinavia (e.g. Limberg et al 2012; Tuominen et al 2005; Sundin 2008). However, institutionalised forms of IL have not been fundamentally challenged by this approach. I argue that this is in part because there is currently no full, theoretical integration of the practice-based view with the phenomenographic, educational view – one that recognises the fundamentally dialogic and political nature of knowledge formation in society. The second part of the book (chapters 5–8) is therefore devoted to this task of integration. Chapters 5 and 6 explore the political and linguistic theories which are the foundation of the dialogic view of IL, first through assessing (but ultimately rejecting) the contribution of Jürgen Habermas to the field (chapter 5), then, in chapter 6, considering the work of Mikhail Bakhtin. This is an original application of Bakhtin, whose work has not yet featured significantly in discussions of IL, despite a shared interest in dialogue. Chapter 6 explores these theories and draws out from them the notion of authority, and eventually, an intersubjective view of IL that stresses the necessary democratic transformation of information landscapes as an outcome of IL. The key methodological connection (explored in chapter 7) between the phenomenographic and practice-based traditions lies in the way variation in perceptions of the information landscape are accommodated. This reveals the role of authority in the genesis and ongoing transformation of context-specific information landscapes, and how these landscapes can be seen as an outcome of learning. Finally, chapter 8 returns to the idea that a radical IL would enhance actors’ ability to perceive, scrutinize, and transform the structures of authority over information exchange and, based on the preceding theoretical synthesis, explores what work has already been undertaken in this area and proposes agendas for both research and practice in radical IL. *** This book is a critical theory of education, but it is one that specifically challenges notions that education is something limited to formalised institutions. The book is intended for all practitioners of IL, wherever they may be located: in libraries, in schools, in community organisations, activist groups, or businesses. In their detailed and influential exploration of educational theory, Carr and Kemmis (1986, 41) state that: "the development of a critical theory of education must be related intrinsically to the professional development of teachers." While radical IL is certainly educational, however, it is key to the argument of this book that it be viewed as relevant to all educational processes in society, including, but going well beyond, formal education such as that practiced in schools or colleges. The ways we view the role of the ‘teacher’ – and how these different views impact, in turn, on approaches to teachers developing their competencies, and helping learners to do the same – are integrated into the structures through which authority and institutionalisation are sustained. Exploring in a broader sense what it...