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| husband - age 8 |
He admits it, my husband was one of those somewhat irritating, but wonderfully curious children who constantly peppers their parents with questions about the world. You know, the kids who endlessly ask, “Why?” His parents often responded with, “Go look it up in the encyclopedia.” And believe it or not, but he did. A. J. Jacobs may have become famous from his idea to read the Encyclopædia Britannica cover to cover, but my husband swears he did it first. And in so doing, he essentially learned how to learn. Now, when he has a question or a problem, he feels confident in his ability to find appropriate resources, understand the information that is presented, and then apply what he has learned to his question or problem—this, in a nutshell, is information literacy.
The American Library Association (ALA) states, “Information literacy is a set of abilities requiring individuals to ‘recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information’” (1989, para. 3). The example I gave about my husband represents a more traditional concept of literacy, specifically one that is related to books; however, information literacy skills need to be appropriate to the activity at hand, and books are not always the answer. In school, information literacy often has to do with finding, evaluating, and using written information. When driving a car, information literacy is based on one’s ability to recognize, evaluate, and react to road signs, other drivers, weather, etc. In a dance class, one demonstrates information literacy by observing an instructor, interpreting the movements of the instructor, interpreting the music, and moving one’s body appropriately. It is valuable to consider that information literacy means something different in different environments, and we shouldn’t assume that there is only one definition. So before I go any further with this discussion, I will specify that for the remainder of this post, I will be focusing on information literacy as it relates to academic work (explicitly that at the collegiate level).
Information literacy seems to be a particularly hot topic given the rise in resources now available via the internet. Many are asking, what part do blogs, internet videos, wikis, online articles, online news stories, etc. play in scholarly research? Do students know how to identify and use appropriate resources for their research? It seems like many librarians do not believe students are very information literate. Some librarians groan that students look things up on Wikipedia, and they groan louder when student cite Wikipedia in their college papers. We often focus on a student’s ability to locate appropriate information, but information literacy doesn’t end with simply finding appropriate resources.
For this reason, I found the results of Rosenblatt’s (2010) study particularly interesting. In her study, she reviewed papers prepared by undergraduates, about half of whom had attended a workshop geared toward increasing information literacy, and half of whom did not attend any workshop. She found that 85 percent of the students were able to “meet or exceed the professor’s bibliographic requirements” for their assignment (p. 56). Even those students who had not attended the workshop were able to identify appropriate, scholarly sources for their papers (p. 56). On the other hand, only 50 percent of all of the students “showed evidence of the ability to integrate the scholarly information they discovered into the arguments they made in their papers” (p. 57). This is a good reminder that information literacy goes beyond simply teaching students to find appropriate resources; students must also be able to use the information effectively.
As librarians, we do a disservice to students if we merely teach them to locate information. I would argue this is why it is important that faculty and librarians work together to encourage information literacy: librarians may focus on helping students to locate and evaluate resources, and professors can support the process by teaching students how to use the information they find. Information literacy certainly isn’t something students learn once in a workshop and that’s it. One of the outcomes of information literacy is for students to develop into lifelong learners (ALA, 2000, Information Literacy Defined section, para. 2)—which is good, because becoming information literate is a lifelong process.
[LIBR 250 Prompt: What are the "big ideas" and unspoken assumptions in information literacy?]
[LIBR 250 Prompt: What are the "big ideas" and unspoken assumptions in information literacy?]
References
American Library Association. (1989, January 10). Presidential committee on information literacy. Final Report. Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/publications/whitepapers/presidential.cfm
American Library Association. (2000). Information literacy competency standards for higher education. Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/standards/informationliteracycompetency.cfm
Rosenblatt, S. (2010). They can find it, but they don't know what to do with it: Describing the use of scholarly literature by undergraduate students. Journal of Information Literacy, 4(2), 50-61.
7 comments:
Ah, that old bugbear, Wikipedia. It's almost a knee-jerk reaction to decry it as a source--but does anyone ever really bother to explain why? You can say it's not authoritative...but what does "authoritative" really mean? Whose authority? What librarians and teachers really mean by "It's not a good source" is "It isn't considered socially appropriate to use Wikipedia in an academic context." That's an important lesson, but it should be made explicit.
Rosenblatt's study was interesting. I think I've seen those results somewhere before. But it's easy to forget that information use is an important part of information literacy.
I am very glad you brought up the use part of information literacy. I am not sure if it is tradition, difficulty or purview that we don't spend more time thinking about strategies to teach effective use but it seems we don't. I'd like the "new generation" of academic librarians, embedded librarians, school librarians to think about that. There are some fabulous models but they stand out because they are thinking about use when we so often think about sourcing or finding.
@ Mary Ann: It's true isn't it. So often I think people assume students don't know how to find information--and that's where the real problem is. That may be a problem, but it's likely only part of the problem. You can throw all of the great resources you want at a student, and they're useless if the student can't use them. "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."
@ Kelli/shelfninja: I was going to respond to your comment about Wikipedia here, but since you wrote such a great post about it on your blog, I won't bother repeating myself. :P
I've had the privilege of interning with a teacher-librarian here in Oakland. Last week, I got to observe her teaching a lesson on advanced search techniques with the juniors who are two weeks out from turning in a major research paper. I observed (and then confirmed after talking with her and the English teacher) a high level of coordination between these two teachers. She used examples of the students' work (clearly, this came from the English teacher) that demonstrated the students' over-reliance on "fluffy" anecdotal information and a lack of studies from journals or books. They talked about the value of one kind of information vs. the other and then transitioned into a discussion of how, once they find articles from journals etc., the students might provide commentary on studies that they find in journals. (I'm offering the abridged version--it was a lengthy lesson.) It was very cool to observe a lesson on such a crucial element of information literacy, which, as you noted, too often gets ignored.
Kathleen - thanks for sharing such a great example of a librarian and teacher teaming up to teach about information literacy! Very cool that they used examples from the students' work so the lesson was very pertinent.
As I read Kimberly’s post and Kathleen ‘s comment, it again hit me how essential school librarians are. Students need the background training librarians offer in information literacy, or they will never understand why they need to come up with legitimate sources.
Funding for school librarians in California is drying up. My kids’ elementary school is 5 years old, and they have never had a trained librarian. There is a huge focus on test scores in the school (since this determines funding), but not enough on turning kids into informationally literate students. I wonder if they are learning how to spit out the answers instead of learning how to learn.
@ Casandria: It's sad, I think I may actually like to be a school librarian, but I can't bring myself to plan on that because so many K-12 schools don't have actual librarians anymore. It really is a shame.
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