Being fluent and keeping looking

The complexities of the many concepts and models around information literacy are considered, and some personal views given as to how they may best be clarified, both theoretically and practically. A slightly adapted idea of the concept of information fluency can serve as a main general purpose for the promotion of information literacy, expressed as a more specific meta-model for the prevailing technological environment, and as still more specific components for a particular context. The focus of this relatively stable general formulation is on understanding, rather than skills or competences. It can incorporate the need for education, advice and counseling, as well as information provision, and with domain-specific literacies, as well as supporting personal information literacy

Theorising Information Literacy: Opportunities and Constraints

Information literacy research is growing in importance but has been critiqued for remaining focused on practical topics of interest and attainment approaches to practice. Prior attempts to conceptualise information literacy have also often taken place without a comprehensive understanding of the ontological or epistemological foundations of theoretical work. The aim of this panel is to critically examine theory development and use within information literacy research through discussing the ways in which understandings of information literacy, including how it happens and how it shapes social life, are both enabled and constrained through critical, sociomaterial and discursive theoretical approaches. Providing a space to discuss and reflect on the impact of theory on information literacy scholarship, this panel creates a focal point for researchers, practitioners and students interested in the construction and advancement of conceptually rich information literacy research and practice

Secondary school teachers’ attitudes to information literacy: a study of a questionnaire validity

The objective of this paper is to determine the validity and reliability of an originally created questionnaire as an instrument to develop an understanding of secondary school teachers’ knowledge on information literacy and practices implemented with developing student’s information literacy skills in Hungary, Poland, and Lithuania. This research will support a research project that aims the harmonisation of various theories of information literacy with the proper application of information literacy to public (K12) education. This paper presents a pilot survey among Lithuanian teachers on a sample of 102 participants in the spring of 2018. We gathered data for this study using a computer-assisted web interviewing (CAWI) technique and administered an online survey using the 1KA.SI web survey tool. The collected data was analysed by IBM SPSS Statistics ver. 19. Internal consistency of the questionnaire measured by Cronbach’s alpha coefficient. Scale and construct validity evaluated using Principal components analysis with Varimax Rotation. The authors feel assured in using the questionnaire for the wider scope survey

Co-learning in a Digital Community : Information Literacy and Views on Learning in Pre-school Teacher Education

Through analysing how different views on learning enable pre-school teacher students to distinguish and use affordances offered by digital tools and the learning environment, this paper seeks to connect modes of appropriation, identity positions and information activities to types of information literacy. Identity, particularly views on learning, is analysed to find out how a Facebook group to some students remains a sustainable digital community throughout teacher education. The paper reports results from a netnographical study conducted between 2012 and 2015. The material used in the analysis consists primarily of 12 semi-structured student interviews and 6 teacher interviews. In the thematic analysis, a socio-cultural perspective on identity is applied. The concept affordance is used to analyse how identity is connected to use of digital tools and the learning environment. The findings show how the appropriation of the Facebook group is connected to identity positions and views on learning in two types of information literacy: a relational information literacy and a pragmatic information literacy. The normative function of co-learning is found to be an important aspect of the learning environment of pre-school teacher education that explains why the digital community can be experienced as either including or excluding

Putting to (information) work : A Stengersian perspective on how information technologies and people influence information practices

Instead of merely subscribing to an unspecific inseparability in the co-constitution or mangle of information technologies and human-actors, there is a need for conceptual tools to describe and explicate the mechanics of how the enmeshment of technologies and human-beings is occurring in information contexts: how information technologies are both setting standards of the social conduct of information practices, and how people are using information technologies to regulate the social process. Building on an empirical study of human-technology relations in the context of archaeological information work, this article discusses how the imaginary of putting Stengers to work can make a contribution to such an end. Stengers describes an ideal system of human-actors and technology working seamlessly World-as-Clockthat is unattainable but can serve as a benchmark and a lens for understanding frictions and discrepancies in the cohesion of the two