It was an auspicious if sub-optimally-timed day when I finally introduced myself to my secret mentor, Emma Coonan (sub-optimal because she's about to leave Cambridge). Thankfully, she seemed quite pleased to have a chirpy little acolyte running around and we have since had some great conversations through email and my job shadow afternoon earlier this week. I won't go into specifics but I wanted to talk about some of the themes we've discussed, my thoughts, and some reflections on where I see my career heading as my final term of my PG Dip Information and Library Management course winds down.
Emma's job at the UL is Research Skills and Development Librarian, which is in theory my dream job. As such, we share an interest in Information Literacy (IL) as well as consternation with some of the ways in which it is taught, measured, ignored, misinterpreted, or under-valued by various parties in higher education. Information literacy is a term with fairly porous edges, but various groups have come up with useful definitions (see CILIP, SCONUL, ANCIL etc.). They all hover around the idea of IL as a range of skills and literacies necessary to succeed in an information-based world through life-long learning and the ability to successfully and ethically search for, evaluate, manage, synthesize, and present information.
I'm currently finishing up an assignment for my PG Dip course that is a literature review of the methods of 10 studies on information literacy (the choice of topic was mine), and I'm looking at studies that have taken various approaches. The most disturbing trend I've noticed is the tendency for researchers to want to qualitatively measure students' IL as a way of evaluating interventions. To quote an email I wrote:
I've been finding with the studies in my literature review that many researchers are looking for very straightforward, quantifiable ways of measuring skills they've just argued in their literature reviews are complex. Some of the assessments are so obviously missing the point of information literacy, for example a multiple choice questionnaire that asks, "If you want to search for journal articles about 'The prevalence of drug abuse in the UK', the quickest way of finding this would be to search in:..." (McKinney, Jones and Turkington, 2011) Of course the answer they're looking for, the "right" answer, is "a bibliographic database" and they make a big deal about the fact that most people said an online search engine before their IL instruction. But if you have the ability to evaluate sources, why on earth couldn't you construct a perfectly thorough search strategy based on search engines, depending on the topic? And asking the same question at the end of the module only proves that you've trained them to parrot back what you think the "right" answer is. But surely this is epistemologically misguided on the part of the researchers to say that there's a "right" and "wrong" answer in information literacy.This attitude has given rise to things like Project SAILS, a standardized test claiming to be able to measure the complex and individual literacies associated with IL. This reminds me so much of a standardized, multiple choice test in reading I took when I was in high school. I tested at something like a 2nd grade reading level and because that was very obviously not true, they actually brought in one of the people who designed the test to talk to me, have me read a passage and interpret it. I remember it took place in a jungle and there was a sense of tension and mention of someone/something watching from the trees. When I came up with an incorrect but totally plausible answer to what the passage was about (I said I thought it might be about Guerilla warfare, having read about it a few weeks previously), the woman asked me, "Why do you think your score didn't reflect your reading ability?" I told her that I don't think you can measure reading comprehension with a multiple choice test at all. I brought to the passage my own experience, knowledge and connections, just as students bring their own strategies, preferences and interpretations to the practice of academic literacy. That is not something you can pin down with a standardized test.
The state of IL practice in this country is interesting. Relatively few universities have specific IL-based learning outcomes and policies (see Corrall, 2007), but IL encompasses many of the hidden expectations universities have of their students and researchers. And yet, if they are not taught, how are students expected to know about them, let alone practice them and receive the feedback and guidance of teaching faculty one would expect to get for any other academic topic? At the moment there is underwhelming support from universities, despite the fact that graduates who know how to solve problems, evaluate information, contribute to knowledge and present it to a high standard are in demand. It seems that in a bid to gain funding - or to not lose it - from institutions, practitioner/researchers are left with little choice but to try to demonstrate value with exactly the sort of quantitative instruments that de-values information literacy.
It is not across the board. Within higher education there are managers who support the development of IL curricula with more than just lip service, but this is very much dependent on where you are. So it seems as though I'll either have to seek out employers that already support these programmes, or be prepared to fight tooth and nail to get one established.
Reflecting on the last 18 months, I am amazed at how much I have changed. It seems the rapid transformation of the undergrad. years is not solely due to transitional issues of living away from home for the first time, but owes a lot to the intensive intellectual process of digging down into subjects about which you are passionate.. I have changed my ideas radically - or perhaps 'clarified' is a better word - and reached out to seize my burgeoning professionalism with a much clearer sense of what my ideal future in library work is.
- I want to help people. I want to help them get excited about learning, empower them to be life-long learners and to continue to learn from them.
- I want to be involved with the IL research community, to encourage good practice and perhaps contribute to the body of knowledge in this field.
- To that end, I would like to someday do a Ph.D. Maybe the topic will occur to me through work, maybe through keeping up with research in the area, but I feel I want to challenge myself to do such an in-depth research project.
- I want to write my book - the sort of book on critical thinking that I'd like to read - and I would LOVE to see that book on required reading lists for GCSE or A Levels.
So, I have more than a little ambition, but a lot of inspiration. If I do half of the things on that list I think I'll be able to feel proud of myself.
Watch this space.
