This article is from the May 2003 issue of Update.
In December, TFPL convened a seminar to explore information literacy, with representatives from the business world, colleges and universities — and one school librarian.
It soon became evident that institutions offering further and higher education share a common problem with the business sector. The majority of students and employees cannot handle information effectively, even after 11 or 12 years of compulsory education. Both these sectors would benefit if the skills of information literacy were a greater priority in schools. Young people need a foundation that is applied in all areas of the curriculum so that they can transfer the skills to FE/HE or employment. Further training at these institutions could then focus on specific needs rather than tackling the basics. I was one of several people asked to give a case study of the work in this area — in my case, at Dixons CTC in Bradford.
But what is information literacy and how does it differ from information skills? Is it just another name for something old hat, or is it a developmental concept that needs to be taught and supported through school and into FE/HE and work? I believe it’s the latter, and I don’t think many would disagree with me. However, we must define it clearly.
Moving on from Marland
Definitions of information literacy abound, but some miss the opportunity to establish new thinking. It is more than Marland’s Nine Steps1 — and other subsequent information skills models, mostly linear, that have been proffered over the last 20 or so years. The difference lies in making explicit the higher order thinking skills that we all need to interact with information and make effective use of it in our lives. Pam Berger2 defines it as ‘the ability to locate pertinent information, evaluate its reliability, analyse and synthesise the information to construct personal meaning and apply it to informed decision making’.
What we need in schools is a definition that is straightforward and easy for our teaching colleagues to understand. I like to explain it as the ability to take the familiar skills a step further, to the thinking processes that underline information seeking and use. Our job in schools is to teach and ‘scaffold’ the cognitive skills that develop those thinking processes, for without them information seeking and use can be little more than a mechanical process in which the brain is largely unchallenged. (‘Scaffolding’ is providing a structure for students that will support their learning and their application of skills — the grid in Fig. 2 is an example of scaffolding). The question is, how are we going to do this?
At Dixons CTC, we have been engaged in an action research project over the last seven years with the aim of improving the teaching and learning of information-
handling skills across the curriculum. This has been an evolutionary project which has had to extend its scope, first to take account of the internet and, more recently, to encompass the wider definition of information literacy. We have been extremely fortunate to work together over the entire period, engaging other teachers with a combination of persistence, humour and various techniques.
Our first step was to define a progression of skills so that teachers would have an idea of what to expect from their students. The skills progression shown in Fig. 1 is a significantly abbreviated version, but it represents the developmental concept.
The crucial thing to understand about the progression is that, although it is divided into four levels that can, very roughly, be related to key stages in the national curriculum, you can always have a Key Stage 3 student operating at Level 4 of the skills progression and even a post-16 student operating at Level 2. With that in mind, there is then a need to differentiate assignments so that all students experience success. To help teachers to plan, we developed an assessment tool to find out where individual students fall on the skills progression and so where they need support or extending.
To be successful, change has to be developmental and ‘owned’ by those whom it affects. This is why we chose the action research model and began by seeking the views of staff and students and making sure that our actions responded to a prioritised list of expressed needs.
Teachers unsure about skills needed
Part of the problem in implementing cross-curricular information-handling programmes is that teachers are unsure about how to define the skills that are needed and how to teach them. We decided, therefore, that a set of core lessons was needed to develop some common understandings among staff and students.
While I have never been an advocate of discrete library lessons in any format, these lessons have become successful because they are immediately followed up by project work, they are internalised by staff, who now deliver many of them, and they are part of a spiralling curriculum in which the skills and concepts are revisited at ever-increasing levels of sophistication throughout a student’s career.
Figure 1
Four of these core lessons cover: resource selection (the best resource for your need); note taking (including identification of key words and ideas, and bibliographic referencing); skimming and scanning; and validity, with special emphasis on the internet. In order for the lessons to have a lasting effect they have to be memorable: Mal, who is extremely creative, made them so wacky that students remember them for years. They are delivered during Term 1 in Year 7 and are followed by research projects in English, history and science throughout the year. These projects are monitored and revised annually to meet changing needs. After the English project in the latter part of Term 1, the students are assessed and the information passed on to teachers in other subjects so that they can see who is struggling with information and who needs to be extended.
Figure 2 and Figure 3
Research grids
In Year 8 we introduce research grids that serve as a framework for recording information. For instance, in geography, students are asked to pick a river and then to focus on the causes, consequences and solutions to flooding on their rivers (see Fig. 2).
By using the grid, their research is focused, they have a limited space to write down information (and so are unable to copy large chunks), they are expected to look at different types of sources and they have a specific place to record bibliographic details.
In Year 9 we move on to developing questioning skills, using grids in a more open format. History students studying the Second World War choose a specific area (e.g. battles, the Home Front, military hardware) and develop some questions around their topic. They then use a variety of sources to answer them, noting their sources down the left-hand side. The trick is to get them to determine their questions before they look at the information available. Otherwise the temptation is to find an interesting bit and frame a question around it.
The grid is a highly flexible, low-tech tool that allows students to differentiate for themselves through the questions they ask and sources they use.
Also in Year 9, our Design & Technology Department developed a project on cultures. Students choose a culture, ancient or modern, and research it with a view to identifying an image with that culture. They then make a product, such as a jewellery box or a bag, incorporating the image. The grid is used extensively for their research and the first step is framing their questions across the top. Last year when working with a group on their questions, I found a girl who had chosen Italy as her culture. Her first question was ‘Is it the capital of prostitution?’ While I’ve often pondered what image she might have come up with, the point is that questioning is a difficult skill and needs support.
Comparing and contrasting internet sites
In Year 10 the English Department looks at comparing and contrasting information, particularly on the internet. One exercise we developed uses three different sites on smoking. First is the Philip Morris site that asserts the company is making a big effort to discourage young people from smoking; second is the British Colombia Ministry of Health site that puts paid to Philip Morris’s claims; third is a consumer pro-smoking site that uses very emotive language to promote the rights of smokers. Using these three sites together increases the students’ ability to be critical of what they see on the net by evaluating fact, bias, opinion, authority and presentation.
What has evolved, then, is a spiralling curriculum (see Fig. 3) that is continually developing and adapting to new needs and new educational demands.
It is the basis upon which we are building our programme for post-16 students. When we talked with staff and students, a number of aims for this programme were identified:
- to encourage the use of a range of resources;
- to eliminate copying and pasting;
- to help students develop effective questioning techniques;
- to help them search and select effectively;
- to help them focus research;
- to develop critical thinking.
Over time we will touch all areas of the post-16 curriculum. Through induction and General Studies we are already: using the internet to develop critical skills; focusing on questioning to develop thinking skills; and using Inspiration software3 to develop questioning and organisational skills.
Internet sites can easily mislead students. From early on they need to learn how to look for specific pointers to quality. One good way of teaching this is by adapting the approach of the copyright-free Quick website4 for different age groups. It is highly visual and entertaining starting point to which you can add screen shots of good and bad sites.
Hoaxes
At post-16 we also tackle the problem of misinformation, disinformation and hoaxes.
An example of a hoax that circulated on the internet about 18 months ago when shark attacks were in the news is shown here (Fig. 4).5 It is a clever example of image manipulation: a South African shark was superimposed on a British military exercise in San Francisco Bay. Because images can be so easily altered and are so powerful, it is crucial that students learn to look for clues. They need to pick the picture apart, check the spelling and grammar of the text, look at the web address and examine any pointers to the authority of the author.
It is important to realise that questioning skills are not easy and that they need teaching, supporting and scaffolding in a variety of contexts.
Most of the research which students are asked to carry out can be divided into three levels:
- Fact finding — very easy to copy and paste.
- Opinion gathering — also lending itself to copying and pasting.
- ‘Big’ questions. These are questions that don’t have one answer, that require new thinking. This is where research gets interesting and can capture students’ imaginations.
Figure 4
Answers to Level 3 questions require the higher order thinking skills of analysis, synthesis and evaluation that are the crux of information literacy. But big questions are not just for post-16 students (e.g. ‘Should the government regulate cloning?’), but for younger students as well (e.g. ‘Have you ever considered why penguins don’t fly?). Big questions are then followed by little questions that establish a factual basis, provide focus and look for what is not known.
By linking what is already known to what needs to be discovered, we establish the links that open the gates to new thinking, to learning, to knowledge construction.
Figure 5
Mind-mapping software
Inspiration is a piece of mind-mapping software that aids question formulation by allowing students to visualise their thinking processes, organise and regroup them on screen and add notes, bibliographic references and live web links. Diagrams can be turned into outline form, rearranged and extended into a working essay plan. It is a tool that motivates Year 7s, supports post-16 research and can be used for different reasons by different subjects at all key stages.
These are just a few of the ways in which librarians and teachers can work creatively together to build the foundations of information literacy. We have moved on from Marland, seeing research as a circular, not linear, process which can be represented as a ‘quest’ (see Fig. 5).
However, whatever model is used, it needs to be recognised that the process is something that must be taught — and not just by the librarian, but through all subjects.
The TFPL seminar ended with a consensus on several points:
- education librarians at all levels need to understand and be able to apply the principles of teaching and learning. Formal training along these lines needs to be available to them;
- the foundations of information literacy need to be laid in schools so that students are better prepared for further and higher education, for work and for life;
- the greater range of students entering FE/HE means that it is even more important now to provide better information experiences in schools to enable young people to develop intellectually.
In schools we have a huge challenge in front of us, but with commitment, professional development and imagination we can and will meet it.
References
1 Michael Marland chaired a LISC committee which reported in 1981, publishing his Nine Question Steps back in 1981. See http://fp3e.adhost.com/big6/enewsletter/archives
/winter00/bentley.html [broken link, removed 13 April 2005]
2 Pam Berger. Internet for Active Learners. American Library Association, 1998.
3 Inspiration (www.inspiration.com).
4 Quick (www.quick.org.uk).
5 Urban legends and folklore (http://urbanlegends.miningco.com/library/blsharkattack
.htm).
Lynn Barrett (lynn@dixonsctc.org.uk) is Information Services Manager, and Mal Danks (mal.danks@btinternet.com) a senior teacher in charge of individual needs, at Dixons City Technology College.