Networked Learning 2014
Nurturing information landscapes: networks, information literacy and the need for a critical phenomenography
Andrew WhitworthUniversity of Manchester
Warning
❖ This presentation may contain excessive doses of theory
Resources for learning❖ Digital habitat (Wenger, White and Smith 2009)
❖ Information landscape (Lloyd 2010)
The landscape metaphor
❖ Different types
❖ Pollution, exploitation, enclosure….
Stewarding
❖ How are these landscapes cared for?
❖ How are they optimised for learning?
Information literacy
❖ Generally defined as the set of skills needed to effectively and efficiently find needed information (e.g. ACRL standards)
❖ But there are competing views…
❖ … and a theory-practice gap
Cees Hamelink (1976)
❖ A Freirean view
❖ IL not as skills needing to be developed in populations…
❖ …but by them, to defend themselves against information ‘pushed’ by the mass media
So…
❖ …how can we judge network effects on factors such as relevance, stewarding, information landscapes?
❖ cf. Harris 2008 — the collective is not just another factor, but completely changes the context
❖ How do we collectively validate what we are told is true, what we think is important?
Christine Bruce’s work…
❖ …. applies phenomenography to an appreciation of IL
❖ Eliciting variation in perspectives, to build up a collective view of the phenomenon
❖ (like viewing a building from different angles)
Phenomenography❖ Becomes a pedagogy, not just a research
methodology
❖ Multiple voices (cf. Bakhtin: polyphony)
❖ A collective map of the information landscape
Questions of power
❖ Not really present in Bruce’s work
❖ But not all experiences of variation are considered equal
❖ In reality, the drawing of the map may be an exclusionary process
❖ Only certain, approved views may be considered valid
Two contrasting tendencies
❖ (cf. Per Linell, 2009)
Dialogue
Monologue
Creates new insights — keeps assumptions foregrounded — intersubjective validation of concepts, thus, distributed authority
Embeds insights — the basis of
systems — ‘objective’ validationof concepts, thus, unitary authority
Single- and double-loop learning
❖ Argyris and Schön
Critical phenomenography
❖ Rarely mentioned in the literature
❖ Hinted at, but not explored, in Russell (2003)
❖ Eliciting the experience of variation…
❖ …but also attuned to questions of power, exploring why certain experiences are valued, and others not
❖ Ideal is intersubjective scrutiny of (objective) claims to authority
Radical IL
❖ IL is the set of skills and practices which steward information landscapes…
❖ …but radical IL does so by explicitly seeking to redistribute authority among a network (community of practice)
❖ See Whitworth, A. (2014): Radical information literacy [advert]
Seeking radical IL
❖ Not the design of a new set of standards, rubrics etc.
❖ But learning to see what is already there
❖ Expertise can play a part but there must be dialogue with the community being helped
Taking these ideas forward
❖ Bibliotek i Endring project in Norway (see tomorrow’s Pecha Kucha)
❖ Macarthur Foundation funding study of learning assets and environmental governance in Greenland & Khanty-Mansyisk, Russia
❖ Theoretical geography? One that allows for information & virtual space?
