Theories of Information Literacy

Refer to Reading "Practising information literacy: bringing theories of learning, practice and information literacy together" by Mandy Lupton and Christine Bruce.

Our Unit Leader has done an admirable job with her colleague in documenting the models of Information Literacy from Luke & Freebody 1999 and their "rich tasks" dappling in "New Basics Curriculum", to the social perspective of cope & Kalantzis 2000 and coming up with their own model of GeST with the "generic window" of "cognitive skills", "situated window" of "contextualised information practices" and the "transformative window" with the "range of information practices used to transform oneself and society (p15 Table 1.6)."

This model shows that literacy is transformative once one has mastered the generic literacy and suggests that curricula "should attend to the full complexity of the literacy experience(p6)."

I have seen curricula come and go and come back again! In the 1990's, shared book experience, invented spelling and writing was the rage and luckily I had learnt grammar in high school German so was able to cope well when functional grammar hit the Millenium and I see that the National Curriculum cheerleaders traditional grammar.

As for as information literacy models, there was the classic Bloom's Taxonomy, Media Education which emphasised critical thinking models, The Four Resources and rich tasks of Luke and Freebody and more recently the Science based approach to guided inquiry involving questioning techniques throughout the inquiry process.

Whatever model is in at the time, I opt for balance using the beneficial elements of models that best suit my students, context, situation using a variety of teaching styles and utilising multiple intelligences that integrate throughout the various disciplines.

The requirements of CLN 650 is to explain how I search on the Web on the topic of information literacy and to fill in a questionaire. I will do this on my next post.

My team buddies are Bernadette L and Bernadette H. We are all full-timers. GO B & B!!

Week 3 Readings Democratic Ideals in Education

I have found some comrades of similiar minds in the readings of McKenzie, J (2005) "Learning to question to wonder to learn" and Powell R, Cantrell S & Adams (2001) in describing a school project entitled "Saving Black Mountain: The promise of critical literacy in a multi-cultural democracy."

Firstly Jamieson McKenzie asserts that "Questions and questioning may be the most powerful technologies of all (p.15)." After all we are humans grappling with a new invention that has been overtaken with corporate interests and multinational control (Powell, Cantrell & Adamsp.772). Humans can use their "mindware" to overcome the plight of "MentalSoftness" by asking "smart questions" in the Smart State(McKenzie 2005)!

Full marks to Powell, Cantrell and Adams for advocating teaching as a "subversive activity (McKenzie 2005) as I have been doing this in my twenty years of teaching experience. Writing, e-mailing, petitioning, filming, photographing for real life literacy practises that capture socio-cultural awareness of young adult's pursuit of knowledge and action.

For over 20 years, I have been involved in various forms of “rich tasks” (Luke 1999) with my primary school students. From writing letters to government and corporate agencies about local, national and global environmental issues, filming debates on whether "To Zoo or not to Zoo" to investigate the pros and cons of preserving endangered animals, to simply propagating seeds and planting them in a school garden or community organisations. In 2010 I produced a DVD in conjunction with the Pullenvale Environmental Centred entitled "Nurturing Nature in the Diginative Age" documenting a Storythread Project espousing Values Education and the Children in Nature Movement. Many teachers and students in our state schools are actively involved, immersed and synthesising information to become information ‘literati’(I made that up?).

Now for the "digirati" ( Spender 1995)! The divide between the information rich and poor is highly visible when comparing Australian public school resourcing with the private school system which also benefited from recent government funding for schools. Maintenance of technology infrastructure in state schools is poor. Contract technicians are assigned to up to 4 schools resulting in once a week visits (Site 2 school visit 29-07-10).

Powell, Cantrell and Adams recognise that democracy is endangered with the schooling system held hostage by economic aims of governments and corporations resulting in a performance based agenda where teachers are forced into training mode and teaching to tests.

The American example of 4th graders defending a Kentucky mountain top from strip mining, easily translates to Australia's coal mining obsession, and the 2010 contamination of Kingaroy's water supply due to the mining industry, the expansion of coal mining in the Hunter Valley resulting in cancer clusters of local residents and there are endless examples of this happening here and now in Australia.

Bring back the notion of a democratic education process where literacy is used for "democratic aims (Powell, Cantrell & Adams)." McKenzie offers some useful strategies to use with students in classrooms and I will emulate his ideas below with my initial information literacy search lesson with my trial class.

Jamieson McKenzie’s website: http://fno.org/500miles/persistence5.html has some practical strategies for students to use when researching a topic of interest. He coins the term “prospecting” for navigating through the Web’s infinite sources.

While schooling in the 19th and 20th centuries was primarily about students mastering processed information - the core curriculum - it is likely that schooling and learning during the next century will be characterized by far more prospecting - the purposeful, skilled, but sometimes haphazard search for insight and truth across a complicated information landscape.

There are three stages to prospecting:

• Locating reliable, high quality sites

• Creating bookmarks for future visits when necessary

• Creating a flow of information when possible

Power to the people!

Week 2 Readings from CLN 650

Bell, R;Smetana,L& Binns;I (2005) from The Science Teacher define inquiry instruction as "involving students in a form of active learning that emphasizes questioning, data analysis, and critical thinking." A scientific question is posed and the students answer research questions through "data analysis p.31".

As part of my teaching, I have been trained in inquiry based learning in the form of posing a question and finding out what students already know, what they want to know and then we reflect at the end of the unit of work with what they have learnt.

Eg. KNOW/WANT/LEARNT chart tracks their progress throughout the unit.

I will be visiting my teaching colleague at a Western suburb school who teaches a multi-age class and I will begin my project on the topic that the class is studying which is "Life in the Past in the Local Area." The teacher has expressed an interest in making contact with the elderly community as a source of information to the children about life in the past.

I will begin the process of gathering resources and adhering to The Essentials QLD curriculum which is current at this time. I may search for the National Curriculum draft for guidance.

The project might involve the students responding to a question that I pose on the topic, they research on the Internet and in the library, fill in the questionaire, then interview their parents or grandparents as part of a homework activity so as to involve their families in the project. They may transcribe an interview with a person from an earlier generation and present it in the form of a Powerpoint or Web 2.0 application.

Readings from Kuhlthau et al (2007) and Limberg, L (2008) reveal that Kuhlthau advocates a source approach or ISP model from a teaching perspective. Limberg advocates a relational approach with the relationship between: 1. learner, 2. teacher and 3. object of learning and their interactions. Bruce (1997) and Marton (1994) promote a phenomenographic view of knowledge as a relationship between a person and a world. The educator is the agent of change.

Upon reading the inquiry theorists, I favour the phenomenographic approach because each person has a unique context in which to make meaning from.

There are opponents to the inquiry based approach that claim that unstructured, open, student based inquiry result in short term memory of concepts presented. Having taught in both the traditional setting by reciting facts and the constructivist approach with guided inquiry I would see the primary school age students require scaffolding to guide them through the inquiry process.