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This presentation accompanies Drew Whitworth's talk at the Networked Learning 2014 conference (#NLC2014). It explores the theories which underlie the collective management of informational resources, or a network's 'information landscape' or 'digital habitat'. How can the necessary information management skills be collectively developed? The presentation looks at information literacy and the different ways it has been conceived, particularly the more radical ideas of Cees Hamelink (1976), then the phenomenographic investigations of Christine Bruce (e.g. 1997, 2008). But though phenomenography, with its emphasis on eliciting multiple views of a phenomenon, is a useful methodology to build on, it is not sensitive enough to questions of power, and how particular perspectives on a phenomenon may be omitted from consideration due to their not conforming to the views of authorities within the landscape. Stewarding, however, works best when it is distributed -- and thus, information literacy needs to attend to not only conformity to authority, but its redistribution. How can authority over information practices be distributed throughout the members of a network or community?
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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?
Thank you
drew.whitworth@manchester.ac.uk
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