AN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE ON INFORMATION LITERACY INSTRUCTION FOR YOUNG PEOPLE

An Historical Perspective on Information Literacy Instruction for Young People

Andrew K. Shenton’s latest paper in the Journal of Information Literacy, “The Early Development of Information Literacy Instruction for Young People as Revealed by Six Volumes” explores the history of Information Literacy in school-aged children. Here, Andrew talks to us about the process of writing this paper and the research undertaken. You can read Andrew’s article here.

Information literacy specialists will, I am sure, be familiar with two relatively recent pertinent anniversaries. In 2021, a special edition of “School Libraries in View” was published to commemorate forty years of CILIP’s School Libraries Group. This was soon followed by a celebration marking fifty years since the earliest recorded instance of the term, “information literacy”. As many readers will already know, it appeared in Paul Zurkowski’s 1974 report – “The Information Service Environment: Relationships and Priorities”. Inevitably, such occasions prompt moments of reflection and wonderment on how far the field has progressed over the years. In my case, the publicity surrounding the 2024 milestone led to the writing of three different papers, all for the “Journal of Information Literacy”.

The first explored the changes over time that have been apparent in the nature of the tools created for young people to help them evaluate the information they access (https://doi.org/10.11645/18.1.49). In the face of current AI trends, this is an area that is now even more important than ever. The second paper was conceptual rather than practical; whilst there is little doubt that Zurkowski was without precedent in writing about “information literacy” using those words, there were others before him who had set down ideas that we associate with the term today. I concentrated my attention on a work which, although generally acknowledged as a classic of its type, is cited surprisingly rarely in information literacy circles – Alvin Toffler’s “Future Shock” (https://doi.org/10.11645/17.2.10). The book shares many thematic similarities with Zurkowski’s report but it was published some four years previously.

Keen to pursue the historical perspective further, I embarked on my third and final paper in the trilogy (https://doi.org/10.11645/18.2.647%20) and it is this which forms the principal focus of the present blog post. It can be found in what is, at the time of writing, the latest edition of JIL. My initial inspiration came from the “Great Men of History” theory for understanding the past. As I learnt when I studied A-level History in the 1980s, essentially it posits that we can construct a narrative and analysis of world events on the basis of the impact of certain individuals at particular points in time. I modified my thinking somewhat when I reflected on the stance underpinning Neil MacGregor’s Radio Four series, “A History of the World in 100 Objects”. Ultimately, I sought to explore the early development of information literacy instruction by profiling a small selection of texts. I was not concerned with their impact per se, rather with what they told us about thinking at the time when they were written.

The project proved one of the most fascinating I have undertaken in my twenty-two years as a published writer. Well aware that, given the limits imposed by JIL, my project report must be no more than 5,000 words, I knew that if each individual item was to be covered in the necessary depth, realistically I could examine only half a dozen. Although the easiest approach would be to sequence the books in chronological order, a thematic structure proved preferable as it enabled more seamless transitions to be made from one text to the next. I opted to extend the time period for my analysis no further than the arrival of the National Curriculum in 1989, largely because this put in place a statutory basis for inquiry in schools and it would impinge on pupils studying a range of subjects at all phases. It seemed a natural finishing point. Nevertheless, there were other major developments emerging around this time – the impact of microcomputers was starting to be felt in the classroom and GCSE courses were beginning to replace the longstanding O-level and CSE systems. Both innovations would have significant implications for information literacy instruction.

The period on which I chose to concentrate embraced entirely the time I myself spent at school as a learner (i.e. 1973-87), so I had to take care to ensure that my appraisal of the literature was not coloured too greatly by my personal experiences as a youngster. The danger of confirmation bias was obvious – it was tempting to spend lots of my time looking for evidence that was consistent with the information literacy teaching I remembered. The biggest challenge, however, lay in establishing how far my coverage of the books should concentrate on the works themselves and how far I should refer to other sources so as to place the items in a broader context. Since the ultimate paper included fifty references beyond the six subject texts, I suspect that I may have erred too much in the latter direction. I have always treated my writing of any paper as a CPD project and I certainly learnt a great deal from this activity. Three of the books I featured were new to me in the sense that I was seeing them personally for the first time and I had never previously submitted the three more familiar items to such close scrutiny.

If I had to isolate the most important discoveries I made as a result of the project, I would cite three. Firstly, I believe it is impossible to state with any confidence the point at which information literacy instruction began. It was certainly not instigated by Zurkowski. In the second paragraph above, I highlighted the importance of Toffler’s “Future Shock”. Yet, we should note, too, the significance of developments that precede this work. Immediately after the Second World War, Francis P. Robinson was presenting his SQ3R framework for critical reading and long before even this, back in 1930 Robert H. Thouless was offering advice to his readers on ways of spotting the fallacious arguments of others. I now tentatively conclude that information literacy instruction – in one form or another – is probably as old as teaching itself and, in the guise of library user education, it is most likely as old as libraries themselves.

Secondly, there has long been an unfortunate tendency to equate information literacy instruction for children and young people with the teaching that takes place in schools and, especially, in school libraries. This ignores the role of books aimed directly at youngsters which are intended to encourage an urge to inquire on the youngster’s part. They may well be read in the home. My research uncovered several books of this type – one of which I considered sufficiently noteworthy to merit inclusion as one of my six volumes.

Finally, many older readers will no doubt recall the passionate debates in the 1970s and 1980s that centred on how information literacy was best taught. There were those who maintained steadfastly that the appropriate skills should be inculcated via structured exercises predominantly associated with the use of the school library; advocates of an alternative school of thought argued equally vociferously that meaningful information literacy instruction was more effective if was contextualised within topic work dealing with specific curriculum subjects – often History or Geography. In truth, there is a place for both. Clearly, if pupils were to appreciate properly the value of one of the foremost information resources available to them in the pre-Internet era – i.e. their school library – they needed to be trained in how they could gauge the extent of the collection (and by extension its potential usefulness for their own purposes) and in the acquisition of skills that were integral to its effective exploitation. Subsequently, in order for the teacher to monitor the learning that had taken place, some form of accompanying assessment, such as an exercise, was necessary. Still, it was only when skills were seen in a real curriculum context that youngsters could understand their value for themselves and deploy them in more natural situations.

Writing each of my three “historical” papers for JIL gave me much enjoyment and I learnt a lot from the experience. Whilst it is easy to dismiss the third, which has formed the focus of this piece, as lacking relevance to the information world of today, it will, I would like to think, strike a chord with older readers who recall similar or related initiatives from their own school days. In terms of younger readers, it is my hope that the article may offer some insights for those who are curious as to how information skills were taught in a now bygone age.

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