This document discusses the need for a critical phenomenography approach to information literacy. It argues that information literacy is generally defined as skills needed to find information, but there are competing views and a gap between theory and practice. A critical phenomenography would elicit multiple perspectives on information landscapes to build a collective understanding, but it should also consider questions of power and why some views are valued over others. Radical information literacy seeks to redistribute authority among networks and communities by having dialogues to validate concepts in an intersubjective way. Moving forward, this approach could be applied in projects studying learning and environmental governance.

1. Networked Learning 2014
Nurturing information
landscapes: networks,
information literacy and the
need for a critical
phenomenography
Andrew Whitworth
University of Manchester

2. Warning
❖ This presentation may contain excessive doses of theory

3. Resources for learning
❖ Digital habitat (Wenger, White and Smith 2009)
❖ Information landscape (Lloyd 2010)

4. The landscape metaphor
❖ Different types
❖ Pollution, exploitation,
enclosure….

5. Stewarding
❖ How are these landscapes cared for?
❖ How are they optimised for learning?

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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?

9. 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)

10. Phenomenography
❖ Becomes a pedagogy, not just a research methodology
❖ Multiple voices (cf. Bakhtin: polyphony)
❖ A collective map of the information landscape

11. 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

12. 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’ validation
of concepts, thus, unitary authority

13. Single- and double-loop
learning
❖ Argyris and Schön

14. 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

15. 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]

16. 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

17. 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?

18. Thank you
drew.whitworth@manchester.ac.uk