December 2023 – Kasia Idzi

Reading ‘Information literacy: a source of self learning’ by Ramchandra Shigwan

This article got my attention because it talks about information literacy and self-learning. It was a perfect reading after the article by Kuan-nien Chen and Pei-chun Lin (blog post here) who highlighted that learning about using different resources and thinking about them critically helps our students become independent learners. I think it is very important, especially in the light of critical pedagogy, to teach lifelong skills such as information literacy to empower our students and encourage them to use their voices.

I want to point out here that both articles that I used to deepen my knowledge of Information Literacy come from the Global South and are important in terms of citational justice. It was great to find the connection between them and use the authors’ findings in my research.

The most important part of Ramchandra Shigwan article from my point of view is the description of different aspects of Information Literacy. One of which is understanding the need to evaluate resources. The whole section will be invaluable when I am designing the session for the students using my findings from this project. The session is planned for the Spring term of 2024.

Excerpt from the article on what it means to evaluate resources:

“Be able to evaluate information for its authenticity, accuracy, currency, value and bias. Also, be able to evaluate the means by which the results were obtained in order to ensure that your approach did not produce misleading or incomplete results. This is not just whether the resources appear to answer the question, but whether it is trustworthy.

For example:

Use prior knowledge of author, editor, series, publisher
Examine relevance to problem in hand
Appropriateness of style for users
Availability of index, notes, bibliography, illustrations, multimedia, etc.
Authenticity and origin
Authority (ownership, reputation, coverage, scope)
Bias or point of view
Error rate/accuracy
Purpose/audience
Currency/timeliness
Consistency
Design (output, presentation and arrangement)
Organisation/navigation (ease of use)
Access and use (documentation, accessibility, comparison with other sources)” p.335

I think it is very useful that author includes bias in their list. Personally, I would also add knowing what information/source to use in different contexts to the list. Especially important in the light of self-learning and using your skills in everyday life being one of the topics of this article.

My favourite quote from the article:

“Information literacy and self learning have a strategic and mutual relationship with each other [.] (…) Both are self empowering: Both the concepts are aimed to help all categories of individuals, regardless of their social, economical, cultural and educational status, as well as their place, gender, race, religion or ethnic background in the society.” (p.341-342)

Other useful take out from this article:

It provided a reminder of different concepts within Information Literacy (p.341) that was useful to think about my research topic and placing it within a broader subject area. My research question fits into User Education section and my findings should lead into further research and action within Information Skills and Fluency.

2. It looks at Information Literacy as helping social prosperity.

“Harnessed together, information literacy and self learning substantially improve the set of choices and options opened up for family and societal matters. It also improves the quality and quantity of education and training in both formal and informal educational activities. (…) Information literacy and self learning is a crucial issue for societal development.” (p. 342)

Reading ‘Information literacy in university library user education’

Chen, K. and Lin, P. (2011) ‘Information literacy in university library user education’, Aslib Proceedings, 63(4), pp. 399-418. doi: https://doi-org.arts.idm.oclc.org/10.1108/00012531111148967.

This is a very well researched and in-depth article. It gives a good overview of literature on the subject every step of the way. It convinced me that choosing Information Literacy as a starting point of my research was a good choice. The topic is important and requires improvements on librarians’ part. There is lots of aspects of the topic and lots of things to find out about.

“It was found that a well-designed information literacy program benefits the library and its staff, faculty, and students; librarians should play a leading role in the design and operation of programs, but collaboration with faculty, IT professionals and students is essential; programs should be embedded in the curriculum (…)” p.399

The article provides a review of literature on changes in what information literacy means now, in the era when “we have all become distance learners” (p.399). There is a consensus among authors that as librarians we need to learn about new technologies and include e-resources in our teaching.

“There is a growing consensus that the chief function of academic libraries is not as a storage facility but as an important centre for learning” (Breivik and Gee, 2006, p. 176), with academic librarians now becoming “educators, inculcators of information literacy (…) helping readers stay afloat on and navigate the ocean of information now available to them” (Ball, 2005, p. 16).

With information increasing, worldwide, at an ever-accelerating rate, the importance of this cannot be over-stressed. The ready accessibility of an enormous volume of information is in itself a problem, not only because students may be overwhelmed by a flood of data but also because, especially in the case of the internet, most of it is unfiltered and requires considerable skill to evaluate. Students must acquire the skill not only to find information but also to select, evaluate and use it appropriately and effectively” p.400

The article deals with defining Information Literacy too. The definition that speaks to me and is very relevant to what I do in my librarian role is the following one:

“In the education sector, information literacy has been generally defined as an understanding and set of abilities enabling individuals to recognize when information is needed, and to have the capacity to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information.” p.401

The author cites the key characteristics of information-literate people that I found extremely helpful in focusing my research topic.

The information literate person:

engages in independent, self-directed learning;
uses information processes;
uses a variety of information technologies and systems;
has internalized values that promote information use;
has a sound knowledge of the world of information;
approaches information critically; and
has a personal information style that facilitates his or her interaction with the world of information.

I highlighted the three most interesting areas that later informed my research question. I think that learning to use different formats of the library materials, evaluating them would enable students to self-direct their studies better. I think this would also provide them with critical thinking skills that they can use in all the areas of their lives.

This article has also given me more insight into my professional role and how it has changed from being a curator of the collections to being an educator too. And in our role as educators, we need to consider the fact that students turn to the internet as their first source of information.

Refining my research question

Padlet with notes on reading about research question design – https://artslondon.padlet.org/kidzi1/research-question-pxjnvzbmxeufzn2b

I took me quite a long time to narrow down my research question.

The most helpful was our first workshop when we talked about critical friendship, which inspired me to consult with the librarian who also studied on the PgCert. That lead to a very interesting conversations about what I had already worked on, looking at my initial mind-map and putting my research into our local perspective.

That finally unblocked me and I submitted my first draft of the research question and the Ethical Enquiry form. My tutor had provided me with excellent advice and link to an online resource on designing research questions (https://www.scribbr.com/research-process/research-questions/). This website together with the other recommended reading – Research for people who (think they) would rather create (Vic, 2021), were my main sources of information that allowed me to refine my research topic and finish writing my research question.

I used Padlet (https://artslondon.padlet.org/kidzi1/research-question-pxjnvzbmxeufzn2b) to keep my notes on reading about research question design. This was a very useful way of keeping them in one place with clear notes that I could come back to every time I needed.

Research methods – finding my way

My Padlet that helped me organise research methods resources

When I started to read about research methods, I got overwhelmed by the sheer volume of resources that are available to us on the subject. To organise the resources, I created a Padlet https://artslondon.padlet.org/kidzi1/research-methods-gathering-information-and-resources-needed–86jbde4hbrcs69hq, and I put books, articles and other resources that I found useful there.

This helped me to see where I could start with my research. I found The M&E Universe resources, that link to was shared with us in the second workshop, very useful as a starting point. The short, 2-3 pages long description of each method allowed me to judge what methods would be most useful for what I wanted to do.

Part of The M&E Universe that I was most interested in for this project

Once I knew that I would like to work with questionnaires and interviews (or small focus group), I had reached for more in-depth books.

The following books provided me with lots of guidance:

Bell, J. and Waters, S. (2018) Doing your research project: a guide for first-time researchers. London: McGraw-Hill Education.

I like the way the book is edited, with very clear layout of each chapter. I looked closer at and used information from two chapters, on interviews and surveys (still very useful for learning about questionnaires). In the mentioned Padlet I included the document with the most important excerpts from each chapter. I learnt about different kinds of interviews (structured, semi-structured for example), issues surrounding recording of the interview and ‘our old enemy’ – bias.

Matthews, B. and Ross, L. (2010) Research methods: a practical guide for the social sciences. Harlow: Longman, Pearson Education.

This is another very well designed and user-friendly book that helped me to work on designing a focus group and will inform the data analysis at later stage of my project. I talk more about this reading in my blog about focus group preparations.

Reflections on our 2nd workshop

The workshop was most helpful for me in terms of looking at the research cycle and thinking at what stage of the cycle I am at. I had been struggling with my research question and working on my Ethical enquiry form at that moment, and this workshop made me rethink my project. I’d realised that I may not be able to complete the cycle during my ARP unit the way I initially planned. I started thinking of focusing my research on my teaching and how we as a team can improve what we are doing. It would be the first research cycle that will lead to the next one with taking action and implementing what I found out during my ARP unit with sessions for the students.

The second part of the workshop that was important to me was a discussion on the articles we were asked to read in preparation for the session. It was great to share our views on citational justice in small groups and then talk about it all together. Being a librarian and working a lot with students on referencing, I feel these has enriched me with new perspectives on the topic that I want to include in my teaching now. I read two articles for this part of the workshop and share my thoughts in a separate blog post.

I appreciate the resources that had been shared with us in the part of the session where we talked about research methods and tools we are going to use. I have shared the resources I engaged with in my blogs on research methods (Category: ARP, Research methods).

Readings about citational justice – for workshop 2

Templin, C. (2022) ‘Why Citation matters: Ideas on a feminist approach to research – Blog ABV Gender- & Diversitykompetenz’, Freie Universitat Berlin, . Available at: https://blogs.fu-berlin.de/abv-gender-diversity/2022/01/10/why-citation-matters-ideas-on-a-feminist-approach-to-research/ (Accessed: Dec 29, 2023).

I really looked forward to reading about citational justice. I have heard my colleagues talking about it and have never got into this subject any deeper before myself. As librarians we help our students a lot with how to reference, and often we need to start with an explanation why we actually do cite. This article gave me lots of food for thought on how I can approach this subject in the future.

The ‘Why should we care’ part of the blog was particularly interesting to me. The author shares her own experience of finding materials for her essay and realising that a lot of what she was finding “was written by white (male) scholars, who are rarely directly affected by the oppressive system in which they work.” She feels that by searching the writings by feminist scholars of colour, she benefited herself by getting a different perspective on her topic. I found it very inspiring and started paying more attention to who I am including in my bibliography. I did not go as far as Sarah Ahmed in her ‘Living a feminist life’ book, where she decided to cite women only, but definitely went for the materials written by women when having a choice between a few articles or books on the topic I am researching. I will see the results when I compile my bibliography at the end of the project.

Kwon, D. (2022) ‘The rise of citational justice: how scholars are making references fairer’, Nature, 603(7902), pp. 568-571. doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-00793-1

It was a very engaging reading. It made me think further about my role as a librarian and ways in which I can participate in reducing inequities in citations.

It was encouraging to learn what is already being done to address these inequalities. However, it was also shocking that some scholars are met with a backlash when they involved in citational justice. I think it was greatly described in the article here:

“Outright racist or sexist comments — such as “white people or men just write better papers” — are rare, but people often say that they just cite good science or that they don’t see race or gender. These arguments are problematic (…) because they indicate that people are not actively trying to address their own explicit and implicit biases — or that they are not willing to dig more deeply into the literature in their field to diversify their citations.” p.571.

Working on Ethical enquiry form

I found it very difficult to finish my enquire form. I think it was mostly due to not having my research question defined for quite a long time. Additionally, I say that in number of my posts and writing for my ARP unit of the PgCert – but it is very important for me to highlight – I was very new to the idea of action research within my field of studies. This project felt overwhelming at times and somehow my apprehension grew every time I tried to work on this form. From the perspective of time, it was unnecessary, as the comments and help provided by my tutor where a huge help and allowed me to move on with my project.

This is my first draft with comments:

V1 Kasia Idzi. Ethical Enquiry Form 2023 with comments Download

I found the link to blog on writing a strong research question that my tutor provided me in on of the first comments extremely useful. It motivated me to look for some more resources on this subject and I created Research Question Padlet to keep the information in one place (presented in a visual and easy to access way). I kept coming back to it when writing my question. I liked the idea of using Padlet for gathering resources and keeping track of my readings this way. I used it a few times during this unit.

V2 Ethical Enquiry Form December 2023 with feedback Download

I worked on the second version of the form in November. You can see that I have not finished some trains of thoughts being distracted with work and feeling not my best. The tutor’s comments were so helpful again. Especially suggestion regarding the research question itself and moving some sections around. This allowed me to finish the form by 4th of December 2023, and you can see it below (V3 of the form).

V3 -final – Ethical Enquiry Form signed Download

Participant-facing documents

I did not experienced many issues when designing these documents. I think we were provided with very good templates for this task. Additionally, I worked on most of the issues that I could have come across here when I was designing the Ethical Enquiry form for this project.

I used these forms to get consent from the participants for both the questionnaire and focus group too.

ARP_Information-Sheet, Kasia Download

ARP_ParticipantConsentForm- Kasia Download

Reading: “Creative research methods and ethics” by Helen Kara

chapter 3 in Creative research methods in the social sciences: a practical guide (2015).

I found this chapter very useful in terms of introduction to ethics, even though many of the areas discussed here felt too advanced or far from I am planning to do. I think this chapter was complimentary to the article on ethics that I also read for our ARP unit (Banks, 2016).

What I learnt:

Ethics should be considered at every stage of the research process

Ethical issues traditionally have been though in term of risks to participants and data gathering. “However, ethics should underpin every single step of research, from the first germ of an idea to the last act after dissemination.” p.35

Theories of ethics: deontology (including ethics of justice), consequentialism (including ethics of care), virtue and value-based ethics.

“It can be helpful for researchers to review ethical theories and standpoints if they want to deepen their understanding of the philosophical basis for their decisions. Researchers may also find it useful to review ethical codes and other resources that suggest ways of putting these theories and standpoints into action.” p. 39

Transformative methodological frameworks such as feminist, emancipatory, decolonised and participatory research – they “are creatively designed to be more ethical by addressing and reducing power imbalances between researcher and researched.” p. 39.

Something that it is interesting to learn more about, especially in the context of my project that involves thinking about including our students’ voices more in my teaching. It is important to remember not to wear only one set of lenses (gender for example).

“After all, nobody is ‘only’ a woman, or a person of colour, or someone with a disability. An intersectional approach does not attempt to take into account every aspect of someone’s identity but aims to accept and reflect the complexity of identity and examine the relationships between different aspects of identity and their implications for power relations.” p.40.

Some other take outs from this chapter:

“It is not the case that using a transformative research framework will, in itself, iron out any potential ethical difficulties. (…) [it] may help all concerned to address power imbalances and differences within the research project, but doing so will still take time and effort above and beyond that needed for core research tasks.” p.46
Importance of the researcher well-being – it should not be overlooked. Useful advice for researchers to manage stress and emotional costs of their work – it includes “advance preparation, peer support, working reflexively and seeking counselling when necessary.” p.54

Reading: “Everyday ethics in professional life: social work as ethics work” by Sarah Banks

*Image by Rosy / Bad Homburg / Germany from Pixabay*

Recent trends in ethics “represent attempts to broaden the domain of professional ethics beyond dilemmas and decision-making requiring rational judgement (ethics as individual decision-making) and beyond conformity to codes of ethics and rules of ethical conduct (ethics as external regulation). Instead, a situated ethics is proposed, that places dilemmas and decisions in a broader social, political and cultural context and sees responsibility in a wider, more relational sense, beyond the isolated individual decision-maker.” (Banks, p. 35-36)

The list of ethical dimensions very useful. Each dimension made me think of how I can relate it to my profession and my positionality. I read more about the dimensions I found most relatable or important for my project.

“(1) Framing work—identifying and focusing on the ethically salient features of a situ-ation; placing oneself and the situations encountered in political and social contexts; negotiating/co-constructing frames with others (including service users and colleagues);

(2) Role work—playing a role in relation to others (advocate, carer, critic); taking a position (partial/impartial; close/distant); negotiating roles; responding to role expectations.

(3) Emotion work—being caring, compassionate and empathic; managing emotions; building trust; responding to emotions of others.

(4) Identity work—working on one’s ethical self; creating an identity as an ethically good professional; negotiating professional identity; maintaining professional integrity.

(5) Reason work—making and justifying moral judgements and decisions; deliberation with others on ethical evaluations and tactics; working out strategies for ethical action.

(6) Relationship work—engaging in dialogue with others; working on relationships through emotion, identity and reason work (dialogue work)

(7) Performance work—making visible aspects of this work to others; demonstrating oneself at work (accountability work).” (Banks, p. 37)

I focused on role, identity and relationship work. I think they all are closely related, and they made me focus on my role within the University, Library and my Team more.

Role work: “involves judging what roles to take with particular people in particular circumstances, how and when to shift between roles, when a degree of professional closeness or greater distance is right and negotiating roles with service users and others. (…) Ethical dimensions are highlighted when conscious dilemmas and choices over role positions arise—for example, between carer and controller; educator or advisor; ‘friend’ or professional.” p.41.

In my role as librarian, I need to negotiate my role at the service point (Information desk), 1-2-1, group, face to face sessions with students and staff (teaching part of my role), as well as supporting library users in our space – both technically (when they print, use software or need to find the books) and very often emotionally (when they are stressed before deadlines).

Identity work: “is the work people do through talk, interaction and demeanour to construct and negotiate who they are—their personal and social identities. (…) ‘Ethical identity work’ (identity work in the ethical sphere) involves practitioners working specifically on their ethical selves—for example, as morally good social workers, caring professionals, committed practitioners or fair-minded people.” p.42-43.

These words speak to me strongly. This is a motif within ethics and generally action research area that engages me with my studies and work. I feel that it is closely related to compassionate pedagogy that I got interested in during our first unit on the course.

Relationship work: this term is used “to cover the work of engaging with others, building relationships of trust, getting to know people and caring for and about them over time. The relationships may be with service users, colleagues, officials or members of the public. (…) Relationship work is a key feature of the ethics of care, which highlights the importance of attentiveness (noticing the need for care), responsibility (taking care of others) and responsiveness (of others to the care given).” p.44