Just thought I’d kick this blogging off with my thoughts on the readings we had collected on Friday.
SEED
In the Untangling Spaghetti? Case study they place a lot of emphasis on reviewing various previous studies and see the fact that what they were doing was to be a development and evolvement of these important studies. The first statement they mention is the ALA one but then provide references to various articles to show that the key to teaching secondary school pupils information literacy is understanding that the children have a complex mix of skills, knowledge and attitudes.
The report discussed the fact that ICT skills play a bigger role now that the New Opportunities Fund led to computers being equally available to all. It points out however that due to the huge range of skills in a school and IL that is taught must take into account all levels and abilities. It looks at the work of McKenzie (2003) who said that any IL programme should be based on asking how? Why? And which? Rather than what?.
The study ultimately said the key factors in setting up an IL programme was
Type of task set and questions posed;
Perceptions and shared understanding by mediators and students of what a task entails;
The approach used in mediation;
Prior knowledge, skills and understanding (subject and information-related).
The research team then point out that the steps are to establish a group of students, assess any ‘risks’ or potential problems that teaching within that group of students may cause, highly detailed notes, constant analysis and development, meetings before and after every class and then complex data sets used to analyse data.
I think this account can be used by us to provide a framework for how we would justify types of questions chosen and also the part about highly detailed notes and constant development meetings during the programme are all things that should be included in our programme. Obviously a lot of it would have to be put in hypothetically but would relevant.
CILIP
CILIP meanwhile provide a case study that shows techniques for carrying out and info lit programme that they have researched and tested and that we could develop. They point out that whatever is done must be done with the aim of a simple framework and that this is for the teachers needs as much as anything so that they can understand how to teach such a complex yet paradoxically simple topic.
The case study suggests that skills must be clearly defined and that lessons must be memorable if they are to stick so an emphasis must be placed on creativity. They point to the fact that different ages must be taught in different manners but attention must be paid to the fact that age is not defining and an older student may be a slower learner than a younger one. They there fore advise looking at it in terms of four stages with stage one being basic info lit skills of identifying pictorial evidence with help and stage four being skills such as independent ideas and varied search strategies.
The study points out that different subject will require different types of programmes but gives a good framework for this. They advise that older students will be better with larger sets of resources of information and that independent thought and critical thinking should be encouraged along with dealing with misinformation. Younger students meanwhile were better targeted with tasks associated with compare and contrasting given information and practicing recording and questioning skills.
Probably, a lot here we can develop certainly in terms of targeting age groups with different skill sets as this will be a major part of any programme for secondary school unless we were to only target set age groups for information literacy?
ROBERT GORDON
I’ve had a general look through this report and as people were already saying this would provide a good basis for what we want to do. The ideas of teacher’s dialogues and thoughts being looked at first and the whole style of systematic data analysis and development provides a perfect example of something we could look at for inspiration and use some of the techniques from whilst also developing our own. The report also shows a lot of the techniques mentioned above such as the constant development meetings taking place. At the very least it gives us a decent example of the style of report we would hope to produce. Definitely something we can look at on Friday?
Anyway, these are just my thoughts so feel free to rubbish them, develop them or whatever, can discuss more on Friday.
