Scottish Information Literacy Project

A couple of weeks ago (November 30^th- 1st December) I attended an invitation only conference in Wales on the theme of ‘An Information Literacy Strategy for Wales?’  which was held at the attractively situated if geographically inconvenient University of Wales conference centre at Gregynog House.

All LIS sectors and Welsh education were represented and I was particularly impressed by the willingness of all sectors to work together and learn from each other.

The initial presentations were devoted to reviewing the various sectors and the familiar theme emerged of pockets of excellent good practice which were not being supported by an overarching strategy. I spoke about the work of the Scottish Information Literacy Project and the lessons which Wales can learn from it. After dinner there were sectoral discussion groups and I joined the public librarians and was impressed by their grasp of the role which public libraries can play in informal learning and the good work they are already doing.

The following morning Gareth Evans from Caerphilly Public Library spoke about the work he has been doing with the Open College network which could well be replicated elsewhere.

The conference concluded with a list of action points which included:

• The production of an overview/vision statement (urgent)
• The development of a strategy and Framework
• Making cross sectoral/partnership contacts including outside the LIS sector
• Developing a National Forum for Information Literacy in Wales
• Appointing an Information Literacy Development Officer for Wales
• Accrediting library staff information literacy training skills
• Include IL concepts in teacher training
• School librarian posts should be a statutory responsibility
• Pursue media literacy issues through Ofcom

However if these objectives are to be achieved funding will be a key requirement

 Last month, before the Scottish Learning Festival took place (23-24 September), attendees were invited to submit questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Education for her to answer.  I submitted the question below but only a few were answered directly by the minister at the conference. The remainder were subsequently dealt with by email.  The minister’s answer is below. Only a relatively short part of it refers directly to information literacy and only to the schools sector. The wider agenda is ignored and there is no answer to the question – what strategic initiatives does she think the Scottish Government can engage in to promote it? I shall be enquiring further and also refer her to the US President’s greater commitment to information literacy. (See URL http://www.whitehouse.gov/assets/documents/2009literacy_prc_rel.pdf  

 Question to Fiona Hyslop, Cabinet Secretary for Education in the Scottish Government

My question to the minister is:

 The important skills of critical literacy / information literacy has been highlighted within the Curriculum for Excellence: Literacy across learning (finding and using information, understanding, analysing and evaluating) levels Early to Fourth. Does the minister agree that  information literacy  skills are essential in  independent learning at all educational levels, career choice and long term management, employability training, workplace decision making and lifelong learning and what strategic initiatives does she think the Scottish Government can engage in to promote it?

Answer from the minister

Thank you for submitting a question, please see below the response from the Education Secretary,

 The Scottish Government is determined to help our children and young people develop the literacy skills they will need to thrive in the 21st century. Skills in literacy unlock access to the wider curriculum, increase opportunities for the individual in all aspects of life and lay the foundations for lifelong learning and work. Curriculum for Excellence, the Scottish Government’s major programme of reform for the education sector, emphasises the importance of literacy skills and makes clear that all teachers have responsibility to promote their development.

The Curriculum for Excellence principles and practice paper for literacy sets out the outcomes we want our young people to achieve as they progress through their education.  Young people will need to know about the fundamentals of reading and writing but also how these skills can be applied critically, across different media, to analyse and evaluate information and to work out what trust they may place in it and identify when and how people are aiming to persuade or influence them.

As our children and young people progress through learning they should develop increasing independence in applying these skills, and the ability to use them across a widening range of contexts in both learning and life. Glow, the world’s first national schools Intranet, provides learners with  a range of tools and rich learning materials which can be accessed at any time and anywhere there is an internet connection, offering a safe, accessible online environment which supports independent learning.

On Friday 24^th April we attended a Future Skills Symposium at Govan High School.  The school is one of our most active Project partners through the work of Ian McCracken the Learning Resources Manager there. The Framework (Future Skills) of 71 core transferable skills is the work of Philip Graham, the Depute Head and Ian with the full support of the ‘Heidie’, Ian White, and has been in operation since the 2007-8 school year began.

It arose out of the fact that pupils were unable to identify their own skills and confidently use them in a wide range of situations. This led to an unsuccessful search for a comprehensive pre-existing framework of skills with the result that Philip and Ian set out to compile their own with the full involvement of staff and pupils.  An initial list of ‘hundreds of skills’ was pared down to a definitive list of 71 future skills which are prominently displayed around the school and are used in every subject.  This has not meant an abandonment of the curriculum or the teaching skills as a separate subject because an examination of the Curriculum for Excellence showed that the skills were already there. They had not been noticed before.  A matching exercise on skills demanded by a range of employers was successfully carried out. The skills are divided into seven groups – the communicator, the contributor, the doer, the sorter, the originator, the connector and the decider. The communicator, for example, has skills which include creative writing, e-literacy, presentation skills and objective reporting while the contributor has team skills, participation skills and is environmentally friendly. Skills booklets were devised so pupils could self assess the skills they learned in lessons and extra-curricular activities. There are also skill cards for teachers who can nominate pupils who make progress in a particular skill. The details of the skills booklets are fed into a growing computer database which offers interesting analytical possibilities to support further development and to inform key areas.  Information literacy is, of course, one of the skills and occurs regularly in all the booklets. Ian is now analysing the database to identify the frequency of the appearance of IL skills and how they relate to others. The results should be interesting.

The event was attended not only by teachers but also people from other education sectors and those concerned with learning and skills development. The Future Skills Framework is likely to be influential well beyond the school sector.  Some further detail can be found in a Times Educational Supplement Scotland article. See URL http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=2638693. You can also watch two PPTs which describe the developmental processes and outcomes in detail. govan-1-journey-so-far1 govan-2-nuts-and-bolts

This year’s LILAC, held at Cardiff, was yet another administrative triumph for the organising committee with all the components of a successful international conference present including two superb evening events. I shall certainly be going back to Caerphilly Castle again. With the 5^th year completed a pattern is now established with the continuing predominance of HE, both in attendees and presentations. This is not surprising, given that HE is the library sector where there is most interest and activity in R&D and also funding to support it. There is interest, but less time, money and resources generally in schools but there were presentations about or relating to schools which is a welcome development. It is also good to see university libraries working with schools and this is clearly well established in a number of cities now as the discussion following Michelle Schneider’s presentation showed. There was a much less about the workplace and taking the IL message to supportive non ‘library’ client groups. There was nothing directly on media literacy and only one presentation on health literacy which attracted a disappointingly small audience for such an important subject. The range of sources people use to find information about weight issues was interesting as ‘librarianly’ type sources cam about two thirds way down the list. In view of our work I find this unsurprising and no doubt Christopher Walker would be of the same opinion, given that he has found that parents of young children’s principal source of information is the TV programme, ‘Supernanny’.

There is no doubt that the programme was extremely full, perhaps too full, although this may be unavoidable as the organisers would not want to disappoint any applicants unnecessarily.  However the conference has been running for five years now and perhaps it is time to stand back and take stock. As director of the Scottish Information Literacy Project I have tried to move away from a concentration on models based on traditional information sources and to some extent to move away from a culture of librarians talking to librarians in favour of making partnerships and contacts with supportive organisations outside the library world. This includes employers’ organisations, skills bodies and trade unions. In a real sense we should be talking to anyone but librarians and promoting IL as an essential career choice and management skill, a CPD skill, a workplace decision making and lifelong skill, a civil right and a skill to support leisure. Perhaps next year there should be some longer reflective sessions about what IL is really for and where it ought to go in the 21^st century. Speakers from outside the profession would be a good idea although such people are still not very common.  As usual it is easier to pose the questions than produce the answers.

Christine has reported on a number of specific sessions and like her I found Leslie Burger’s presentation inspiring because she is a public librarian with a cross sectoral, skills perspective which is just what we need.

Among the parallel sessions the one I will remember most is not a worthily scholarly presentation but Alison Beswick and Claire Taylor, two students at Sheffield University who spoke about ‘The reality of information literacy: Does Joe Student actually understand what’s going on’. Although I have sat through many presentations about what students need and what they should get this is the first time I have ever seen actual students giving their perspective on what IL is. It was a naïve piece of work in the very best sense of the word, consisting largely of a video of interviews with students, apparently selected at random, and asking them informally for their perspective on IL. Having in the past been involved in service evaluation work I am always struck how muted the voice of the learner/user is in information skills teaching and learning and more presentations along these lines would be welcome, especially supported by unequivocal evidence of value and impact. A theme for next year, perhaps? I also found Wendy Beautyman’s talk on children’s’ information seeking behaviour interesting. She is obviously very good with children and there should be interesting results but we will have to wait for another day to hear them.

As usual I missed some presentations which looked interesting such as Marsha Miller and Susan Frey on the techno senior.

Cutting the 5th anniversary cake

Bill Johnston is Senior Lecturer and Assistant Director of the Centre for Academic Practice and Learning Enhancement at the University of Strathclyde he has experience in first year experience as well as information literacy and is a member of the project advisory group and spends quite a bit of time in Australia speaking at conferences. In a recent visit to the University of Southern Queensland he spoke about:

1. practical tips for teachers of first year courses to help them engage their students early in the semester.
2. embedding information literacy skills into first year courses and using assessment to engage students
3. how to prepare students for the workplace.

The interviews were filmed and can be viewed at www.usq.edu.au/learnteach/learnres/vsarchive/bjohnston.htm 

The three individual interviews with Bill are not long and give practical examples. Thanks to Sheila Webber for bringing my attention to this in her information literacy weblog.

Discussions and presentations with staff and students at Sheffield University, Department of Information Studies

On Wednesday 11^th March we were off to Sheffield at the request of Sheila Corrall and Sheila Webber of the Department of Information studies at Sheffield University to do some work with students. On the morning of Thursday 12^th March we did a two hour seminar with the post graduate students who turned out to be a lively bunch.  Our theme was our information literacy journey and how we have moved from a fairly educational/scholastic view of information literacy to much more lifelong learning based view in which information literacy should be seen as a key skill for career choice, progression, CPD, workplace decision making and, of course, lifelong learning because you can’t ‘do’ lifelong learning unless you are information literate. Our change of view has been influenced by the many people we have met who have reinterpreted the excellent CILIP definition in the light of their own qualifications, experience, work and learning needs. For example when we first talked to the Careers Division of Skills Development Scotland we had not given much thought to the role of information literacy as a career choice skill but after our discussions with them we have very much changed our view.  We have also abandoned the ‘ibrarianly’ view of what constitutes an information source and now accept people as just a valid source of information as a book or a website and people can be evaluated as sources in exactly the same way as a traditional source.  We were very pleased that this approach went down well with the students who are clearly well ahead of traditional thinking.

In the afternoon we gave a PPT presentation to PhD research students and some of the staff which generated a useful discussion at the end. Overall a useful experience and an opportunity to present our ideas to the next generation who seemed to appreciate our ideas.

See also Sheila Webber’s weblog posting about the visit – http://information-literacy.blogspot.com/2009/03/visit-from-scottish-information.html

We have both had our heads down for a while with backroom matters hence the lack of postings but we were out and about last week.

On Tuesday 10^th March we attended the National Literacy Conference, held at the Hilton Hotel in Glasgow. We had been invited by the Literacy Team of the Curriculum for Excellence and the event was organised by Learning and Teaching Scotland. Most of the attendees were teachers but there were a few librarians. The day was mostly taken up with parallel workshops but there were two presentations which kick started the day. The first by HMIE: Mary Ritchie and Janie McManus on some wonderful examples of good practice that they as inspectors had come across that engaged with learners and highlighted that it was all about developing and planning opportunities for learners to use their literacy skills at an appropriate level to meet their needs and that learning must go out beyond the classroom. There were so many good practices that they didn’t have much time to talk about Journey to Excellence (http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/journeytoexcellence/index.asp) and the Professional Development Pack (http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/journeytoexcellence/learningtrails/index.asp ) they are working on which they are keen to engage and talk about. Something we need to investigate further.   Next was an introductory keynote by Professor David Booth of the University of Toronto who has spent a lifetime researching and promoting reading and had some good ideas on how to encourage it.

The morning workshops included an impressive presentation by Pamela McLean, the Access Co-ordinator at the Mitchell Library who works mainly with primary schools to promote educational visits to Glasgow libraries to encourage the use of the Libraries’ resources. This includes some basic information literacy training. Perhaps her service could work with school libraries to develop a more co-ordinated approach to information literacy training in schools.  A second morning seminar was about Glow which is naturally of interest to librarians. The presentation revolved around a case study of work by an English teacher. While this was very informative the discussion flagged up a worrying ignorance of copyright issues by teachers and clearly they lack guidance and advice. With the coming of Glow this is a bigger issue than before. In higher education most universities have copyright advisers who are usually librarians. Perhaps schools should have copyright advisers too and who better to do it than the school librarian. At lunch time we had a chat with the GLOW team about this issue and discovered there is a section on GLOW about copyright but unfortunately it appears that those teachers who are using GLOW have still to discover this resource.

The first afternoon session included a presentation by Louise Ballantyne, a primary teacher currently on secondment to Learning and Teaching Scotland’s Literacy Team. John attended this presentation and Louise spoke about her ‘Real and Relevant’ information literacy training material which is aimed at Primary 6-7 and early secondary. Among the sources she has used is our Framework.  The session was extremely well attended and she was kind enough to refer to our work and hand out some of our leaflets.  Her materials should be available on the Learning and Teaching Scotland website in the autumn. Meanwhile Christine attended another excellent presentation by Anne Louise Nicholson, St James’s Primary, Paisley on using Glow to Promote Literacy (Primary) in which it was amazing to see how Primary 1/2 pupils were engaging with Glow, having fun and learning. Children who didn’t participate much in class seemed to find their voice using Glow. This wasn’t just using technology for the sake of it but showed that with innovative learning and teaching very young children can work at their own level using all the technological advances available to them.  Anne’s conclusions was that it had lead to  – fun and meaningful learning, more ambitious learning, richer language experience overall, able to tap into real life events and involve children, easier collaboration, use of experts to educate (a local painter (artist), wider audience for work to be showcased, easier to evidence using Glow.

The final afternoon session Christine attended was Literacy across the Curriculum – two English teachers who have been working in partnership with a Science (Physics) teacher and a History teacher in different schools in East Dunbartonshire to improve pupils understanding in different subjects through the development of literacy skills. Common areas of concern where; written accuracy (basic spelling, punctuation) and poor quality of extended written responses; in both cases the extended written responses were addressed through note taking and skimming and scanning techniques which lead me to ask the question of whether the school librarians had been involved in this work. Silence! The answer was no and I asked why not since these skills and competencies were the school librarians professional skills and competences. Fortunately there were other presentations which did involve school librarians. As a profession (library and information) we need to do more advocacy work with the teaching profession.

During the coffee and lunch breaks we were entertained by a wonderful school band from Turnbull High in Bishopbriggs. The performance on the drums was particularly spirited. Every conference should have a school band.

I have been reading the recently published Skills utilisation literature review, a report by CFE for the Education Analytical Services, Lifelong Learning Research, Scottish Government (Executive summary and full text vailable at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2008/12/15114643/0)

which aims ‘to bring together evidence on the topic of skills utilisation to provide a clear picture of the nature and extent of the current evidence base’.  Naturally I read it from an information literacy perspective and therefore found it somewhat disappointing as the extensive list of references has nothing about information although there are a couple of useful education references. Although the researchers interrogated a range of databases Library and Information Science Abstracts was not among them. However there are some useful lessons for us.  

The occasion of the report is the lack of evidence of a ‘conclusive and causal correlation between increased investment and skills and increased productivity’. (p.1) Attention is therefore moving away from simple skills acquisition to how skills are actually used in the workplace i.e. – skills acquisition which is defined as:

‘Skills utilisation is about ensuring the most effective application of skills in the workplace to maximise performance through the interplay of a number of key agents (e.g. employers, employees, learning providers and the state) and the use of a range of HR, management and working practices. Effective skills utilisation seeks to match the use of skills to business demands/needs.’ (p.2)

The last sentence seems particularly important although what we have been finding out suggests that businesses are not very sure themselves about what training they need. The study reports that both Scotland and Wales invest proportionately more in training in the workplace than England although this is not reflected in productivity (p.14). ‘Policy development needs to be linked to business need rather than simply trying to increase the number of people gaining qualifications’. (p.15).

The Scottish Skills Strategy has two main aims:

·         Skills must be acquired

·         Skills must be effectively utilised in the workplace in order to improve productivity  (p.18)

The report identifies three approaches to Skills Utilisation: (pp.2-5)

1.      the market driven workplace approach which focuses on individual workplaces

2.      The state driven workplace approach in which the state takes the lead

3.      The holistic approach in which the state collaborates with a range of agencies

However the report finds that substantive evaluation of these approaches or evidence of direct impact on productivity is lacking and that, not surprisingly, the large organisation is most important. Such findings are not encouraging for a country of SMEs.

On p.6 the report notes:

‘The evidence identifies a link between skills utilisation and a range of workplace matters such as employee motivation, job design, employee participation, equality issues, collective agreement and well being.’

While this may not be the most original observation in the world it does highlight points which have to be borne in mind when promoting information literacy in the workplace.

Pp.75-76 offer the most relevant quotes for information literacy:

Marchington and Wilkinson (2005) argue that the management of learning and transfer of knowledge have been shown to have a major effect on skills utilisation. If the learning fails to be integrated into wider business practices, it will become a barrier to the utilisation of new skills.

Ahlgren et al. (2007) identified good practice in workplace learning and found managers had an important role in the following practices:

• Promotion of open communication and encouragement of informal and social forms of learning
• Encouragement of employees’ ability to learn and to bring new knowledge, skills and experience into the workplace
• Welcome new knowledge and found it applicable in the workplace

Some food for thought perhaps

On Wednesday December 10^th Christine and I, along with two of our Project partners, Cleo Jones, Principal Officer, Libraries & Resources at Edinburgh City Council and Ian McCracken, Learning Resources Centre Manager at Govan High School attended a meeting at Learning and Teaching Scotland’s (LTS) offices to discuss possible Project input to the development of the Curriculum for Excellence (CfE).  LTS was represented by Stuart Ritchie, Director of Curriculum at LTS, Fiona Norris, Team Leader, language and literacy and Ian Graham, Schools ICT Programme Director. Although we have been working with LTS for several years, including most recently the case studies of IL in secondary schools, this is the first opportunity we have had to engage with LTS staff at a policy level and the meeting opportunity was therefore very welcome.

We reviewed with LTS colleagues the work of the Project and Cleo and Ian explained some of their work which underlined the key role our partners play in our work. Fiona explained that she is keen to have a project involving school librarians.  Having reviewed what both sides have to offer and identified IL as sitting within the CfE Literacy team – Literacies for Learning, four action points emerged to be taken forward.

1.      A joint project is to be formulated with the CfE Literacy team. As a first stage Stuart and Fiona will discuss it and come back to us with firm proposals. Christine and I will meet with Fiona and colleagues early next year.

2.      We will work with the Literacy team on an IL proposal for presentations / workshops at the Scottish Learning Festival in September 2009

3.      There was some discussion about the presence of IL in different parts of the GLOW (the national intranet for Scottish schools) website which are not linked together. We will jointly look how at how Information Literacy should sit within Literacy

4.      Following a discussion on the need for CPD for teachers in IL we agreed that   online resources are required. Some funding will be available to support the development of this.

5.      A Literacy event is to take place at the Hilton on the 10^th March, 2009 at which the keynote speaker will be Professor David Booth from Toronto. We will discuss Project involvement in this with Fiona.

We will hear more from LTS on the implementation of these plans by mid January. 

PS Thanks to Rob Westwood for giving the blog a mention in the current issues of CILIP Gazette. Apparently we are up there with the Prime Minister and Stephen Fry.

New for 2008 at the Scottish Learning Festival was Topic Surgeries which according to the programme would faciltate informal discussions with presenters lasting 12 minutes. Having identified Joyce Henderson, Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS) new Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) Technologies: The Draft Experiences as the one for me. I joined the surgery to find two teachers doing most of the talking about what they liked and didn’t like about the outcomes, leaving no time for me to get a word in, in the 12 minute allocated time. I did however manage to have a quick word with Joyce and her colleague about information literacy, it’s cross curricula relevance to CfE, the work of school librarians / learning resouce co-ordinators plus leave her with a copy of the national framework (Scotland).

Information I gleaned is that they (CfE) are going to be looking at skills, which will tie in nicely with the work we are doing and that following consultation / research carried out by Glasgow University (interim report is on the web) they are redoing the Science draft learning outcomes and experiences.