The Challenge of the Critical Edge

 

for Teacher/Librarians

 

Katie Day

katie.appleton.day@gmail.com

 

Charles Sturt University

June 2005

 

If you don't stretch, you won't know where the edge is.

-- Sara Little Turnbull

 

A major challenge for teacher/librarians (T/Ls) is to consistently seek the critical edge of information literacy (IL) in the information literate school community (ILSC) in order to reveal the boundaries between different communities – between the included and the excluded, the vocal and the silent, and the powerful and the powerless.

 

The imperative of social justice (a concept which is generally accepted as including ‘gender equality, democratic government, economic opportunity, intellectual freedom, environmental protection and human rights’ (Clyde 2005)) as a goal of IL, especially in light of how information technologies are transforming learning contexts, is not a new concern – Todd (1998) highlighted it seven years ago – but it bears repeating, as Katpizke (2005) most recently does. After all, literacy of any kind – whether information literacy or social critical literacy or Kapitzke’s (2005) proposed hyperliteracy – is a set of practices, and practice implies something that must be exercised – or lost.

 

Hyperliteracy is described as ‘being literate about literacy’ or the ability to ‘critique the information process’ – not just the information being processed (Kapitzke 2005). It is unclear whether her terminology will catch on, but her use of it is consistent with the critical literacy assumed by Luke & Carpenter (2003), which is committed to social change through critical understanding (Kapitzke 2005). This commitment must be a constant challenge for T/Ls.

 

Most IL pedagogical strategies highlight frameworks for information seeking and the research process in support of resource-based learning, however, this tends to keep activity at the ‘code breaker’ and ‘meaning maker’ level of the Four Resources model of literacy; the critical edge is only attained when the reader also acts as ‘text user’ and ‘text critic’ (Kapitzke 2005).

 

All literacy education is socially and politically situated – it is about what we teach people to do with texts (Luke & Carpenter 2003) and the goal should be to help students learn how to question the text – to contextualize and problematize it – to ‘talk back’ to the text to reveal its social power, as Kapitzke (2005) demonstrates with her example of the deconstruction of the homepage of the new National Geographic Kids magazine, produced by a traditionally reputable supplier of information now delving into the genres of ‘edutainment’ and ‘infotainment’.

 

There is a difference between knowledge and the ethical application and presentation of it (Luke & Carpenter 2003). In order for students to be ‘creative, critical and constructive users of information’ they must come to understand the ways in which information can work to empower some and disempower others (Todd 1998). Thus IL education is a crucial component in guaranteeing social justice and citizens’ ability to exercise and protect their human rights (Clyde 2005).

 

The word ‘politics’ and ‘policy’ both derive from the Greek word ‘polis’, meaning city, the political unit of citizenship in ancient Greece, and a policy is a set of principles of action adopted by a governing/political body. The library or information policy is therefore an important document in an ILSC. The teaching and learning community, led by the T/L, must ensure that their policies actively support the goals of social justice, both at the micro and macro levels (Clyde 2005).

 

The most widely respected policies on human rights are those emanating from the United Nations, therefore it is not surprising that many international and national library organizations, e.g., the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) and the International Association of School Librarianship (IASL) – and subsequently school libraries – base their information policy statements on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its supporting document, the Convention on the Rights of the Child (Clyde 2005).

 

Clyde (2005) discusses the rationale and possible content for such policies, but in fairly dry terms (using what Pawley (2003) calls techno-administrative language), with little mention of the need to make these policies living ones for students.

 

It is easy to focus the critical eye of IL primarily on the new technologies and digital resources, as Todd (1998) does on ‘the ambiguous world of the Net’ with his recommended questions re what to believe, what to doubt, what to pay attention to, and what to care about. He values the Internet as a means of creating new learning communities on a global scale, with an assumption that it is consumption of information off the Internet that is the problem. Yet Pawley (2003) challenges librarians to open up access to the alternative community publishing possibilities of the Internet and warns of the dangers of depending on the library ‘tradition of decontextualized informational genres’ such as printed reference materials, which are designed to escape scrutiny.

 

Everything must be examined for moral and political values via IL – even seemingly authoritative policies. Perhaps students should use the Four Resources method (as described by Kapitzke (2005)) to contextualize and problematize the IL policy itself – to see to what extent the policies actually support the goals of social justice and critical literacy within their own ILSC.

 

This is particularly important given that the reality of school libraries responding to the information needs of students on important social issues such as AIDS and homosexuality is far from ideal, with significant barriers separating students from resources (Clyde 2005). This is another kind of edge that T/Ls must work to maintain – to not shy away from the edge of discomfort with controversial materials.

 

Local needs must never be ignored, however, a potentially greater danger exists in focusing on just the local – assuming it will be more easily assimilated and relevant to students. Yet the risk, as Luke & Carpenter (2003) put it, is ‘a kind of parochial literacy that… simply fences kids’ in.

 

The global community must always be present in the local ILSC, and reading and writing are the tools that allow the borders to be crossed. They are the ones that can help students build those necessary ‘cosmopolitan world views and identities’ (Luke & Carpenter 2003). Literacy, in its broadest formulation, is about making critical connections that allow time and space – as well as the local and global – to be bridged (Luke & Carpenter 2003).

 

The bridge metaphor is particularly apt, for the term ‘information literacy’ is an example of discourse synthesis (Pawley 2003), connecting the old-fashioned sense of literacy with the new literacies demanded by digital information, and bridging ‘the spaces and logics of print and electronic textualities’ (Kapitzke 2005, p. 37). IL, as best practiced by T/Ls, also bridges librarianship with other disciplines through collaborative teaching (Todd 1998).

 

There is a tensile strength to bridges, and for IL it exists in the ‘contradictory coupling’of freedom and control – an ideological tension that has existed throughout the history of libraries and expressed at different times as information consumers vs. information producers, intellectual freedom vs. censorship, advocacy vs. neutrality, populism vs. elitism, and texts that challenge conventional thought vs. texts that buttress it (Pawley 2003). She argues that contradiction ‘is a condition that characterizes the field’ along with the fundamental belief that IL is an empowering democratic exercise (Pawley 2003).

 

Appreciating the inherent contradictions in IL is key – because it is by knowing where the boundaries of social justice are – in practical terms – that an ILSC can try to shift them towards a better society. Pawley (2003) cites Todd as saying the time is past for the ‘one-size-fits-all approach’ to IL. The practice of IL is necessarily different in different contexts (Kapitzke 2005). By problematizing and contextualizing at every opportunity, students can come to understand what contradictions are in play in each situation.

 

T/Ls need to contextualize and problematize their own practice of IL and to understand the history of libraries and the forces of authority working on it (Kapitzke 2005). The IL policy is one place to start. To seek the edge means to renounce neutrality. It means keeping politics and morals in the forefront and constantly resisting the historical drag of the print-based neutrality of the library and its informational genres (Pawley 2003). It also involves ‘reinventing and rethinking the purposes of education’ (Luke & Carpenter 2003).

 

The two most important questions an ILSC must ask itself and answer using through its IL policy and regular practice are: ‘what is information literacy for and who is it for?’ (Pawley 2005). These questions must be foremost in a T/L’s mind every day. Only in this way can the edge – and the connection between social justice and the practice of literacy education – be maintained in an ethical way.

 

 

 

Part A: References

 

Clyde, LA 2005, ‘Policy, social justice and the information literate community’ in The information literate school community 2: issues of leadership, J Henri & M Asselin (eds.), Centre for Information Studies, Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, NSW.

 

Kapitzke, C 2005, ‘Whose community? Whose knowledge?’ in The information literate school community 2: issues of leadership, J Henri & M Asselin (eds.), Centre for Information Studies, Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, NSW.

 

Luke, A & Carpenter, M 2003, ‘Literacy education for a new ethics of global community’, Language Arts, September 2003, vol. 81, no. 1, viewed 15 May 2005, retrieved via ProQuest database.

 

Pawley, C 2003, ‘Information literacy: a contradictory coupling’, The Library Quarterly, October 2003, vol. 73, no. 4, viewed 17 May 2005, retrieved via ProQuest database.

 

Todd, R 1998, ‘WWW, critical literacies and learning outcomes’, Teacher Librarian, November/December 1998, vol. 26, no. 2, viewed 17 May 2005, retrieved via ProQuest database.

 

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Produced as coursework for Charles Sturt University ETL 401 Portfolio Part A, Teacher-Librarianship, June 7, 2005, by Katie Day