Presented at LILAC 2008

1. Information literacy and professional development LILAC,
March 2008
Information literacy and professional
development: a critical view
Andrew Whitworth
University of Manchester
March 2008

2. Information literacy and professional development LILAC,
March 2008
Professional development in HEIs
• Why should IL form a
part of this?
• What are the
consequences if IL
and PD remain
separated?

3. Information literacy and professional development LILAC,
March 2008
Summary of argument
• Key themes developed from critical theory:
– The colonisation of the lifeworld
– The ceding of cognition to organisations and
technologies
– Activity theory: describing a sociotechnical system
– Critical social science: Information literacy as
communicative competence
• Information literacy and professional
development as embedded in one another
• Accepting the challenge: a research and action
agenda

4. Information literacy and professional development LILAC,
March 2008
The colonisation of the lifeworld
Critical theory of Jurgen Habermas 
(see also Forester, 1985)
Instrumental rationality Communicative rationality
Strategic, control-oriented Consensual, understanding-oriented
Disempowering Enabling, creative
Dehumanising, alienating Collective, fulfilling potential
Passive acceptance Active critique
Positivist, objective Critical, intersubjective
People as clients, consumers People as citizens, active employees
The lifeworld: the stock of human knowledge
and understanding, produced and reproduced
by communication

5. Information literacy and professional development LILAC,
March 2008
Educational organisations and
design
Strategic apex
Professional core
The work of the professional core is
increasingly managed through the
application of a technostructure
Technostructures are those aspects of organisations which
design work processes via strategic, instrumental principles
(Mintzberg 1989)
ICT plays a significant role in this process – how we process and
communicate information is subject to design and management

6. Information literacy and professional development LILAC,
March 2008
Beneath conscious awareness…
Activity Theory is a
useful way of conceiving
of how sociotechnical
systems are both
designed, and then evolve
Information technologies, and information processing systems, work
on course teams “from above”… and are worked on “from below”
Activity  Task  Action  Operation  Function Block
Once we reach the level of operation, things become routinised,
unconscious – we cannot attend to what is familiar

7. Information literacy and professional development LILAC,
March 2008
Organisations and meaning
The organisation is not a “neutral space” in which individuals and
communities are free to create meaning
Organisations are shot through with
power relations… different subcultures
experience matters differently on each
side of these divides
Organisations “push” certain cognitive
schema at their members (Blaug 2007);
this is partly the purpose of design

8. Information literacy and professional development LILAC,
March 2008
But why should we care?
Is academic autonomy better
consigned to history?
How can we keep up with the
rapid changes required in an ICT-
heavy organisation?
Yet these processes are essential if the organisation is to learn
Mavin & Cavaleri (2004): “The HEI is the last place you will find
organisational learning!”… but:
Argyris, Senge – a failure to question basic and taken-for-granted
assumptions may lead an organisation into a damaging feedback loop…

9. Information literacy and professional development LILAC,
March 2008
A critical social scientific view of
information literacy
See Whitworth (2007)…
Positivist…
“ICT skills”
Achieving mastery
over information
Technique, training
Interpretivist…
More understanding-
oriented…
ACRL definitions?
Individualised
But subjective?
Relativist?
Critical!
Change-oriented
Community-based
Self-reflective, self-
critical
Educational

10. Information literacy and professional development LILAC,
March 2008
IL for all stakeholders!
IL = Learning about information – the way it
changes roles, rules, tools… having a critical
awareness of policy, systems design, etc.
Note point #3 of ACRL definition – “evaluate
critically”…
Retain creativity and double-loop learning –
rather than letting organisations and
technologies do our thinking for us
Better for us – better for our employers!

11. Information literacy and professional development LILAC,
March 2008
An agenda for action
• IL is critical – so will face
challenges
• As well as embedding in
professional development process…
• … it will help to develop a dialogue
with other stakeholders in HE (incl.
students, parents, ICT
developers...)
• If we can link this to the quality
agenda however (also issues like
plagiarism…) – there should be
hope!

12. Information literacy and professional development LILAC,
March 2008
Thank you
• andrew.whitworth@manchester.ac.uk