Presentation by Sheila Webber, Olivier Le Deuff, Bill Johnston given in September 2017, at the European Conference on Information Literacy, Saint Malo, France.

1. Sheila Webber, Olivier Le Deuff, Bill Johnston
September 2017, ECIL, St Malo
Theorising information literacy
Exploring different expert views and reflections
and different national / cultural perspectives

2. Outline of the session
• Introduction of the panellists
• Presentations from the panellists
–Information Literacy as a discipline
–Information Literacy theory
• Questions and open discussion
Webber, Le Deuff & Johnston, 2017

3. Sheila Webber (Senior Lecturer, Information
School, University of Sheffield)
Bill Johnston (Honorary Research Fellow,
University of Strathclyde)
Olivier Le Deuff (Assistant Professor in information
science and communication studies, University of
Bordeaux Montaigne)
Webber, Le Deuff & Johnston, 2017

4. Information Literacy as a
discipline
Webber, Le Deuff & Johnston, 2017

5. Sheila Webber & Bill Johnston
Webber, Le Deuff & Johnston, 2017

6. Benefits
• Locates a home discipline for PhD study,
researchers: common touchpoints, language,
understandings etc.: helps the field move forward
• Acknowledging a theoretical base can strengthen
argument for IL meriting attention from academics in
other disciplines
• Provide a theoretical and evidence base for practice
beyond the academy
Webber, Le Deuff & Johnston, 2017

7. Evidence
• Dedicated journals, associations, and conferences;
Graduate research; international community
• IL literature base increasing, becoming more
scholarly, taking more prominent place in the field
(Sugimoto & Cronin, 2012; Pinto, Escalona-
Fernandez & Pulgarin, 2013; Sproles, Detmering &
Johnson, 2013)
• IL is subject of scholarly debate
• “Sub-disciplines” of IL mentioned at this conference
See Johnston and Webber, 2006; Webber and Johnston, 2017
Webber, Le Deuff & Johnston, 2017

8. Reservoirs of knowledge resources shaping regularized
behavioural practices, sets of discourses, ways of thinking,
procedures, emotional responses and motivations. These
provide structured dispositions for disciplinary
practitioners who reshape them in different practice
clusters into localized repertoires. While alternative
recurrent practices may in competition within a single
discipline, there is common background knowledge
about key figures, conflicts and achievements.
Disciplines take organizational form, have internal
hierarchies and bestow power differentially, conferring
advantage and disadvantage
(Definition of a discipline: Trowler, 2014, p.9)
What is a discipline in the 21st Century?
Webber, Le Deuff & Johnston, 2017

9. Organisational form …
A group of scholars - but does it have to be a
university department?
What are the internal hierarchies at this conference,
for example… (UNESCO identified ECIL as the
key IL organisation…)
Webber, Le Deuff & Johnston, 2017

10. Olivier Le Deuff
Webber, Le Deuff & Johnston, 2017

11. What is discipline?
• Discipline … and punish (Michel Foucault)
• Discipline as a method of control
• Discipline as a method of learning and teaching
Webber, Le Deuff & Johnston, 2017

12. IL a school discipline?
• Discipline for teaching (Evolutions de la
documentation : Naissance d'une discipline
scolaire, Frisch, 2003)
• Pedagogy for IL (for French teachers-librarians,
professeurs-documentalistes)
• Didactic of information (Duplessis and GRCDI :
group of research about didactic and cultures of
information)
Webber, Le Deuff & Johnston, 2017

13. • Library and information science
• Communication studies
• Education studies
• Documentation or documentology (Paul Otlet)
• Media and Information Literacy
• Transliteracy
Relations with other fields?
Webber, Le Deuff & Johnston, 2017

14. What “theory” means and how
Information Literacy might be
theorised
Webber, Le Deuff & Johnston, 2017

15. Olivier Le Deuff
Webber, Le Deuff & Johnston, 2017

16. What “theory” means and how IL might be
theorised
• Need to understand concepts [and teach with concepts]: what
is information, what does it mean to be an author; work that
can be used by professeurs documentalistes
• Need theory not just practice - know the concepts and that
they can change
Webber, Le Deuff & Johnston, 2017

17. Sheila Webber & Bill Johnston
Webber, Le Deuff & Johnston, 2017

18. Bates (2005)
“.. for most purposes the core meaning of theory
centers around the idea of a developed
understanding, an explanation, for some
phenomenon” (p2)
In science: description, prediction, explanation
Sees research models particularly helpful in
describing and predicting
“most of “theory” in LIS is really still at the modelling
stage” (p3)
Webber, Le Deuff & Johnston, 2017

19. Working towards theory:
Phenomenography
• Research approach which determines
• The type of question (What are the varying ways in which
people conceive of or experience a phenomenon)
• Data collection
• Way findings are presented
• Therefore more valid to compare across studies in
different countries and contexts
• Just beginning metaanalysis: studies of adult
populations: looking at categories of description
Webber, Le Deuff & Johnston, 2017

20. Sources conception of IL
• Teaching IL to first year UGs: USA (Dawes, 2017): “Critical
selection: teaching how to develop strategies for managing and
finding relevant sources for specific purposes”
• IL of nurses: UK (Forster, 2015) “Passive minimalist” gathering or
absorbing facts, basic clinical knowledge
• Uni students learning IL: Australia (Diehm & Lupton, 2014):
“Learning to find information”
• IL of academics/professionals: Australia (Bruce, 1997) “IL as
finding information from appropriate sources”
• IL of academics teaching English: UK (Boon, Johnston and
Webber , 2007). “Accessing and retrieving textual information”
• IL of school librarians: Syria (Salha, 2010). “IL as using textual
information to solve practical problems” (main focus on finding)

21. Higher order conception/experience:
growth and change
• Teaching IL to first year UGs: USA (Dawes, 2017): “Behavioral
change: teaching how to use information to develop new
understandings that change behavior or impact society”
• IL of nurses: UK (Forster, 2015) “Leader, philosopher and strategist”
e.g. IL as a means to facilitate change
• Uni students learning IL: Australia (Diehm & Lupton, 2014): “Learning
to use information to grow as a person and to contribute to others”
• IL of academics/professionals: Australia (Bruce, 1997) “IL as using
information wisely for the benefit of others”
• IL of academics teaching English: UK (Boon, Johnston and Webber ,
2007). “IL as becoming confident autonomous learners and critical
thinkers”
• IL of school librarians: Syria (Salha, 2010). “IL as Living Successfully”
Webber, Le Deuff & Johnston, 2017

22. Questions
Webber, Le Deuff & Johnston, 2017

23. Prompt questions for discussion
Webber, Le Deuff & Johnston, 2017

24. • What needs to be done to develop the IL theory
base?
• Are there issues specific to particular countries or
cultures?
• How can we enable/benefit from cross-cultural
engagement with IL?
• How can practice inform theory?
• How can theory support practice?

25. Olivier Le Deuff.
Maître de conférences en SIC.
Laboratoire Mica. Université de Bordeaux Montaigne
Responsable du DUT. Information et communication option
Information Numérique à l'IUT Montaigne de Bordeaux.
0687653127.
www.guidedesegares.info, www.okonok.fr
Sheila Webber
Information School
University of Sheffield
s.webber@shef.ac.uk
Twitter: @sheilayoshikawa
http://information-literacy.blogspot.com/
http://www.slideshare.net/sheilawebber/
Photos:SheilaWebber,takeninSecondLife(TMLindenLab)
Bill Johnston
Honorary Research Fellow
School of Psychology and
Health Sciences
University of Strathclyde
b.johnston@strath.ac.uk

26. References
• Bates, M. (2005). An introduction to theories, metatheories and models. In K. Fisher, S. Erdelez and
L. McKechnie.(Eds.) Theories of information behavior. (pp. 1-24). Medford, NJ: Information Today.
• Boon, S., Johnston, B., & Webber, S. (2007). A phenomenographic study of English faculty's
conceptions of information literacy. Journal of Documentation, 63(2), 204 -228.
• Bruce, C. (1997). The seven faces of information literacy. Adelaide: Auslib Press.
• Dawes, L. (2017). Faculty perceptions of teaching information literacy to first year students: a
phenomenographic study. Journal of librarianship and information science. (Early online publication).
• Diehm, R. and Lupton, M. (2014). Learning information literacy. Information Research, 19(1).
• Forster, M. (2015). Six ways of experiencing information literacy in nursing: the findings of a
phenomenographic study. Nurse Education Today, 35, 195-200.
• Johnston, B. and Webber, S. (2006). As we may think: Information Literacy as a discipline for the
information age. Research strategies, 20 (3), 108-121.
• Larivière, V., Sugimoto, C. and Cronin, B. (2012). A bibliometric chronicling of Library and Information
Science’s first hundred years. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and
Technology, 63(5), 997-1016.
• Pinto, M., Escalona-Fernandez, M.I. & Pulgarin, A. (2013). Information Literacy in social sciences and
health sciences: a bibliometric study (1974-2011). Scientometrics, 95, 1071-1094.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-012-0899-y
• Salha , S (2011) The variations and the changes in the school librarians' perspectives of information
literacy. PhD thesis, University of Sheffield.
• Sproles, C., Detmering, R. & Johnson, A.M. (2013). Trends in the literature on library instruction and
information literacy 2001-2010. Reference Services Review, 41(3), 395-412.
• Trowler, P. (2014). Disciplines and interdisciplinarity: conceptual groundwork. In P. Trowler, M.
Saunders & V. Bamber. (Eds.), Tribes and territories in the 21st Century: Rethinking the significance
of disciplines in Higher Education.(pp.5-29). London: Routledge.
• Webber, S. and Johnston, B. (2017). Information literacy: conceptions, context and the formation of a
discipline. Journal of Information Literacy,11(1), 156-183
Webber, Le Deuff & Johnston, 2017