Reading through today’s course material was like walking through thick snow. But one sentence, in one of the readings, caught my attention and made it all a bit clearer.

By engaging with this modality of information, novices learn to act as practitioners, but they cannot become practitioners because they are removed from the reflexive and reflective embodied experiences and tensions arising from practice.”

– Lloyd, 2007, “Learning to act as a practitioner”

Lloyd’s article was about switching from the idea of Information Literacy (IL) as a set of skills and behaviours, to sociocultural construction of information and meaning, and whole body engagement with a range of modes. Context, Lloyd argues, is fundamental to what is learnt and how it is learnt.

I can relate to the quote above as I look back on my professional teaching practicum. As a student teacher, I was only acting like a real teacher, and never truly became a teacher until I experienced the real thing. Similarly, our students can never truly become information literate by simply ticking off a set of skills and behaviours. They must be fully immersed in authentic information literacy learning, in a variety of contexts, to become information “practitioners”.

Reference

Lloyd, A. (2007). Recasting information literacy as sociocultural practice: Implications for library and information science researchers. Information Research, 12(4). Retrieved from http://informationr.net/ir/12-4/colis/colis34.html