Information Literacy: A Relational Approach

In the following essay, I share something I learned about information and information literacy from working with hundreds of college students and from working with dozens of "underserved" urban students. This post is a bit long, but I hope it sparks a discussion among us about information and information literacy. Please forgive me if this topic already has been widely discussed in the literature, during conferences, or in the classroom.

I previously conducted information literacy one-shot workshops as transfers of knowledge that resulted in measurable outcomes. It didn't matter that such outcomes were relatively easy to produce or that the assessments I used almost never demonstrated a long-term impact of my teaching. I lectured. Students demonstrated a level of proficiency during or shortly after the workshop. We (the students and I) produced measurable outcomes.

However, I changed my approach when I noticed that the same students I taught perhaps a week earlier would come to the reference desk, using the same information-seeking behavior they used prior to the workshop. They would type phrases and sentences into the library's discovery tool as if it were Google. I wasn't surprised because I didn't expect a one-shot information literacy session to change student assumptions about the nature of information and how to find and use it. From what I observed from hundreds of college students at two Midwestern universities, students tend to think of information and data as "things" to be found, manipulated, and exploited. We librarians further emphasize the "thingness" of information by teaching information literacy as discrete skills that result in measurable outcomes.

Relationship as Core of Human Existence

But what if information isn't a thing, but a relationship?

Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann (1966) noted that reality is socially constructed. That is, they suggested that knowledge and information are social products, the results of specific types of relationships. More recently psychologist Kenneth Gergen (1994, 2009) suggested that relationships are the core of being human. We know who we are because of the relationships we have with others. Synthesizing Gergen's theory with Berger and Luckmann's framework, I argue that Information isn't something outside of human relationships. It is the relationship itself. Information is the connection between two or more people. Information is information because of human interactions. By extension, information literacy is the ability to effectively participate in these relationships.

A relational approach transforms information from examining things to investigating relationships within a community. Can I trust that person and therefore risk a connection with that person? What are my ethical responsibilities to the community as I participate in the research enterprise? More importantly, a relational approach extends students' real-life experiences of personal relationships to the realm of the scholarly community. As such, plagiarism is no longer an abstract topic about things, but about the more concrete reality of relationships--like the relationships students already have with family, friends, romantic partners, and co-workers.

Information Literacy as Relationship

Unfortunately, I never had a chance to test my relational approach in a college classroom. But I did recently work with about 32 urban 8th-graders who were largely working-class African Americans. I modeled information as a relationship between students, their colleagues, scholars, their teachers, and the world outside the school. Within this specific nexus of relationships, I respected students' lived experiences and histories. In other words, I acknowledged that these students' different types of native information (relationships) and attempted to bridge those to the curriculum (schooling or school relationships). There were measurable outcomes that lasted more than a week because students connected new information (relationships) with old information (prior relationships). Information literacy was no longer an artifice to forget once the class was over. It was a crossing of a threshold, a change of assumptions about the nature, evaluation, and use of information.

SOURCES

Berger, P. & Luckmann, T. (1966). The social construction of reality: A treatise in the social construction of reality. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books.

Gergen, K. (1994). Realities and relationships: Soundings in social construction. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Gergen, K. (2009). Relational being: Beyond self and community. Oxford, UK & New York: Oxford University Press.

Image Credits

Information Literacy
Retrieved from https://upslis.info/index.php/news/98-information-literacy-seminar 

Relationships
Retrieved from https://aceofjacks.com/inspirationalyourelaionships

Teacher and Students:
Retrieved from https://cla.umn.edu/aaas/undergraduate

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