Methods in Information Literacy Research - ECIL 2016 Reflections
A few weeks ago I attended the European Conference on Information Literacy (ECIL) in Prague. It was my first time attending this conference and it was a great experience. Six people (students, alum and faculty) from our Gateway PhD program were there and it was fabulous to see our program so well represented at this conference.
The conference covered a wide variety of information literacy related topics, and what interested me most were the presentations about methods in information literacy research. Here’s a summary of them
Autoethnography: Research as Reflection, Inclusion and Empowerment (by Deitering, Anne-Marie; Schroeder, Robert; Stoddart, Richard)
The three presenters were involved in a project where a learning community of librarians developed their autoethnographies. The provided an overview of autoethnography and discussed their experience and reflections on this project. It was quite refreshing to me as because in authoethnography the researcher is the subject of research. I found an article that provided a detailed explanation of this method – here’s the link http://nsuworks.nova.edu/tqr/vol19/iss37/3/.
Using Phenomenographic Methods to Support Political Information Use (by Smith, Lauren)
There are quite a few phenomenographers in information literacy research, including some of my colleagues in our Gateway PhD program. So I know a little bit about this method. The presenter talked about her study using this method to examine how high school students are aware of, acquire, engage with and apply political information. It’s a comprehensive study and well designed. Her presentation slides can be located here.
Critical Incident Technique in Information Literacy Research in the XXI Century (by Cisek, Sabina Barbara)
The presenter shared her review and analysis of studies that used Critical Incident technique in information literacy research. This method has not been widely applied to studying information literacy related topics. It’s more popular in examining information seeking behavior. Here’s a brief definition of this method “The critical incident technique consists of a set of procedures for collecting direct observations of human behavior in such a way as to facilitate their potential usefulness in solving practical problems and developing broad psychological principles. The critical incident technique outlines procedures for collecting observed incidents having special significance and meeting systematically defined criteria” (Flanagan, 1954). The presentation slides can be located here.
