192 The Jou

Critical Information Literacy: Implications forInstructional Practice

by James Elmborg

Available online 13 February 2006

This article uses critical literacy theory todefine information literacy. It argues that to be

educators, librarians must focus less oninformation transfer and more on developing

critical consciousness in students. Usingconcepts from literacy theory, the author

suggests ways library practice would change iflibrarians redefined themselves as literacy

educators.

James Elmborg is the Assistant Professor,School of Library and Information Science,

3078 Main Library, The University of Iowa, USAbjames-elmborg@uiowa.eduN.

rnal of Academic Librarianship, Volume 32, Number 2, pages 192–19

Information literacy has become a core concept in librariesand librarianship, but the term remains problematic. Muchof the confusion results from complexities introduced by the

word ‘‘literacy.’’1 Disagreements about what informationliteracy means are not merely a matter of semantics ortechnicalities: the lack of clarity has confused the developmentof a practice that might give shape to librarianship in theacademy.2 Information literacy appears regularly on conferenceagendas and has been featured prominently in sessions dealingwith public services at recent Association of College andResearch Libraries (ACRL) meetings.3 Statistics from theAssociation of Research Libraries indicate one reason for thisgrowing interest: a major shift in the demand for academiclibrary services away from reference services and toward libraryinstruction. From 1991–2002, ARL libraries report referencetransactions down 26 percent and group presentations up 55percent.4 Michael Ray notes an accompanying shift in attitudeamong academic public service librarians, reporting that theyincreasingly see instructional design and curriculum consulta-tion as a significantly better way to work with the campuscommunity than reference.5

This shift, driven by demand, implies an evolution in whatlibrarians do, and moving from service provider to activeeducator challenges librarians and library educators to developnew guiding philosophies. On many campuses, librarians havefaculty status and participate in curriculum revision andinstructional initiatives, but librarians continue to expressconcern about their lack of preparation for these roles. Fowlerand Walter argue, for example, that ‘‘instruction programs arebecoming increasingly complex, and ever more closely tied toinitiatives of import across the campus because of broadertrends both in the profession and in higher education.’’ Theyclaim that as a result ‘‘issues facing the [instruction]coordinator today are very different from those described inmuch of the work we read while preparing for our careers.’’6

They conclude that education for librarians needs to moredirectly prepare them to fill these evolving instructional roles.

The primary challenge to addressing these changes lies in thevision librarians and Library and Information Science (LIS)educators have of themselves and of the profession. Librarians inthe academy increasingly see themselves as educators, anevolution in the profession that challenges established defini-tions of librarianship and of how we generate knowledge aboutprofessional values and practices. In this essay, I will argue that

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librarians and library educators can better engage the educationalclimate on campuses by defining academic librarianship throughthe scholarship of teaching and learning in general, and thescholarship of literacy in particular. I will explore the centralconcepts underlying literacy theory, and I will apply theseconcepts to information literacy. In the process, I wish toforeground the underlying conflicts that emerge when teachingliteracy becomes the primary role for librarians. Ultimately, Iwill argue that adopting a literacy agenda in the library mighttransform librarianship by challenging current assumptions andproviding guiding principles to shape an emerging practice. Thiswill only happen to the extent that library practice evolves bycontinuing to focus on its educational mission.

EDUCATION THROUGH A CRITICAL LENS

The lack of precision about what information literacy means hasprevented critical judgment about its importance. Pawley arguesthat we can see information literacy as either a dynamic form ofeducation aimed at transforming lives or as a ‘‘procrustean bed’’of skills and standards generated by the library’s need to holdonto the status quo.7 Much is at stake in the choice. While theacademic library community spends a great deal of energydevising, implementing, and testing the Information LiteracyCompetency Standards, literacy researchers from outside thelibraries have grown increasingly critical of the effort to defineliteracy through standards, and of the research community inLibrary and Information Science (LIS) for its inability to engagethe literacy literature. Luke and Kapitzke argue, for example,that ‘‘the information sciences have yet to engage with criticalliteracies and with the larger epistemological questions raised bynew technologies and postmodern reconstructions of discipline,knowledge and identity.’’ They conclude that current definitionsof information literacy as espoused by ACRL and in the libraryliterature are ‘‘at best anachronistic, and at worst counter-productive in their avoidance of the central questions facingstudents, teachers, and libraries.’’8 Seeking a broadening ofcampus partnerships, Rolf Norgaard (Director of CompositionStudies at University of Colorado at Boulder) asks that librariesengage the literacy movement by moving away from instru-mental, skill-based definitions of literacy and toward an under-standing of literacy as a culturally situated phenomenon based inthe way communities construct meaning and belonging.9

‘‘ The lack of precision about what informationliteracy means has prevented critical judgment

about its importance.’’

Critical theory brings new dimensions to academic thinkingabout education and literacy, and these theories have madeteaching and learning more interesting, complex, and, in someways, problematic processes than past educational models haveimplied. Swanson notes that these new dimensions – criticalliteracy and critical pedagogy – show potential for shapinginformation literacy in practice.10 Viewed through the lens ofcritical theory, educational problems are no longer defined as‘‘information transfer’’ problems—that is, a problem of gettingthe right knowledge into students’ heads. Critical literacy andcritical pedagogy have led us to a different discussion of the

means and ends of education. Its most influential theorists,including Paolo Freire, Peter McLaren, and Henry Giroux, arguethat schools enact the dominant ideology of their societies—either consciously or unconsciously. Viewed this way, educationis a profoundly political activity. Educators must either acceptthe dominant ideology of their society or intentionally resist itand posit alternative models. Neutrality is not an option.

Freire argues that Western education (especially Americaneducation) is guided by the ideology of capitalism, and thatconsequently, schools have developed a ‘‘banking concept’’ ofeducation in which knowledge is treated as cultural andeconomic capital, and accruing knowledge equates to accruingwealth.11 Teachers make daily deposits of knowledge instudents’ heads which they bank for future use. Classroomsfrom the primary grades onward are constructed as workplaces.Teachers are bosses. Students who bank enough knowledge(often quantified numerically through standardized tests) aredeemed educated. This education trains students in thecapitalist ethic, and they subsequently approach their educationas consumers and passive receivers of knowledge rather thanactive agents shaping their own lives. Freire posits analternative pedagogy, one designed to create ‘‘critical con-sciousness’’ in students.12 Rather than focus on knowledgeacquisition, students identify and engage significant problemsin the world. By developing critical consciousness, studentslearn to take control of their lives and their own learning tobecome active agents, asking and answering questions thatmatter to them and to the world around them.

Freire notes that in banking education, ‘‘the scope of actionallowed to the students extends only as far as receiving, filing,and storing the deposits.’’ Their only real initiative can beexercised by ‘‘the opportunity to become collectors orcataloguers of the things they store.’’13 Perhaps not accidentally,Freire equates the common library functions of receiving, filing,collecting, and cataloging with the banking concept. In doingso, he poses important challenges to librarians. What is the roleof the library in the Freireian vision of critical literacy? Is thelibrary a passive information bank where students and facultymake knowledge deposits and withdrawals, or is it a placewhere students actively engage existing knowledge and shape itto their own current and future uses? And what is the librarian’srole as an educator in this process? Gage persuasively arguesthat ‘‘librarianship stripped of the critical capacity to appraiseitself, appears secure in defining its professional trajectory inaccordance with the undemocratic dictates of those commercialvalues and social relations that obstruct rather than expand therights of library users. . .as critical and engaged citizens capableof materializing the possibilities of collective agency anddemocratic life.’’14 Critical literacy provides a way for librariesto change this trajectory and more honestly align themselveswith the democratic values they often invoke.

As Luke and Kaptizke note, the library literature has beenslow to embrace critical approaches to literacy or to integratecritical perspectives into research or practice. Critical literacyfocuses on the links between the educational process and thepolitics of literacy. Approaching education in this wayaccentuates its role in enacting political and cultural agendas.Rather than focus on schools as tools for transmitting knowl-edge, critical theory examines schools as agents of culture andshapers of student consciousness. This perspective has beenlargely missing from the information literacy debates, a factrelated in part to the ways that LIS researchers have defined

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and carried out their educational research. By objectifying anddecontextualizing phenomena in the search for broad structuralpatterns, information literacy researchers have separatedstudents from social and economic contexts, thereby detachingthem from school, teacher, and society in an effort to isolatevariables to create more pure ‘‘scientific’’ studies.

This approach to creating knowledge has prevented ananalysis of how individual students in specific contexts andcommunities encounter information generally and the libraryspecifically. Kuhlthau’s formulation of the ‘‘InformationSearch Process’’ identifies six stages students go through inpreparing academic research,15 and Eisenberg and Berkowitzhave identified the ‘‘Big Six’’ information seeking process.16

Other process models for seeking information include Pitts/Stripling,17 Pappas/Tepe,18 and Irving.19 These process modelswork by standardizing the complexities of research into‘‘stages,’’ which generally include: defining a topic or question,narrowing the topic and identifying sources, synthesizing thesources, and finally presenting the results. With minordisclaimers, the process is presented as linear, from taskinitiation to completed project. ACRL has disseminated ahighly influential set of competency standards and bestpractices that describe what educational programming lookslike and what skills competent students can demonstrate.20 Allthese projects attempt to identify deep underlying universalstructures which can be named, described, and, perhaps mostimportantly, replicated in all contexts for all students.

Prior provides a useful summary of the strategy employed insuch research. First of all, the researcher adopts an ‘‘observationalperspective’’ that places him or her outside and above the thingunder study. Then, the researcher performs ‘‘several acts ofdecontextualization and abstraction.’’ Finally, out of the abstrac-tions created, the researcher identifies a series of privilegedcategories that create order or causality, creating a ‘‘closed andunified system of discrete and ordered elements’’ which are‘‘brought under the control of a set of rules that allow predictionand description.’’21 Using this method, students’ researchprocesses can be sequenced into discrete stages, and universalstandards and best practices can be defined. To be clear, none ofthis critique makes the results of these studies less credible. Infact, these standards and models have been profoundly importantin guiding librarianship toward a student-centered educationalphilosophy, but without complementary theoretical perspectives,none of these approaches can generate important criticalquestions about its own conclusions, assumptions, or methods.

‘‘ This next stage provides a necessarycomplement to existing research because so

many significant issues for information literacycannot be explored using the above described

research paradigm.’’

Building on the foundation of the process models and otherrelevant learning theory, critical literacy represents the nextevolutionary stage in the development of a theory of educa-tional librarianship. This next stage provides a necessarycomplement to existing research because so many significant

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issues for information literacy cannot be explored using theabove described research paradigm. Most importantly, theseuniversal models abstract and generalize the work of achievers,those who are committed and successful students and forwhom school works. In doing so, they suggest that if lesssuccessful students can be taught to emulate achievers, theywill succeed. In fact, students’ struggles with school almostalways derive from more fundamental problems than such anapproach suggests. Schools and students make up a complexsocial network that structures literacy, and the research modelsand best practices described above are largely irrelevant to thereal work of literacy education in practice.

Schools are hierarchical social systems generating multiplevariables that account for student success. In general, studentssucceed in school because their sociocultural identity mergesseamlessly into this social system. As Gee notes, ‘‘certain sortsof homes, usually middle-class homes, socialize their childrenearly in life through practices that dresonateT with the practice ofschools. At the same time, schools honor these practices as ifthey were dnatural,T universal, and dnormal,T while ignoring thepractices and values of other sorts of homes.’’22 Students whocould contribute to their schools or communities either choosenot to or cannot merge into this idealized student body. Schoolsreject many such students as unprepared or uncooperative.Rather than define these students as ‘‘deficient,’’ we might askwhether schools and curriculums themselves are a large part ofthe problem, especially when they become conservativeprotectors of traditional, authoritative knowledge and cease torespect students as people capable of agency and meaning-making in their own right. Indeed, one of the primary challengesfor contemporary education is to find ways to make it possiblefor all students to succeed, not just those socially preselected foracademic success.

A growing body of scholarship deals with the problemsencountered by alienated students and reluctant learners. MikeRose has recounted his own journey from marginal student toliteracy educator by focusing on the influence of caring,engaged teachers.23 Lisa Delpit argues that students who comefrom the margins can actually teach schools ‘‘what it feels liketo move between cultures . . . and thus perhaps better learn howto become citizens of the global community.’’24 Herbert Kohlincisively summarizes the problem of the reluctant learner inhis book, I Won’t Learn from You: The Role of Assent inLearning. Kohl describes students he has taught over the yearswho refuse to learn, even though they are perfectly capable.According to Kohl, this response ‘‘tends to take place whensomeone has to deal with unavoidable challenges to her or hispersonal and family loyalties, integrity, and identity. . .. Toagree to learn from a stranger who does not respect yourintegrity causes a major loss of self. The only alternative is tonot-learn and reject the strangerTs world.’’25 Kohl sees therefusal to learn as a political statement, a form of civildisobedience to a dominant educational system that wieldspower without conscience. These authors follow Freire inseeing American education as an industrial assembly line, withideal students emerging with standardized knowledge. Non-conforming students are ‘‘rejects,’’ expelled from the systemfor nonconformity. Rose, Delpit, Kohl, and others argue thatsubjecting students to an educational process whose effect is toerase their individual and cultural identities is immoral. Theyshare a perspective of literacy as a social and politicalphenomenon, and they challenge the educational system to

acknowledge this reality and to deal honestly with the resultingcomplexities.

EVOLVING DEFINITIONS OF LITERACY

According to the New London Group (an interdisciplinarygroup of scholars engaged in defining and developing newliteracy practices), social changes currently underway providecompelling reasons to broaden our conceptions of literacy.First, the global, transnational economy has collapsed spaceand time, bringing into working relationships vastly differentgroups of people with very different languages, lifestyles, andvalues. Second, technology continues to reshape the learningprocess and the ways people acquire information and commu-nicate. These forces compel a contemporary reconsideration ofliteracy. First of all, we can no longer conceive of ‘‘literacy’’ asa homogeneous ideal. National identity – in the sense of acommon language and common customs – no longer exists. Inthe past, traditional literacy ‘‘has meant teaching and learningto read and write in page-bound, official, standard forms of thenational language. Literacy pedagogy, in other words, has beena carefully restricted project—restricted to formalised, mono-lingual, mono-cultural, and rule-governed forms of lan-guage.’’26 In the emerging environment, literacy can no longerbe approached in this way. We need to talk instead aboutmultiple literacies, both in terms of diversity in human culturesand diversity in message formats.

New technologies increase the speed of information flow andthe diversity of formats in which we receive information. In thisenvironment, definitions based on traditional monolingual,monocultural literacies can become defensive and reactionary.The New London Group suggests we adopt a concept of‘‘multiliteracies.’’ In their work in media literacy, for example,Kress and van Leeuwen have argued that literacy is ‘‘multi-modal,’’ comprised of multiple media operating simultaneouslyto transmit complex messages to specific cultural groups.27

Hamilton has explored the semiotics of photographs to testvisual literacy theory.28 On a more fundamental level, HowardGardner has argued that the very definition of intelligence needsto be reconceptualized. His theory of ‘‘multiple intelligences’’accounts for the diverse abilities that people bring to learning.Gardner argues that ‘‘traditional schools’’ have privileged verbaland analytical thinking while discounting other kinds ofintelligence.29 While print was the primary medium forintellectual content, such verbal and analytic definitions ofintelligence made sense, but in an environment in whichnetworked information systems deliver new media in increasingproportion to text, this narrow definition of intelligence isincreasingly inadequate to describe how people think and learn.

Recent expansions of literacy theory provide the concepts todevelop new definitions of literacy flexible enough to copewith these boundary-stretching times. As a working definition,we may start with the following: Literacy is the ability to read,interpret, and produce ‘‘texts’’ appropriate and valued within agiven community. Such texts can be in print formats, but textstake other forms as well. They include any objects that areintentionally inscribed with meaning and subsequently ‘‘read’’and ‘‘interpreted’’ by members of communities. A ‘‘text’’ canoccur in any medium (visual, aural, tactile), as long as it isproduced to speak to a community that engages in collectivereading and interpretation. ‘‘Reading’’ and ‘‘writing’’ involveprinted texts, but also other texts in multiple genres ofcommunication as implied in multiliteracies. Kress and van

Leeuwen, for example, claim that we ‘‘read images’’ as we dotext, and they propose a ‘‘grammar of visual design’’ to explainthe underlying principles of communicating with images.30

Most importantly, people produce, read, and interpret texts incommunities, not in isolation. Communities reach consensusabout interpretation, sometimes easily and sometimes conten-tiously. Literacy cannot be described, therefore, in broad termsas a set of universal skills and abstractable processes. Rather,literacy is in constant flux and embedded in cultural situations,each situation nuanced and different from others.

‘‘Recent expansions of literacy theory providethe concepts to develop new definitions ofliteracy flexible enough to cope with these

boundary-stretching times.’’

Communities negotiate literacy through ‘‘literacy events.’’Identifying literacy events allows us to locate and foregroundliteracy practices in specific communities. A literacy event is‘‘any occasion in which a piece of writing is integral to the natureof participants’ interactions and their interpretations of mean-ing.’’31 In literacy events, the text provides an occasion forshared reading and interpretation. Literacy events allow com-munity members to develop regular, recurring interpretivepatterns over time. Being an insider to a community meansrecognizing and participating in literacy events—knowing thecodes used by the community and the customs and conventionsin play. These conventions involve both grammatical andinterpretive skills. Gee notes that ‘‘each social language has itsown distinctive grammar.. . . That is, we speakers and writersdesign our oral or written utterances to have patterns in them byvirtue of which interpreters can attribute situated identities andspecific activities to us and our utterances.’’32 This definitiondiffers from the traditional banking model of grammar in whichteachers deposit grammatical rules in students’ heads to teachthem to produce grammatical sentences from these rules.Viewed socially, grammar involves seeing language structuresin context as a set of communal conventions; a social view ofgrammar describes practice rather than prescribing ‘‘correct’’usage.33

The goal of this exercise in definition has been to create ausable definition of literacy, one which looks at literacy inpluralistic, nonjudgmental ways. Literacy has long involvedvalue judgments, invested in part in differentiating who isliterate from those who are illiterate. The definition constructedhere endeavors to avoid this approach, acknowledging multipleliteracies, thereby foregrounding the arbitrariness of privilegingschool literacies. In saying this, we have arrived at an importantpoint that bears emphasis—while there are multiple literacies inany given culture, all literacies are not equal. School literaciesare special. Schools confer social power, in that education opensdoors and creates opportunities. Bourdieu argues that studentsaccrue cultural capital through education, and indeed, parentsmake long-term investments in education for precisely thispurpose.34 Educated people have mastered school literacies atconsiderable effort, and while every community produces textsof value, not every community’s texts are valued equally in thewider culture.

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Therefore, while school literacy might be just one literacyamong many, its importance in creating pathways to social andeconomic success is unique, which is at least in part whyschool literacy is such a contested terrain. John Dewey arguedthat, in a democratic society, schools need to create and teacha progressive democracy. This approach stands in contrast toeducational approaches that create cultural standards asgateways to lifelong success. In defining progressive educa-tion, Dewey emphasized the importance of managing changewhile protecting participatory democracy, arguing that ‘‘asociety which is mobile, which is full of channels for thedistribution of change occurring anywhere, must see to it thatits members are educated to personal initiative and adapt-ability. Otherwise, they will be overwhelmed by the changesin which they are caught and whose significance orconnections they do not perceive.’’ In times defined by rapidchange, much is at stake for education in how literacy isdefined, taught, and measured. Dewey saw progressiveeducation as a key way for a rapidly evolving society toretain the possibility of democratic participation by anengaged citizenry,35 and, indeed, Dewey’s vision of democ-racy harmonizes with issues of critical pedagogy as professedby the New London Group. ‘‘Democracy’’ is a contested term,however, one just as easily taken up by the proponents ofglobal capitalism and the spread of American economic valuesas those following Dewey. Much of the conflict inherent ininformation literacy as a critical project can be traced tocontested definitions of ‘‘democracy.’’

CONSTRUCTING ACADEMIC DISCOURSE

Students begin their college careers already possessing a numberof well-developed literacies, most of them related to their homeliteracy, which Gee calls their ‘‘Primary Discourse’’. Thisdiscourse ‘‘constitutes our original and home-based sense ofidentity.. . . We acquire this primary Discourse, not by overtinstruction, but by being a member of a primary socializinggroup.’’36 From this primary ‘‘home’’ discourse, college studentsmust move to a form of ‘‘secondary discourse’’ through overtinstruction in the academy. This academic discourse is unnaturalfor everyone, but it is less natural for some than for others. Bruffeerefers to this academic discourse acquisition as the process of‘‘reacculturation,’’ a process of learning the conventions ofdiscourse that pertain first to acceptance within the academy ingeneral and second to disciplinary identity as it is practiced inacademic departments.37 Gee argues that true academic fluencymay well be out of reach for many students, especially whenlearning this discourse involves ‘‘active complicity with valuesthat conflict with one’s home- and community-based Dis-courses.’’38 In effect, Gee concludes that contemporary educationexcludes many students on the basis of their home literacy—a factat odds with utopian constructions of the academy as a levelplaying field where all students face the same challenges andsuccess results from hard work and personal merit. Gee and otherscontinue to struggle with the implications of this conclusion.39

If literacy is the ability to read, interpret, and produce textsvalued in a community, then academic information literacy is theability to read, interpret, and produce information valued inacademia—a skill that must be developed by all students duringtheir college education. Information functions in very unique waysin higher education. Academics validate information throughcomplex peer review processes in ways that may seem obsessive,even paranoid, to outsiders. These processes make perfect sense to

196 The Journal of Academic Librarianship

the initiated. Students must learn how information functions inproof or argument, and why that information is accepted whileother information is not. Ultimately, students need to produceinformation that meets the community’s standards. Faculty in thevarious disciplines expects student work to reflect an under-standing of their disciplinary styles. Academic conventions reflectbeliefs about how research should be done, and how students’work should be measured against these standards. Informationliteracy, seen in this way, is more than a set of acquired skills. Itinvolves the comprehension of an entire system of thought and theways that information flows in that system. Ultimately, it alsoinvolves the capacity to critically evaluate the system itself.

‘‘ If literacy is the ability to read, interpret, andproduce texts valued in a community, then

academic information literacy is the ability toread, interpret, and produce information valued

in academia...’’

Becher and Trowler argue that the ‘‘professional languageand literature of a disciplinary group play a key role inestablishing a cultural identity.’’ All disciplines employ distinctstyles of communication, ‘‘a particular set of favoured terms,sentence structures and logical syntax—which it is not easy foran outsider to imitate.’’ They conclude that, alongside the

structural features of disciplinary communities. . .are their more

explicitly cultural elements; their traditions, customs and practices,

transmitted knowledge, beliefs, morals and rules of conduct as well as

their linguistic and symbolic forms of communication and the meanings

they share. To be admitted to membership of a particular sector of the

academic profession involves not only a sufficient level of technical

proficiency in one’s intellectual trade but also a proper measure of

loyalty to one’s collegial group and of adherence to its norms. An

appreciation of how an individual is inducted into the disciplinary

culture is important to the understanding of that culture.40

Far from arbitrary, academic ‘‘style’’ manifests a way ofthinking and a set of shared values. Students who aspire tomembership in academic communities must master both theexternal style and the way of thinking to be initiated into adiscipline. Librarianship as a profession should developstrategies for helping students master these styles and patternsof thinking.

Literacy events in higher education occur in many venues(classrooms, coffee shops, auditoriums, faculty offices, etc.)and they involve many academic ‘‘genres’’ (lecture, Socraticquestioning, debate, research essay, oral examination, defense,etc.). These literacy events and academic genres range frominformal to formal and low pressure to high pressure. Theyallow for the negotiation of community standards and themeasuring of individual progress. Academia generates theseliteracy events intentionally and self-consciously, and theability to succeed in college depends in large part onmastering their social codes and customs. Berkentotter andHuckin first formulated the dimensions of academic literacyevents by defining them as academic genres and identifyingfive principles they embody. First, academic genres are

dynamic forms that ‘‘develop from responses to recurrentsituations and serve to stabilize experience and give itcoherence and meaning.’’41 These genres derive from ‘‘ourparticipation in the communicative activities of daily andprofessional life.’’ Genre knowledge embraces both ‘‘formand content,’’ and has a ‘‘duality of structure’’ which meansthat even ‘‘as we draw on genre rules to engage inprofessional activities, we constitute social structures. . .andsimultaneously reproduce those structures.’’ Finally, ‘‘genresare owned by communities, and genre conventions signal adiscourse community’s norms, epistemology, ideology, andsocial ontology.’’42 Indeed, without academic genres it wouldbe impossible to engage in scholarship. Genres provide uswith explicit patterns for creating academic work—the wayswe construct our identities as writers and researchers, theways we construct and interpret our major statements and useevidence, and the ways we conceive of the communities weaddress with our scholarship.

While all communities rank literacy performance to someextent, academia is relatively unique in its formal andritualized assessments, with the result that in academia‘‘nearly everything is graded in more or less subtle ways.’’43

Through institutionalized processes – such as assigning gradesto students, granting tenure and promotion, conducting peerreview of books and articles, establishing institutional rank-ings, and the ranking of publications for prestige – judgmentsabout quality permeate higher education. All these rankingand grading reflect the negotiation of community standards asdetermined by performance in increasingly sophisticatedliteracy events. Literacy events in higher education have, asa result, two sometimes contradictory functions. One is toplace community standards on display to help students andfaculty measure their own growth and achievement. The otheris to determine who ultimately belongs in college and whodoes not. Literacy events therefore take on a high-stakesperformance quality in academia. Literacy events determinewho succeeds and also who fails. These competing con-ceptions of literacy create tension within academic literacylibrarianship. Should librarians ‘‘serve’’ the academy byteaching its literacy skills unquestioningly, or should librariansparticipate in the critical reflection undertaken by ‘‘educa-tors,’’ a reflection that leads us to challenge, if necessary, thepolitics of academic exclusion, and to participate in thecreation of new and better academic models?

A GRAMMAR OF INFORMATION

Information has a grammatical dimension that informationliterate academics must master and students must be taught. AsGee notes, we create structures ‘‘to have patterns in them byvirtue of which interpreters can attribute situated identities andspecific activities to us and our utterances.’’44 These structuresand patterns constitute a grammatical system for facilitatingcommunication. Libraries have traditionally created andmanaged the structures that organize information, and thehistorical meaning of ‘‘grammar’’ naturally suits it to the studyof underlying logical structures like MARC and the Library ofCongress Subject Headings. The ability to parse a journalcitation or to read a catalog record results from an under-standing of its deep structures and derives from a disciplinedand grammatical approach to information. The citationfunctions to distill the elements of publication into concisecode. We can treat this citation either prescriptively (there is a

‘‘right way’’ to cite and a universal truth reflected in itsstructure) or as a social construct (by focusing on why citationmatters in the academy and what conversations are implied innetworks of citation).

To make judgments about citations – the kind of workcited, the value of the work in the academic discipline, andthe creation of citations to support arguments or prove facts –involves understanding disciplinary conversations and whycitations are so important in academia. Jon Olson argues that‘‘grammar class has long been a site for displaying power,’’usually the teacher’s power. In the banking concept ofeducation, teachers know grammar and they teach it tostudents who ‘‘bank’’ it.45 The motive for learning grammaroften involves establishing rules for belonging, and correctgrammar, as Mitchell notes, has long been used by themiddle class ‘‘in generating its own identity’’ apart from the‘‘lower’’ classes.46 As an alternative, Olson proposes ‘‘abroad view of grammar which focuses on the ends oflanguage rather than the particulars.’’ Olson notes thatgrammar can ‘‘help transfer power from teachers to students.The power will not be freedom from rules of usage; ratherthe rules will be contextualized, subordinated to the ends ofpolitical arete.’’47 To apply this contextualized perspective tothe grammar of information, students must understand thatthe libraryTs ‘‘grammars of information’’ are reflections of aparticular world view—Anglo, Western, Christian, andpredominantly male. Should librarians be content to teach‘‘the grammar of information,’’ or should they emphasize itsrole in creating privileged discourse? Again, it depends onwhether we see librarianship as a profession which serves thedominant ideology of the academy, or whether librarians seethemselves a critical educators in pursuit of more ‘‘demo-cratic’’ models.

‘‘ Should librarians be content to teach‘‘the grammar of information,’’ or should they

emphasize its role in creating privilegeddiscourse?’’

Hope Olson argues, that ‘‘Melvil Dewey and [the DeweyDecimal System] both accept a concept of knowledge basedin Cartesian epistemology. They accept that a single knowablereality exists and that we come to know it by discoveringuniversal truth.. . . The notational universal language ofclassification maps the topography of recorded knowledgestructuring a space to reflect the single knowable reality anduniversal truth.’’48 Elsewhere, Olson argues that the ‘‘roots ofthe classes in the Dewey Decimal System classification. . .godeep into Western philosophy.’’ She concludes, ‘‘it is nosurprise then that Dewey’s approach is reflective of both theepistemological and ontological presumptions’’ of that phi-losophy.49 For information literacy to have a criticaldimension, it must involve both an understanding of howvarious classification systems work, and also an explorationof how they create and perpetuate such powerful categoriesfor representing ‘‘knowable reality and universal truth.’’These systems can be learned (indeed, they must be learnedfor students to gain a full measure of control over their work),

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but learning them need not involve an unquestioning accept-ance of the accompanying world view.

Indeed, Luke and Kapitzke locate much of their criticismof library research in this region, noting that, in Breivik andGee’s definition of information literacy, ‘‘knowledge isexternal to the knower, existing as a thing-in-itself, independ-ent of mediation and interpretation. Seekers of dTruthT cantrack it down and capture it either in the confines of thelibrary or in limitless cyberspace.’’50 In order to address theseconcerns, librarians in the academy need to define informa-tion itself as the product of socially negotiated epistemolog-ical processes and the raw material for the further making ofnew knowledge. Information literate academics understandthat the peer review process tends to replicate authorizedknowledge and resists alternative thinking, and that collec-tions structured by classification systems derived fromdisciplinary ontologies explicitly function to channel thinkinginto disciplinary categories.51 Ultimately, critical informationliteracy involves developing a critical consciousness aboutinformation, learning to ask questions about the library’s (andthe academy’s) role in structuring and presenting a single,knowable reality.

CONCLUSION

For librarians to work in literacy education, they will need adifferent kind of philosophy than librarians of the past. AsRay notes, instructional librarianship requires extensiveknowledge of pedagogies and of the cultures and discoursecommunities of higher education.52 Such an approach impliesthat the library profession must evolve accordingly, a factwhich a growing number of librarians realize. Librarians (andthose who teach them) must revise the notion that learning tobe a librarian means acquiring and storing knowledge aboutlibraries—whether that knowledge pertains to learning the‘‘best sources’’ for reference, learning the Library of Congressrules for cataloging and classifying, or learning models forefficient management. Librarians need to develop a criticalconsciousness about libraries, by learning to ‘‘problematize’’the library. Education for librarians must become what Frierecalls a ‘‘problem posing education.’’53 With this shift,librarians will cease to study the ‘‘library-as-subject,’’ andwill instead become specialists in coaching intellectual growthand critical development. Learning becomes the essentiallyhumanistic process of engaging and solving significantproblems in the world, a process central to both teachingand learning. Information can then be redefined as the rawmaterial students use to solve these problems and to createtheir own understandings and identities, rather than assomething ‘‘out there’’ to be accessed efficiently, either inthe library or in the world. This educational process cannot beconveyed as ‘‘content.’’ It is, rather, a ‘‘path’’ or ‘‘journey’’ ofintellectual growth and understanding. Learners and teachersneed to negotiate the journey together and for themselves.The education of librarians needs to prepare them to helpothers negotiate it, which they cannot do until they havelearned to negotiate it themselves.

The real task for libraries in treating information literacyseriously lies not in defining it or describing it, but indeveloping a critical practice of librarianship—a theoreticallyinformed praxis. With this philosophical evolution, librariescan no longer be seen as value-neutral cultural space, andlibrarians cannot be defined as value-neutral information

198 The Journal of Academic Librarianship

providers. Librarians will be involved with the daily struggleof translation between the organized conceptions of knowl-edge and the efforts of all students to engage that knowledge.This struggling with meaning is crucial to literacy education,and for librarians and libraries to realize the full potentialinherent in information literacy, libraries need to engage thisstruggle, thereby aligning the values of critical literacy withthe day-to-day work of librarians. This development willlikely require ongoing questioning and challenging ofcherished library values. If librarians wish to take their placeamong the progressive educators in the academy, it is vitalthat this process takes place.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

1. For a cogent discussion of the implications of ‘‘information literacy’’as a phrase, see Christine Pawley, ‘‘Information Literacy: A Contra-dictory Coupling,’’ The Library Quarterly 73, 4 (October 2003).

2. Teresa Neeley, Sociological and Psychological Aspects of Infor-mation Literacy in Higher Education (Lanham: Scarecrow Press2002), pp. 5–6;Christine Bruce, Seven Faces of Information Literacy (Adelaide:Auslib Press, 1997), p. 38;Dane Ward, ‘‘Seeking the Promised Land of InformationLiteracy,’’ in Integrating Information Literacy into the CollegeExperience (Ann Arbor: Pierian Press 2002), p. 2.

3. James K. Elmborg, ‘‘Teaching at the Desk: Toward A ReferencePedagogy,’’ portal: Libraries and the Academy 2 (3) (2002): 455.

4. ARL Statistics online http://www.arl.org/stats/arlstat/graphs/2003/pubser03.pdf (accessed April 7, 2005).

5. Michael S. Ray, Shifting Sands: The Jurisdiction of Librarians inScholarly Communication (PhD dissertation, University of Ari-zona, 1999), p.179.

6. C.S. Fowler & S. Walter, ‘‘Instructional Leadership: NewResponsibilities for a New Reality,’’ College and ResearchLibraries News 64 (7) (July/August 2003): 466.

7. Christine Pawley, ‘‘Information Literacy: A Contradictory Cou-pling,’’ 425.

8. Allan Luke & Cushla Kapitzke, ‘‘Literacy and Libraries: Archivesand Cybraries,’’ Pedagogy, Culture and Society 7 (3) (1999): 486.

9. Rolf Norgaard, ‘‘Writing Information Literacy: Contributions to aConcept,’’ Reference and User Services Quarterly 43 (2) (2003):124–130.

10. Troy Swanson, ‘‘A Radical Step: Implementing A CriticalInformation Literacy Model,’’ portal: Libraries and the Academy4 (April 2004): 263.

11. Paolo Freire, trans. Donald Macedo, Pedagogy of the Oppressed(New York: Continuum, 2002), 30th Anniversary Edition, p. 72.

12. Ibid., p. 73.13. Ibid., p. 72.14. Ryan Gage, ‘‘Henry Giroux’s Abandoned Generation and Critical

Librarianship: A Review Article,’’ Progressive Librarian 23(Spring 2004): 71.

15. Carol Collier Kuhlthau, Seeking Meaning: A Process Approach toLibrary and Information Services (Westport, CT: LibrariesUnlimited 2nd ed., 2004).

16. M.W. Eisenberg & R.E. Berkowitz, Information problem-solving:the Big Six Skills Approach to Library and Information SkillsInstruction (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1990).

17. Barbara K. Stripling, Brainstorms and Blueprints: TeachingLibrary Research as a Thinking Process (Englewood: LibrariesUnlimited, 1988).

18. Marjorie Pappas & Ann Tepe, Pathways to Knowledge andInquiry Learning (Englewood: Libraries Unlimited, 2002).

19. Ann Irving, Study and Information Skills Across the Curriculum(London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1985).

20. ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards, online http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlstandards/informationliteracycompetency.htm (accessed April 8, 2005).

21. Paul Prior, Writing/Disciplinarity: A Sociohistoric Account of LiterateActivity in the Academy (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1998) p. 6.

22. James P. Gee, An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory andMethod (New York: Routledge, 1997) p. 73.

23. Mike Rose, Lives on the Boundary: The Struggles and Achieve-ments of America’s Underprepared (New York: Free Press, 1989),pp. 33–35.

24. Lisa Delpit, Other People’s Children: Cultural Conflict in theClassroom (New York: New Press, 1995), pp. 69.

25. Herbert Kohl, I Won’t Learn from You: The Role of Assent inLearning (New York: the New Press, 1994), p. 6.

26. New London Group, Multiliteracies: Literacy, Learning and theDesign of Social Futures. edited by Kope & Kalantzis (London:Routledge, 2000), p. 9.

27 Gunther Kress & Theo van Leeuwen, Multimodal Discourse: TheModes and Media of Contemporary Communication (New York:Oxford UP, 2001).

28. Mary Hamilton, ‘‘Expanding the New Literacy Studies: UsingPhotographs to Explore Literacy as Social Practice,’’ SituatedLiteracies edited by David Barton and Mary Hamilton (London:Routledge, 2000).

29. Howard Gardner, Frames of Mind: The Theory of MultipleIntelligences (New York: Basic Books 1993), pp. 347–348.

30. Gunther Kress & Theo van Leeuwen, Reading Images: TheGrammar of Visual Design (London: Routledge, 1996).

31. Shirley Brice Heath, Ways With Words: Language, Life, and Workin Communities and Classrooms (New York: Cambridge UP,1983) p. 96.

32. Gee, An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method,p. 29.

33. Gina Claywell, ‘‘Reasserting Grammar’s Position in the Trivium inAmerican College Composition,’’ in The Place of Grammar inWriting Instruction by Susan Hunter and Ray Wallace, (Ports-mouth, NH.: Boynton/Cook. 1995), pp. 49.

34. Pierre Bourdieu & Trans. L.C. Clough, The State Nobility: EliteSchools in the Field of Power (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1996),pp. 331–332.

35. John Dewey, Democracy and Education (New York: Free Press,1997), pp. 87–88.

36. Gee, An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method,p. 527.

37. Kenneth Bruffee, Collaborative Learning: Higher Education,

Interdependence, and the Authority of Knowledge (Baltimore:Johns Hopkins UP, 1993), pp. 22–23.

38. James P. Gee, ‘‘‘Literacy Discourse, and Linguistics’ and dWhat isLiteracy?’’’, in Literacy: A Critical Sourcebook. edited by E.Cushman E. Kintgen B. Kroll M. Rose (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s2001), p. 532.

39. In fact, Gee argues for a complex solution, one that involveschanging the culture of higher education (admittedly a slow andunclear project), developing in students a kind of ‘‘meta-discourse’’ to frame literacy problems, and finally teachingstudents to ‘‘fake’’ the discourses of school. Delpit counters Gee’scontention that secondary discourse fluency is impossible bynoting that, in many cases, students accomplish it.

40. Tony Becher & Paul L. Trowler, Academic Tribes and Territories:Intellectual Enquiry and the Culture of Disciplines (Buckingham:Open University Press, 2001), pp. 46–47.

41. Carol Berkentotter & Thomas N. Huckin, Genre Knowledge inDisciplinary Communication: Cognition/Culture/Power (Hills-dale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1995), p. 4.

42. Ibid., p. 4.43. Becher and Trowler, Academic Tribes and Territories. p. 81.44. Gee, An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method,

p. 29.45. Jon Olson, ‘‘A Question of Power: Why Frederick Douglass Stole

Grammar,’’ in The Place of Grammar in Writing Instruction: Past,Present, Future. Edited by S. Hunter and R. Wallace (Portsmouth,NH: Boynton/Cook Publishers, Heinemann, 1995), p. 39.

46. Linda C. Mitchell, Grammar Wars: Language as a CulturalBattlefield in 17th and 18th Century England (Ashgate: BurlingtonVt., 2001), p. 153.

47. H.A. Olson, ‘‘A Question of Power: Why Frederick DouglassStole Grammar,’’ p. 39.

48. H.A. Olson, ‘‘Dewey Thinks Therefore He Is: The EpistemicStance of Dewey and DDC,’’ Knowledge Organization andChange, (Indeks Verlag, 1996), p. 304.

49. H.A. Olson, ‘‘Sameness and Difference: A Cultural Foundation ofClassification,’’ Library Resources and Technical Services 45:3(July 2001): 117.

50. Allan Luke and Cushla Kapitzke, ‘‘Literacy and Libraries:Archives and Cybraries,’’ p. 483.

51. H.A. Olson, ‘‘Patriarchal Structures of Subject Access andSubversive Techniques for Change,’’ Canadian Journal ofInformation and Library Science 26:2/3 (2001).

52. Ray, Shifting Sands, p. 251.53. Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, p. 79.

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