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Using Phenomenographic
Methods to Support Political Information Use
Lauren Smith
Department Of Computer and Information Sciences and School Of Education, University Of Strathclyde
@walkyouhome
This study looks at the
different ways in which the
participants are aware of,
acquire, engage with and
apply political information
Phenomenography and information literacy
Author(s) Topic
Bruce et al. (2006) Different ways of approaching
teaching and IL
Boon, Johnston and Webber (2007) Conceptions of information literacy
Williams and Wavell (2007) Secondary school teachers'
conceptions of student IL
Smith (2010) Young people’s experiences of
information
Nielsen and Borlund (2011) Students’ perceptions of public
libraries’ role in learning, IL and
librarians’ information
competencies
Diehm and Lupton (2012) University students’ approaches to
learning IL
Forster (2015) Nursing, IL, ethics & professional
competence
This study:
• Participants were Year 10 students
(aged 14-15) in a school in South Yorkshire,
England
• Although not legally allowed to vote, they had
begun to engage in political discussion as part of
the educational curriculum
• 23 individual interviews and 3 focus groups
Analysis
• Phenomenographic studies do not make use of
predetermined hypotheses or coding categories
• Examined the focus group and interview transcripts in their entirety
• Identified common themes and theoretical
concepts, coded as they emerged
• Identified similarities and differences in the ways
the participants experienced political information
Anatomy of the outcome space
• Levels
• Categories of description
• Structure of awareness
• Dimensions of variation
Outcome Space
Young people’s conceptions of political information are varied, and they and
encounter a wide range of information
sources providing them with the knowledge
to form political opinions.
Dimensions of variation
Production of information
Category
of
Description
One Two Three Four Five Six
Production
of
information
Not perceived as
being part of a
system of
production or the
individual’s own
repertoire of
information
PI external
to
individual -
not
processed
Individual is part
of the process of
the production of
new information
Active
sharing &
production
aiming for
social
change
Evaluation of information
Category of
DescriptionOne Two Three Four Five Six
Evaluation
of
information
PI sources &
their content
are not
evaluated
Superficial;
PI taken at
face value
Evaluation
of basic
credibility
PI is subject to
critique &
evaluation
Political information and agency
Category of
DescriptionOne Two Three Four Five Six
Information
and agency
PI not connected
to indiv iduals’
conceptions of
own agency
Superficial
acknowledge-
ment of PI &
agency
relationship
Active use
of PI to
help
develop
(perhaps
illusory)
‘sense’ of
agency
PI v iewed
as
necessary
to create
conditions
for agency
Engagement
with PI
connected to
personal
action
Conception of politics
Politics as all issues affecting public life
Politics as social issues
Politics as...
Politics as current events reported in media
Politics as formal processes
Categories of description
Categories of description represent the different
conceptions participants express about the research phenomenon; a ‘conception’ being a
‘qualitatively distinct manner in which the subjects were found to voice the way they thought’ about the phenomenon (Marton and Booth 1997, p.36)
Different ways of experiencing political information
1) ... A range of sources of information;
2) ... Something which is encountered out of context;
3) ... Something to fill a knowledge gap;
4) ... Something through which to gain meaning and context;
5) ... Something relevant to one’s own life;
6) ... Something which can help to achieve social change.
Political information as something to fill a knowledge gap
• Deliberate acquisition of information to form an
opinion and fill a gap• Information as external object to meet an internal
need• Engagement with information beneficial but not
essential
• Educational and real-world outcomes• Political knowledge as a commodity
• Not conceptualised as being part of a system• Evaluated based on existing predispositions and
assumptions
Political information as something to fill a knowledge gap
If I want to find out more about
something I’ve heard on the news I’ll
Google it, just to find out the basic facts
so I know what’s going on. (P26 FG3)
I can see the value of
learning about politics but I
wouldn’t want to do it at
school unless I could do it
as a GCSE. (P8 FG1)
I hate it when my Grandad comes out with
something, like when he’s watching the news, and
I know he’s wrong, but I don’t have the facts to
back myself up if I said anything to him about it.
If I could say like, that’s not how many people are
benefits cheats really or whatever because I knew
the facts, that’d be good. (P7 FG2)
Political information as something through which to gain meaning and context
• Potentially useful resources for sense-making
• Develop opinions, beliefs, attitudes, understanding• Easy to manage amount of information
• Does not challenge existing worldviews but develop considered opinions
• Awareness that information production is a process
and can be subject to critical analysis• Develop a ‘sense’ of political agency (albeit with
existing biases)
Political information as something through which to gain meaning and context
He [the sociology teacher] always
brings up things in the news, like
how does that fit in with what we're
doing, like family or youth or
something. (P15 FG1)
The newspapers can be very biased because
the editor or whoever it is who’s written that
particular article writes it, so they put their
own view into it. (P7 FG2)
I wouldn’t want to be
able to vote because I
don’t know enough. I
mean, what if I voted
and I voted for the
wrong party - the ones
who lost? (P8 FG1)
Political information as something relevant to one’s own life
• Actively use information to develop a ‘sense’ of
political agency, taking an interest• Understanding the “right” political views
• Broader ‘landscape’ of politics• Used to develop understanding of politics and society• Individual part of the production of new information
• Critical assessment of information sources• Connection between information from academic
lessons and everyday life acknowledged
Political information as something relevant to one’s own life
It kind of annoys me, the fact that the
Prime Minister is usually someone
who's been brought up middle class,
that's never had to pay for anything, so
they don't quite know how our parents
feel, they don't quite know what it's like
to work and have to earn and stuff like
that. (P18 FG2)
I think the only time I care about
politics, is if it affects me or my family.
If it doesn't, I have no reason to care
about it. (P23 FG2)
Sometimes I think I know
about something but…I’ll
hear something on the news
and it makes me realise
there’s more to it…I learn
from that…when I’m
talking to my friends…I’ll
tell them it’s different. (P27
FG2)
I think it’s important to be
thinking about things now
because even though I can’t
vote yet, I do want to. So I
need to know what I think
about things. (P3)
Political information as something that can help to achieve social change
• Developing a consciousness of the structures of power and systems of production
• Information sharing and production with a view to enacting social change
• Production of political opinion• Assess reliability of information • Understand impact of bias and misinformation• Connect engagement with political information to action:
being informed enough to become involved • Focus on application of information for social change
Political information as something that can help to achieve social change
On Tumblr you’ll see a
picture and it’ll come with
a little caption about it, and
then everybody will talk
about what they think about
it, and they can have a
debate on it… And there’ll
be different things that they
talk about, like…feminism
and stuff I hadn’t learnt
about before. (P9)
I like going to village meetings even
though I’m the youngest one there
because it’s where you find out local
things that you don’t hear about ,
even in The Free Press. I like to
know what I can do about things,
how I can help. Like the other day,
with the protest against the building
work, they were saying what you
can write in letters to the
councillors and that. (P26)
Levels of the outcome space
Although hierarchical in structure, the outcome space is not a representation
of developmental phases of political activism, but is a representation of the
different ways in which the participants experience political information and
how they reported using information to become informed or take action.
Research outcomes focus on how the variation of experiences and different ways of
thinking about a phenomenon can be used as
‘a powerful way of seeing’, which in turn can
be supported by educators to become
‘powerful ways of acting.’ (Marton and Tsui 2004, p.8)
Use of phenomenography
Inclusion and participation
Understanding these experiences can help us influence the degree of
complexity with which young people use
information to help them form political
opinions and participate in democracy.
Finding out about the specific contexts of
learners and the sources of information they
encounter can help instructors to tailor their
work to the needs of their learning
communities.
The methods used in this research can be
applied in practice.
Tailoring our education
Finding out about where young people get information from about the world around
them and how they assess the authority of
these sources helps us develop theory and
helps us understand how we can help them to
critically evaluate information and make informed choices.
Helping our young people
Acknowledging that beliefs and actions are influenced by heuristics, emotions and
sociopolitical factors, and that non-
‘traditional’ sources of information can be
just as (or more) valid in certain contexts
than traditional authorities, enables us to view the role of information literacy (in
theory and practice) in a different light.
IL in a different light
What can we do to support more complex conceptions of
political information?
Drawing on critical pedagogy
Culture of praxis
• Young people are conscious of power differentials
• Learn more effectively when teacher seen as a ‘person’
• Scope to build strong relationships with students• Opportunity for a less hierarchical learning
environment
• Emancipatory practice that provides the conditions for both to “speak and be taken seriously” (Giroux
2005, p.27)
Supporting popular culture as an information source
• The benefits of using popular culture as an information source can be harnessed rather
than warned against as an ‘invalid’
information source
• Finding out how students perceive and
evaluate these sources to help them do so more effectively
Border pedagogy
• Helping students to locate accurate information
and to challenge the messages promoted by the mass media
• Critically interrogate the reasons behind their own willingness to accept misinformation as accurate
• Encourage them to consider whose voices aren’t
being heard• Think about the reasons institutions of power
support the dominant culture through promotion of inequality and fear of the Other
• Phenomenographic exploration offered
participants the opportunity to voice their experiences of political information and their
concerns and attitudes about social and political issues
• The voices of all participants were given equal
weight and taken seriously
• The fundamental principles of the approaches may be a useful starting point for engaging in this kind of work
Phenomenography in practice
Spaces for speech
The process of involving students in focus groups where they were encouraged to
speak freely, and participants were
encouraged to challenge the statements
being made by others, contributed to the
development of participants’ learning about the issues they were talking about,
such as benefit fraud and immigration.
Liberatory approaches
• The library should provide a learning
environment in which students feel in control of their learning (Doherty and Ketchner 2005, p.3)
• Flexibility in the content provided• Use of current events and world issues as a focus
of learning
• Promoting activities which are relevant to learners
• Active dialogue with students
Improving critical skills
Supporting learners to critically analyse texts and other information sources
can have a transformative impact on
the learner, helping them to develop a
“healthy and creative scepticism”
which encourages them to pose problems, and to challenge the claims
made (Kincheloe et el. 2010)
Mass media fails to make a
distinction between an
informed argument and an
unsubstantiated opinion
(Giroux 2011, p.83)
Cognitive schema
Phenomenographic interviews and focus groups, or
even casual discussion may help pupils to becomeconscious of underlying assumptions and biases
that inform their worldviews and informationbehaviours, many of which may be limitingindividuals’ capacity to learn and develop as
critically as they may be capable of.
Critical consciousness
Power awareness
Understanding social history
Critical literacyAnalytically reading, writing and discussing social matters
Desocialisation
Examining internalised myths and values of mass culture
Self-organisation/self-education
Taking initiative in ongoing social change
(Deans 1999)
