From informational reading to information literacy

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to historicise research conducted in the fields of Information Seeking and Learning and Information Literacy and thereby begin to outline a description of the history of information in the context of Swedish compulsory education. Design/methodology/approach Document work and documentary practices are used as alternatives to concepts such as information seeking or information behaviour. Four empirical examples of document work – more specifically informational reading – recorded in Swedish primary classrooms in the 1960s are presented. Findings In the recordings, the reading style students use is similar to informational reading in contemporary educational settings: it is fragmentary, facts-oriented, and procedure-oriented. The practice of finding correct answers, rather than analysing and discussing the contents of a text seems to continue from lessons organised around print textbooks in the 1960s to the inquiry-based and digital teaching of today. Originality/value The paper seeks to analyse document work and documentary practices by regarding “information” as a discursive construction in a particular era with material consequences in particular contexts, rather than as a theoretical and analytical concept. It also problematises the notion that new digital technologies for producing, organising, finding, using, and disseminating documents have drastically changed people’s behaviours and practices in educational and other contexts.

Aesthetic reading as a problem in mid-20 th centurySwedish educational policy

“…In this concept the experience is arguably more central than any objectively identifiable quality in the literary text. However, as mentioned above, previous research suggests that informational reading, focusing on non-fiction, study skills, and finding facts was favoured in actual classroom practices (Dolatkhah & Lundh 2016;Lundh et al, 2018), meaning that the practice of experiential reading may have been limited.…”

“…There are, for obvious reasons, fewer studies of actual classroom practices. A few examples (Dolatkhah and Lundh 2016;Lundh et al 2018) show that actual reading activities in Swedish primary school classrooms in the late 1960s were mostly focussed on informational factfinding reading rather than experiential, imaginative reading.…”

“…Furthermore, we focus on a particular aspect of the politics of reading, namely educational policy. Finally, we focus on a particular type of reading, namely aesthetic reading (Rosenblatt 2002; see also Dolatkhah & Lundh, 2014;Lundh et al, 2018). By aesthetic reading we refer to a tradition of reading for pleasure, enjoyment and meaningful cultural experiences.…”

Readers’ experiences of fiction and nonfiction influencing critical thinking

“…The role of fiction, and the role of the public library in promoting CT, is underexplored. This is mirrored in the wider focus of LIS research, where there has arguably been 'a long tradition involving a rationalistic utilitarian more of reading, in contrast to an experiential, emotional mode of reading' (Lundh et al, 2018(Lundh et al, : 1048. Hampson Lundh and colleagues distinguish the 'informational reading' approach, where reading is done to extract facts and specific answers, from 'experiential reading' associated with fiction.…”

“…Furthermore, the intentional approach to defining fiction chimes with calls for library classification to acknowledge different readers understandings (Ward and Saarti, 2018). Nonfiction has been strongly focussed on in previous information literacy (IL) research, which has emphasised 'informational reading' to obtain knowledge (Lundh et al, 2018). This has focussed on conditions under which we should believe or disbelieve information, typically by judging source quality (e.g.…”