Assessing disciplinary differences in faculty perceptions of information literacy competencies
| Published date | 21 March 2016 |
| Pages | 227-247 |
| Date | 21 March 2016 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-05-2015-0079 |
| Author | Maria Pinto |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Information behaviour & retrieval |
Assessing disciplinary
differences in faculty
perceptions of information
literacy competencies
Maria Pinto
Universidad de Granada, Granada, Spain
Abstract
Purpose –Uncovering faculty members’conceptions of Information Literacy (IL), as well as exploring
their perceptions with regard to the importance given to a previously defined set of core IL
competences grouped into four categories: searching, evaluation, processing and communication and
dissemination. Ascertaining the possible differences among the five knowledge branches (arts and
humanities, sciences, social and legal sciences, health sciences, and technical disciplines); and
understanding the importance granted to a set of learning improvement initiatives by the faculty.
The paper aims to discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach –The survey was completed by a set of faculty members from the
University of Granada (Spain). Data were collected using the IL-HUMASS survey. The research is
based on subjective data, first approached from a descriptive point of view. Later, data correlation,
analysis and non-parametric tests were used with the goal of finding significant differences of faculty
perceptions among the relevant academic areas.
Findings –Results suggest that more than half of the surveyed faculty have what the authors define
as an Academic Concept of IL. The IL categories of communica\tion and dissemination and searching
were graded in significance by the staff as being “very important,”while those of evaluation and
processing were assigned a slightly lesser rating of “important.”Results suggest that IL awareness
falls into two broad groups differentiated by subject discipline: those from health sciences, social and
legal sciences and arts and humanities representing the first group, and sciences and technical
disciplines the other.
Research limitations/implications –This approach address the subjective status of faculty
concepts in a single university, but also in all knowledge branches. Future research is needed.
Originality/value –This is one of the few papers regarding faculty perceptions of IL.
Keywords Assessment, Information literacy, Perceptions, Disciplinary differences,
Faculty members, Information competencies
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
The understanding of perceptions, and subsequent attitudes and behaviors, of faculty
members in relation to the emerging paradigm of Information Literacy (IL) is an
interesting question of which little is known. This is partly due to the fact that scientific
papers addressing the relationships between IL and university teachers are rather
scarce. Nevertheless, the importance of understanding the states of awareness of
teaching faculty with regard to this topic within our information society is apparent,
as this should be the actual starting point for future improvements aiming to master
IL competencies among teachers. In an academic environment where IL instruction
evolves into a major issue, we must recognize the key role of faculty as facilitators of
learning processes, “Higher education cannot produce information literate students
if it does not first have information literate teachers”(Frier et al., 2001). One has
Aslib Journal of Information
Management
Vol. 68 No. 2, 2016
pp. 227-247
©Emerald Group Publis hing Limited
2050-3806
DOI 10.1108/AJIM-05-2015-0079
Received9May2015
Revised 9 December 2015
Accepted 18 January 2016
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/2050-3806.htm
227
Assessing
disciplinary
differences
to acknowledge that for faculty and other academic professionals to be proactive
rather than reactive consumers in the information society, they must become
information literate. If the faculty have limited skills, how do they train students
to become proficient in information usage (Amstutz and Whitson, 1997)? In short,
faculty ought to possess some basic competencies in IL which allow them to support
both classroom instruction and, ultimately, students’autonomous and meaningful
lifelong learning.
From a theoretical point of view, the modelemployed ranges from the traditional to the
alternative approaches to IL. While the first approach is preferably concerned with the
instruction and the corresponding instructional competencies, the second is more
focussed on learner interactions with information. We are interested in bothapproaches,
but currentlyour main support is the existing literature on the topicof faculty perceptions
of IL competencies. As for the conceptual approach to IL, we havedistinguished between
its universal and academic conception and two alternative misconceptions. These
emerged from the results the focus group, involving a few lecturers and professors from
the University of Granada, prior to the development of this research. The academic
concept is based on the ACRL approaches and refers to the set of skills needed to find,
retrieve,analyze and use information.We refer to this as the AcademicConcept of IL. One
of the alternatives, partial and biasedviews, which we have selectedfor use in the survey,
estimated that IL consists in the ability to carry out independent and ongoing learning.
The other misconception, closer to the concept of digitalliteracy leads us to the mastering
of Information and Communication Technology (ICT).
The overall objective of this paper is to reveal awareness levels of faculty members,
belonging to a wide set of disciplines within the University of Granada (Spain), about
the importance of IL in the students’instructional curriculum. This is a pioneering
study in Spain, based on a model of subjective evaluation that assesses the perceptions
and attitudes of classroom faculty concerning IL.
Through this research the following objectives are intended:
•uncovering the opinions of faculty on what constitutes an information literate
person;
•checking whether these conceptions about IL expressed by faculty affect the
importance which they attach to competencies;
•assessing the overall importance given by faculty to informational macro-
competencies, or categories, obtained from a predefined set of core IL
competencies;
•assessing the importance attached by faculty to each of the IL competencies from
that set;
•uncovering differences of IL attitudes among faculty with regard to the five areas
of knowledge; and
•assessing the importance given by faculty to a set of learning improvement
initiatives proposed for IL instruction.
This is not an attempt, however, to evaluate faculty members’perceptions of the levels
of informational competence of their students. Rather, this research aims to achieve a
better understanding of the importance, for the faculty, of the various IL competencies
necessary to improve student learning.
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