Learning to search and learning to slow down or “The quick and the dead”
| Date | 02 July 2024 |
| Pages | 1475-1493 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-03-2024-0067 |
| Published date | 02 July 2024 |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Records management & preservation,Document management,Classification & cataloguing,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Scholarly communications/publishing,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
| Author | Renee Morrison |
Learning to search and learning
to slow down or “The quick
and the dead”
Renee Morrison
University of the Sunshine Coast –Sunshine Coast Campus, Sippy Downs, Australia
Abstract
Purpose –This study examines the temporal dynamics shaping our understanding of search in education and
the role language plays in legitimising these dynamics. It critiques the way online search is discursively
constructed using home-education as a case study, and problematises how particular discourses are privileged,
whom this privileging serves, as well as the likely consequences.
Design/methodology/approach –The study employs Faircloughian Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as
its methodological framework. Search and discursive practices were recorded during observations, search-
tasks and interviews with five Australian home-educating families. Discursive features from the Google
interface were also analysed.
Findings –A discursive privilegingof hasty search practices was identified. This was found alongside largely
ineffectual search, but participants continued to discursively represent search as fast and easy. The study
highlights the complex co-option of discourses surrounding online search that privilege particular temporal
and commercial landscapes.
Originality/value –This study contributes new knowledge regarding time as a context for understanding
search behaviours, locating the perception of temporal scarcity in education within broader discursive and
social structures. To date, no studies are found which investigate the temporal factors surrounding search in
home-education. Increasing global reliance upon online search means the findings have broad significance, as
does the proliferation of home-education induced by COVID-19. Additionally, while much work problematises
the power search engines wield to privilege certain discourses, few investigate the day-to-day discursive
practices of searchers affording Google and others this power.
Keywords Critical discourse analysis, Education, Home-education, Information literacy, Online search, Time,
Search engines, Temporality
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Despite the increasing ubiquity of online search, and Google recently celebrating its 25th
year, we are only beginning to understand the impacts of this algorithmic media landscape
(Bucher, 2020). Some suggest that one impact has been a “perceived acceleration of society”
(Haider et al., 2022, p. 3) where instantaneity, simultaneity and multitasking are not only
desirable, but expected (Wajcman, 2020). This culture of persistent urgent and rapid
immediacy has both online and offline effects (G
alik and Oprala, 2021), including in
education. Indeed, Marchionini (2019) explains that while we still need to better understand
the consequences of this new temporal regime, one incited by an increasingly algorithmic
information landscape, we know that search has changed us including how and when we
devote our cognitive efforts. In 2006, Savolainen identified the capacity for temporal factors to
restrict and qualify information seeking and called for a research agenda to approach such
factors systematically. According to the present publication’s special issue on Time and
Temporality in Library and Information Science (LIS), such calls remain largely unanswered
(Haider et al., 2022). This special issue brought together works investigating how time and
temporality shape notions of information. Like Savolainen’s work though, the issue did not
comprise studies in the field of education. The present work explores online search, and the
privileging of fast search in one particular, but growing, educational format: home-education.
More specifically, using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), the work critiques the way online
Journal of
Documentation
1475
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/0022-0418.htm
Received 19 March 2024
Revised 31 May 2024
Accepted 10 June 2024
Journal of Documentation
Vol. 80 No. 6, 2024
pp. 1475-1493
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/JD-03-2024-0067
search is discursively constructed in education, problematising how discourses of fast search
are particularly privileged, whom this privileging serves, as well as the likely consequences.
For nearly two decades, lack of time has been reported as “one of the most frequent
barriers in information seeking”(Savolainen, 2006, p. 118). Some of these barriers are
objective, set time limits per search for example, and an abundance of literature considers the
impact of such barriers on search with mixed results (Chevalier et al., 2015;Sharit et al., 2015;
Sun et al., 2014;Zhang and Quintana, 2012). The present work instead considers subjective
constraints on search, locating our perception of temporal scarcity within broader discursive
and social structures that serve political and commercial ends, not educational ones.
Significant incursion into the education “market”has already been made by commercial
juggernauts like Google contingent upon an attention economy (Grimaldi and Ball, 2021;
Perrotta et al., 2021) and this, coupled with a focus upon speed not scholarship can put
learners at risk. A robust body of research reports that educators and students search in
ineffectual ways (e.g. Fraillon et al., 2019;Karaseva, 2016), perhaps suggesting that this focus,
and the associated discourses, do not support beneficial search in education. Some suggest
that tech giants actually incite undemanding search practices, limiting the potential benefits
of online search (Haider and Sundin, 2019) while maximising profits.
The power search engines wield to privilege certain discourses has previously been
critiqued (Baker and Potts, 2013;Noble, 2018), but little research investigates the day-to-day
discursive practices of searchers affording Google and others this power, including in
education. This paper’s aim is to better understand the temporal dynamics that shape our
understanding of search in education and the role language plays in legitimising these
dynamics and resultant search practices. It identifies privileged conceptions of search, and of
time, as reflections of broader ideologies and problematises how these conceptions can
restrict learning and become instruments of control (Haider and Sundin, 2022b;Haider et al.,
2022). By analysing a selection of discourse (both human and algorithmically-created
discourse), the study sheds new light on the ideologies privileging fast, often limited search,
using home-education as a case study.
Though various definitions exist, this study defines home-education as “the [voluntary]
education of students, parent-directed, at home”(Neil et al., 2014, p. 107). In Australia, an
estimated 40,000 children are presently home-educated, with every state and territory
experiencing record high registrations (Cassidy, 2023). Early work by Van Galen (1988)
divided home-educating parents into two groups based on motivation: pedagogues (those at
odds with the methods of teaching or the nature of public schooling) and ideologues (those
who desire to teach conservative religious values). More recent work by English (2021)
divides home-educators into the “deliberates”and the “accidentals”; the latter group having
not intended to educate their children in the home until circumstances demanded it (e.g.
COVID-19 school closures) or made it more appealing. The present participants did not begin
home-educating due to COVID-19, but recent increases in several countries in home-education
registrations (Fitzsimmons, 2022;Hanks, 2020;McCulloch, 2022) appear to suggest that, like
English’s“accidentals”, some forced to home-educate during this time are making the change
permanent. Such growth, in addition to an increasing global reliance upon online search
means the present findings have broad significance.
The rest of the paper is structured as follows. First, research on time and temporality in
online search is presented, as is some preliminary literature on discourse and online search.
Next, the theoretical framework is discussed, identifying how Fairclough’s model for CDA is
used to inform a critical discursive perspective of online search. The specific instruments
used for material collection and a description of the analytical procedures employed are then
presented. Several excerpts are used in the findings section to illustrate how the participants’
discussion of search (in interview) and during search (in observations) reflect assumptions
that online search is inherently fast, with other materials presented to demonstrate the
JD
80,6
1476
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