A practice-based exploration of the enactment of information literacy among PhD students in an interdisciplinary research field
| Date | 09 May 2016 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-05-2015-0056 |
| Published date | 09 May 2016 |
| Author | Ola Pilerot |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Records management & preservation,Document management |
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A practice-based exploration of the enactment of information literacy among
PhD students in an interdisciplinary research field
Introduction
This paper is a contribution to the research area of information practices (e.g. Rivera and Cox, 2014;
Lloyd, Kennan, Thompson and Qayyum, 2013; Cox 2013; Haider 2012; Huizing and Cavanagh 2011;
Pilerot and Limberg, 2011; Talja 2010). It reports a study of how information literacy of PhD students
is enacted in a Nordic network of design researchers. The concept of information practice indicates
the importance of taking a broad perspective when investigating information literacy. Such a
perspective embraces historically shaped socio-cultural aspects, such as norms, conventions, and
routines, the people acting in the site, material aspects, including the use of ICT tools, as well as the
interaction between physical setting and the social site. In accordance with this view, information
literacy is understood as something more than a decontextualized set of skills. IL is seen as the
embodied capacity to understand and be familiar with how information is created, sought, used, and
valued in a certain practice (cf. Lloyd, 2011).
The design research network under study functions as an example of interdisciplinary research. As
will be explained further on in this introduction, students in interdisciplinary fields face a number of
challenges concerning epistemic traditions and variation in research practices. They therefore
constitute an eligible group for the kind of research presented in this article.
Being a doctoral student in the Nordic countries means being in a position where one is outside of
the higher education system as most people know of it. This system is generally characterized,
among other things, by a fairly set schedule of lectures and classes which the student attend
together with, often, a quite big group of fellow students who are supposed to be reading the same
literature and are assigned the same tasks. The transition from large-scale studies, for example in the
shape of undergraduate study programs, to more individually designed study trajectories such as
doctoral studies as these are carried out in the Nordic countries, does not only comprise a move from
a big group of fellow students to a smaller community of PhD students; it also involves a change of
position with regards to the hierarchy of academia. At the same time as the PhD student is on the
way of leaving something behind, he or she is also approaching a social arrangement, which to most
newly recruited doctoral students is relatively unfamiliar. In this new setting, the student is likely to
be exposed to a number of new colleagues comprising the full range of positions in the academic
hierarchy system, all with their varying expectations and assumptions regarding what the student is
supposed to do and not do. Moreover, the PhD student is expected to take greater responsibility for
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his or her studies and research activities than he or she did before embarking on the doctoral
program. With a particular focus on the specific discourse that dominates research work, Charles
Bazerman (1997) has aptly described the complexities that characterize the entry passage to a
research field:
Each person entering the discursive complexes of a scientif ic field must learn to cope with
those communicative means and processes that mediat e participation with others. /…/ [He or
she] must draw on a common body of resources, cope with the same body of material and
symbolic artifacts, master the same tools, and gain legitim acy for any new resources they want
to bring into the field by addressing the same mech anisms of evaluation by which new
concepts, tools, or phenomena gain standing in the dis course (Bazerman, 1997, p. 305).
Information literacy, the way it is conceptualized according to a practice-based approach (e.g. Lloyd,
2011; Pilerot and Lindberg, 2011), epitomizes the common body of resources referred to in the quote
above. Being information literate in a specific research practice accordingly entails knowledge about
what information sources, in the widest sense of the word, that are deemed credible and thus
valuable, what intellectual and physical tools to use for seeking information, and how to
communicate in relation to the information used in the research practice.
Another dimension of complexity is added to the scenario outlined here when considering that
research activities are structured in accordance with an intricate system of fields and disciplines (e.g.
Whitley, 2000). It is well-established that information practices vary by discipline (e.g. Hjörland &
Albrechtsen, 1995; Talja & Maula, 2003) which implies that the newly recruited PhD student will have
to pay attention to and learn how information is sought and used in the specific discipline he or she is
active. The fact that the doctoral students, who have participated in the present study, are active in
an interdisciplinary research field with lopsidedness towards the social sciences thus contributes to
further complicate the understanding of how information literacy is enacted in the practice under
study. From an information perspective, interdisciplinarity can be related to the notions of core and
scatter (Chubin, 1976), according to which literatures are more or less concentrated to one discipline
or distributed over a number of disciplines. In a similar vein but on the notion of “subject
dispersion”, Crane (1972) asserts that “[s]ocial sciences have a higher level of subject dispersion than
do the natural sciences” (p. 102). In her review of the literature, Bates (1996) concludes, with
reference to both Chubin and Crane, that “there may be dramatic differences in the kinds of
strategies needed and the amount of effort needed to seek information, depending on the degree of
coherence of the bibliographic resources of a field” (Bates, 1996, p. 158). In conclusion, it can thus be
asserted that the newly recruited PhD student in an interdisciplinary field faces a demanding
challenge with regards to information literacy.
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