Six Frames for Information literacy Education: a conceptual framework for interpreting the relationships between theory and practice.

Abstract

Information literacy educators are daily challenged by an environment in which colleagues and students bring very different perspectives to curriculum design, teaching and learning, and by the need to apply theories of learning to information literacy education in coherent ways. The purpose of this paper is to propose a model, Six Frames for Information Literacy Education, as a tool for analysing, interpreting and understanding these challenges; and to explain the relational frame in more detail. In the first part of this paper we provide an overview of the different ways in which teaching, learning, and information literacy may be approached. We also introduce the Six Frames for information literacy education. In the second part, we explore some challenges and techniques of applying the relational frame for information literacy education in more detail. Finally, we suggest some ways in which using the six frames may assist practice.

Keywords:

• Information literacy
• learning
• relational model
• six frames of information literacy education
• variation theory

Biographies

Christine Bruce is Associate Professor and Director of Teaching and Learning in the Faculty of Information Technology at QUT, Brisbane, Australia. She developed the relational model for information literacy education, and has extensive interests in higher education teaching and learning.

Sylvia Lauretta Edwards is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Information Technology at QUT. Sylvia has received nine teaching awards. Her research interests include higher education, information literacy and information searching. She has co-developed the Reflective Internet Searching Model and developed a relational model of the experiences of students web-based information searching.

Mandy Lupton is a Lecturer in the Griffith Institute for Higher Education, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia. She is currently undertaking a PhD investigating students’ ways of experiencing the relationship between information literacy and learning.

Appendix One — Six Frames for IL Education (adapted from Eisner and Valance, 1974; Kemmis et al, 1983; Pratt et al, 1998; Toohey 1999)