Research talk by Alison Hicks

Sociocultural approaches to information literacy: Space races, wish-cycling and squabbling siblings

The talk was delivered on 25 October 2023 by Dr. Alison Hicks, member of the FOIL group, as part of the DIS research seminars series.

Sociocultural approaches to information literacy, which recognise that information literacy is shaped through dialogue and debate, have not always been welcomed within LIS, being variously critiqued as ‘fashionable,’ of no interest to practitioners or as irrelevant given the availability of other conceptual work. Yet, it could be argued that these ideas have irrevocably changed the direction of information literacy research and practice, not least by challenging ingrained assumptions about ways of knowing- and how we teach for these ideas. This presentation critically analyses the legacy of information literacy’s sociocultural turn by reflecting on how these ideas have been developed since the early 2000s, how they have been integrated into information literacy discourse and narratives and their contributions to information literacy research and practice.

This presentation has been adapted from Alison’s recent keynote presentation for the European Conference on Information Literacy (ECIL) for UNESCO Global MIL Week.