Page 247 - Journal of Library Science in China, Vol.47, 2021

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246 Journal of Library Science in China, Vol.13, 2021

No.5

The foundational structure of information literacy as its empowerment
mechanism

〇a*
YU Liangzhi & WANG Junli
This study aims to investigate the mechanism through which information literacy programs
empower students, and in so doing, to justify its status as a distinct education practice and to
provide guidance for possible innovations of information literacy education in China. It draws
on modern practice theories and traditional Chinese concepts of knowledge-, utility- and
development-oriented education. It focuses on formal credit-earning information literacy courses
and takes the university-wide courses as a unit of analysis. It collects data from courses of 6 out of
23 universities and colleges in one region through participant observations and in-depth interviews.
In total, the authors participated in 76 hours of 20 courses, which amount to 12.7 hours for each
course and 3.3 courses for each university. In observing these courses, one of the researchers tape
recorded (with the lecturer’s consent) and took notes of every possible detail of the classroom
activities, including contents taught, the lecturers’ doings and sayings, and the interaction between
the lecturers and the students. The study further interviewed 20 lecturers and one administrator
responsible for information literacy education, inquiring about the background for the course-
offerings, objectives of the courses, course designs, syllabus, teaching approaches and assessment,
etc. It analyzed the collected data in light of Schatzi’s practice theory. In addition to the courses’
teleo-affective structure as theorized by Schatzi, this study reveals a more fundamental structure
on which the teaching practice of the investigated courses is based. This structure consists of
information related objects concerned by the courses and their associated literacies covered by the
courses; it indicates the courses’ understanding of what exactly information literacy is about and
what it should contain, which the courses pass implicitly on to their students. This study names the
structure “the taught structure of information literacy”. This study further demonstrates that it is
possible to extend this structure to one that includes more objects and more associated literacies,
which it calls “the foundational structure of information literacy”. It argues that the more a course’s
taught structure is aligned with the foundational structure, the greater is its empowerment, and the
more likely will it achieve both instrumental and intellectual empowerment on one dimension, and
knowledge-oriented, utility-oriented and development-oriented empowerment on the other.

* Correspondence should be addressed to YU Liangzhi, Email: lzhyu@nankai.edu.cn, ORCID: 0000-0003-0905-397X.