Information literacy practice plays a key role in the transitional processes of individuals within new intercultural settings. While this ability to adjust to new cultural contexts is increasingly important within today’s multicultural societies, campuses and workplaces, typical approaches to information literacy education struggle to scaffold the newcomer’s disrupted information landscapes. In focusing on prescriptive skills, information literacy standards position linguistic and cultural difference as a learning deficiency. Yet, when alternative information literacy frameworks centre upon personal habits of mind, they fail to account for contextual dynamics. In this conceptual paper, the authors use research into the health practices of resettling refugees as an example to argue that a move away from behaviourist approaches to information literacy refocuses our attention on questions of adjustment and engagement with cultural understandings of information, and forms a more inclusive way to consider the diversity of today’s information societies.

Information literacy (IL) research tends to fall into one of two spaces. In the conceptual space the research concern rests with understanding the experience and core elements of the practice and how it emerges. In the practical space the execution and outcome of the practice as markers of successful teaching and learning are the focus. The division between these spaces and the lack of researcher/practitioner convergence create a conundrum that limits our ability to theorise IL, to adequately situate IL in library and information science research, to champion its benefits outside the library and information science field, or to promote to funding bodies the impact of IL. To address this conundrum a theory and foundational model of IL is described which attempts to reconstruct the IL space and its enactments without privileging research or practice.

Purpose This article introduces a range of sensitising themes that may help to frame the emerging concept of fractured landscapes.

Approach. Key concepts are drawn from the forced migration field, from social theory and from library and information science research to frame the concept of fractured landscape research. Methodological and ethical aspects that influence research are also introduced.

Findings.

The importance of nomenclature is identified in relation to designations of refugee and migrant.

The concept of a fractured landscape provides a suitable way of describing the disruption that is caused to refugees’ information landscapes in the process of transition and resettlement. The sensitising themes such as the exilic journey, liminality, integration, bonding and bridging capital are introduced to provide a way of framing a deeper analysis of the information experience of people who must reconcile previously established ways of knowing with the new landscapes related to transition and resettlement.

Conceptual paper

Originality/Value. Original paper that introduces an emerging conceptual framework and a range of questions that may be useful to Library and Information Science researchers who wish to pursue research that contributes to the humanitarian area or library services.

The development of information literacy and learning practices in everyday spaces is explored.

Data for the study was collected using photo voice technique. Data analysis was conducted using photos and analysis of group transcripts. Participants describe how they tapped into social, physical and digital sites to draw information in the process of (re) forming their information landscapes, building bridges into new communities and maintaining links with family overseas. Media formats were identified according to their appropriateness as fit for purpose, suggesting that the enactment of information literacy was agile and responsive to need at the moment of practice. The results indicate that everyday spaces provide opportunities to develop information literacy practices, which support informal learning. Findings of the study conclude that information literacy is played out in a series of digital, vernacular and visual enactments, which shape the information landscape.

Introduction. How refugees learn to reshape their fractured information landscape and re-establish ways of knowing to support their resettlement into a host society is explored. Of particular interest is how refugees access, use and share information to support information needs which emerge during the resettlement process.

Method. Face-to-face interviews were conducted in the language selected by the participant. Photo-voice technique was also employed and culminated in a focus group in which participants discussed the photos. The first phase of the qualitative analysis is reported in this paper.

Analysis. Data from interviews, focus groups and images captured by photo-voice technique were coded thematically, focusing on the similarities and differences in perspective.

Results.In the resettlement process refugees strive to regain a sense of place. Information is a critical resource for resettlement, but access to information and trust in that information pose challenges in moving from the liminal zone of marginality towards social integration. The digital environment threads through refugees’ information experiences and represents a significant social ground.

Conclusions. Findings from the first phase of this study have provided us with new concepts and ways of describing the impacts of resettlement from an information perspective. It also affords an opportunity to consider how information resilience is shaped and emerges.

Introduction.How refugees learn to reshape their fractured information landscape and re-establish ways of knowing to support their resettlement into a host society is explored. Of particular interest is how refugees access, use and share information to support information needs which emerge during the resettlement process. Method. Face-to-face interviews were conducted in the language selected by the participant. Photo-voice technique was also employed and culminated in a focus group in which participants discussed the photos. The first phase of the qualitative analysis is reported in this paper. Analysis. Data from interviews, focus groups and images captured by photo-voice technique were coded thematically, focusing on the similarities and differences in perspective. Results.In the resettlement process refugees strive to regain a sense of place. Information is a critical resource for resettlement, but access to information and trust in that information pose challenges in moving from the liminal zone of marginality towards social integration. The digital environment threads through refugees’ information experiences and represents a significant social ground. Conclusions. Findings from the first phase of this study have provided us with new concepts and ways of describing the impacts of resettlement from an information perspective. It also affords an opportunity to consider how information resilience is shaped and emerges.

Refugee youth are faced with complex information needs that require them to identify and map the everyday spaces that can contribute to their learning outside the formal schooling system. The use of everyday spaces by refugee youth aged 16–25 was investigated using photovoice and interview data collection methods. The findings of the study suggest that the information needs and information literacy practices of this cohort arise from the desire to connect with a new community, to learn new social rules and to become established, while at the same time supporting the information needs of other family members and dealing with the social challenges that arise from cultural expectations. These challenges require them to connect with a wide range of everyday spaces to support their learning needs.

This chapter introduces the theory of practice architectures and locates it within the theoretical terrain of practice theory. It highlights what is distinctive about the theory as a practice theory, and discusses its affordances as a theoretical, analytical, and transformational resource for practitioners and researchers. We argue that, to create new possibilities for practice in our disciplines and professions, and/or to challenge unsustainable or untoward practices in education and professional practice more broadly, our current practices must be interrogated. The theory of practice architectures can inform such interrogative work. This chapter provides a foundation for the case chapters in this book which variously illustrate the kinds of insights yielded by exploring education and professional practice through the lens of practice architectures

This chapter uses the theory of practice architectures to show how particular kinds of arrangements can make particular kinds of academic practices possible. It does this by exploring the authors’ experiences of being stirred in to practices of academia within a particular practice landscape as part of a research group, and the arrangements that enabled and constrained that stirring in. Employing an auto-ethnographic approach, the authors draw on their individual and collective experiences of research and collaboration with Stephen Kemmis and encounters with the theory of practice architectures. Individual narratives are analysed to identify key cultural-discursive, material-economic and social-political arrangements that prefigured our being stirred in, a process which has led to deep and long-lasting research collaborations and commitments that have strong and enduring local and international ties. In sharing our analysis and narratives, we provide a glimpse of how these collaborations and commitments, and the theory of practice architectures (itself a prefiguring arrangement of our practices) have influenced our research into practice in our respective fields. Our discussion offers insights not only into the kinds of practice architectures that make up a university landscape, but also how conditions of possibility can be created for academic practices that resist the de-professionalising effects of troubling university conditions.

This chapter introduces the theory of practice architectures and locates it within the theoretical terrain of practice theory. It highlights what is distinctive about the theory as a practice theory, and discusses its affordances as a theoretical, analytical, and transformational resource for practitioners and researchers. We argue that, to create new possibilities for practice in our disciplines and professions, and/or to challenge unsustainable or untoward practices in education and professional practice more broadly, our current practices must be interrogated. The theory of practice architectures can inform such interrogative work. This chapter provides a foundation for the case chapters in this book which variously illustrate the kinds of insights yielded by exploring education and professional practice through the lens of practice architectures.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to respond to an earlier article in the Journal of Documentation: The Cult of the “I”. Design/methodology/approach – The method is a form of critical response. Findings – Numerous problems regarding the The Cult of the “I” article are discussed. Originality/value – This paper puts forward views about the iSchools Movement

Introduction.  The study examines the information practices of enthusiast car restorers in order to gain a greater understanding of embodied information practices.

Conceptual framework. The study is informed by a range of different theoretical approaches including practice theory, sense-making and Foucauldian, multimodal and critical discourse analysis.

Methodology. The study uses an ethnographic approach, using semi-structured interviews and in the garage ethnographic observation.  Analysis was undertaken using an inductive, thematic approach.

Findings. Enthusiast car restorers see the lack of information resources relating to their hobby as a challenge as much as a barrier. Car clubs and informal social networks of fellow enthusiasts provide both mentoring and moral support. Learning by doing is central to developing embodied knowledge. Participants describe working on their cars as providing them with a sense of achievement that was otherwise missing in their lives. 

Conclusion. The study’s findings show that enthusiast car restorers live in a complex information world, where social networks and learning by doing are central. The study’s findings in relation to alienation, achievement and identity suggest that research into embodied practices may have a broader significance than has been hitherto recognised.

Recent figures show that half the world’s refugees are children, with young people now representing more than 50 percent of victims of global armed conflict and displaced persons. Increasing numbers of refugee youth are entering their host nations’ compulsory and postcompulsory educational systems having experienced frequent resettlements and disrupted education, which in turn, pose major barriers for educational and future employment. The consequences of these experiences raise pressing equity implications for educators and educational systems. However, the picture is not uniformly bleak. Employing Bourdieu’s thinking tools of habitus, field and capital, Yosso’s concepts of community cultural wealth and photovoice methods, this chapter draws on studies of refugee youth of both genders from diverse ethnic and faith backgrounds, conducted in regional Australia. It examines how everyday spaces for learning, for example, church, faith-based and sporting groups and family can play a crucial role in enabling young people to build powerful forms of social and cultural capital necessary to successfully access and negotiate formal education and training settings. Its findings suggest first that everyday spaces can act as rich sites of informal learning, which young refugee people draw upon to advance their life chances, employability, and social inclusion. Second, they suggest that how one’s gender and “race” intersect may have important implications for how refugee youth access social and cultural capital in these everyday spaces as they navigate between informal learning and formal educational settings.