Thinking beyond the Disjunctive Opposition of Information Literacy Assessment in Theory and Practice

Abstract

School library literature has illuminated several structural barriers (such as lack of time and role perception conflict) that impede many school library media specialists (SLMSs) from fulfilling their student assessment role in practice, and specialists have identified technology as a mediating artifact that could aide in an expansion of that role. The purpose of this study is twofold: (1) to interrogate a middle school’s information literacy assessment system for internal disturbances (tensions and contradictions) between system elements that restrict the SLMS’s ability to assess information literacy; and (2) to design a technology-based instrument that addresses these system disturbances and enables SLMSs to expand their assessment roles. The researcher used rapid design ethnography coupled with an activity theory (AT)-based analysis to produce an indepth description of the assessment system disturbances. A technology-based assessment instrument was then designed and developed to address the system disturbances. The ethnographic methods and AT analysis informed the design and development of a Virtual Reality Information Literacy Learning and Assessment Space (VILLAS). VILLAS addresses the four primary assessment disturbances illuminated in recent library literature in addition to the sitespecific disturbances identified in this study, and it has the potential to decrease the distance between the librarian’s assessment roles as envisioned in theory and as realized in practice.

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