Meta-theoretical considerations on the terms constructivism, definitions, multidimensional taxono... more Meta-theoretical considerations on the terms constructivism, definitions, multidimensional taxonomies, as well as the "is-ought" problem, are presented. It is argued that theories of information literacy must follow the ongoing discourse of literacy. Examples of definitions of literacy, in chronological sequence, show the evolvement of its meaning. While mid 20th century the focus of literacy was on the ability of reading and writing a simple sentence, it changed to a "being knowledgeable in a certain field" – approach, paving the way to multi-literacies and the New Literacy Studies of the new millennium. A major contributor to the literacy discourse is Street with his autonomous and ideological models of literacy. Under the autonomous point of view literacy is seen as irrespective (autonomous) of context, while the ideological model posits that literacy varies with context and can be seen as social practice. Likewise, a categorization of information literacy must be done from a specific position and for this thesis paper the ideological model has been chosen. The various meanings of the term "information literacy" are presented and analysed. The works of Bloom, Krathwohl and Masia (Taxonomies of Educational Objectives) and Markauskaite's framework for ICT Literacy are the basis for the proposed taxonomy of information literacy. The taxonomy itself comprises four first-order constructs, each with a varying number of dimensions. One of the examples of how the taxonomy can be applied shows the difference between the autonomous and the ideological approach, using a simplified example employing MS Excel and calculating quantiles.
Meta-theoretical considerations on the terms constructivism, definitions, multidimensional taxono... more Meta-theoretical considerations on the terms constructivism, definitions, multidimensional taxonomies, as well as the "is-ought" problem, are presented. It is argued that theories of information literacy must follow the ongoing discourse of literacy. Examples of definitions of literacy, in chronological sequence, show the evolvement of its meaning. While mid 20th century the focus of literacy was on the ability of reading and writing a simple sentence, it changed to a "being knowledgeable in a certain field" – approach, paving the way to multi-literacies and the New Literacy Studies of the new millennium. A major contributor to the literacy discourse is Street with his autonomous and ideological models of literacy. Under the autonomous point of view literacy is seen as irrespective (autonomous) of context, while the ideological model posits that literacy varies with context and can be seen as social practice. Likewise, a categorization of information literacy must be done from a specific position and for this thesis paper the ideological model has been chosen. The various meanings of the term "information literacy" are presented and analysed. The works of Bloom, Krathwohl and Masia (Taxonomies of Educational Objectives) and Markauskaite's framework for ICT Literacy are the basis for the proposed taxonomy of information literacy. The taxonomy itself comprises four first-order constructs, each with a varying number of dimensions. One of the examples of how the taxonomy can be applied shows the difference between the autonomous and the ideological approach, using a simplified example employing MS Excel and calculating quantiles.
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