A Vision for Scotland: the report and final recommendations of the Literacy Commission December 2009

Just finished reading  A Vision for Scotland  report and identified a few items that tied in with the projects thinking and with the current project Real and Relevant – Information and Critical Literacy Skills for the 21st Century plus the work of our partners:

• 'it is necessary to start literacy programmes from a very early age' (p13)


• 'good CPD is an essential element of any successful programme, as it develops teachers’ skills, puts the teacher in charge and so helps build the necessary commitment at school level'. (p13)


• moving beyond basic literacy - "the need to move children beyond a basic level of literacy in order that they can fully engage with modern society and the workplace" (p14-15)

As indicated earlier, the Commission agreed from the outset that literacy is a continuum that extends beyond basic literacy skills. Different levels of literacy are needed; for example, for undertaking a modern apprenticeship, for most jobs (SCQF level 5) and for Further and Higher Education. In this age of information overload via the Internet, it is important that all youngsters are equipped with analytical skills so that they can understand not just the information that is provided but also its validity. Did the author of the information have a vested interest in persuading the reader of a particular version of the truth? Literacy is also not the sole responsibility of local authorities and schools. Literacy should go beyond the remit of formal education and become embedded across society in order to ensure continuous development. Partnership working, involving the public, private and voluntary sectors, is key if poor literacy across society is to be challenged. (p14 - 15).

• 'If young people are to develop these higher-order intellectual skills, it is crucial that they are explicitly taught'.

Young people should be made aware at the outset what skills they are going to acquire and why they are important. At the conclusion of any unit of work, they should be reminded of what they have learned and be made aware of its application. This element of metacognition is a crucial part of sound learning at any level. It is no less significant when dealing with learning at an advanced level. (p16)

Govan High School (project partner) is actively doing this with their co-ordinated system of skills, called “Future Skills” see posting about Ian McCracken, Learning Resources Manager, Govan High School presentation at the 2009 Project Open Meeting .  

It is important that the skill is seen as being of widespread application. The ability to use knowledge, understanding and skills in areas other than the one in which they were acquired is essential. In some highly specialised areas of learning, skills may be needed for very specific purposes and have few applications in other contexts. The higher-order skills, like analysis and critical thinking, which are associated with advanced literacy, are not like this; they have everyday significance in much the same way as basic decoding. They are the transferable skills of the 21^st century. (p16)

Within the recommendations are the following which we would certainly endorse and support:

• A national strategy should set priorities for assisting children to move beyond basic literacy by improving standards of comprehension and higher-order literacy skills. This strategy should be informed by research and by good practice.


• Progress of local schemes should be carefully monitored and good practice shared in a systematic process of continuous improvement and professional development.


• Raising levels of higher-order literacy-related skills should be a priority objective within the Curriculum for Excellence development programme. (p18)

The Third Scottish Information Literacy Project Open Meeting

Open Meeting 2009

The Scottish Information Literacy Project’s third Open meeting took place on Wednesday 16^th September 2009 at Glasgow Caledonian University and about 45 people attended. It was a genuinely cross sectoral event with people attending from all library sectors, educational agencies, government organisations including the Scottish Government and academia.  Inevitably a few people dropped out at the last moment through illness or other commitments. Unfortunately this included our keynote speaker, Professor David Smith, who had to pull out through illness.  

The theme of the day was information literacy as part of the wider skills agenda as one of the Project’s successes has been locating information literacy (IL) within this agenda. I began the day by giving an overview and update of the Project including some of the initial findings of the evaluation which we have done of the excellent employability skills courses which Inverclyde Libraries run.  This drew attention to health as an employability issue and the difficulty in disentangling personal from vocational motivations. This provoked a lively audience discussion during which it emerged that people from different library and educational sectors had shared concerns.  Next Jenny Foreman, the Scottish Government’s Information Literacy Librarian spoke about the Scottish Government’s Information Literacy Strategy. This was very much a policy level presentation explaining the need for a strategy and the issues likely to be encountered in developing it. Jenny also described how the policy is turned into practical training. Her colleague, Lesley Thomson, Knowledge Management Officer at the Scottish Centre for Regeneration then described the Information Literacy Community of Practice which she and Jenny are launching and will host and lead. She explained the principles behind a community of practice and how the website will operate. All are welcome to join and contribute. For further details contact either Lesley.Thomson2@scotland.gsi.gov.uk or Jenny.Foreman@scotland.gsi.gov.uk who will gladly sign you up.

 

After lunch Christine Irving, the Project Officer on the Scottish Information Literacy Project, spoke about the restructuring of the Scottish Information Literacy Framework which is being restructured to make it a genuine lifelong learning document incorporating early years, the workplace, employability and lifelong learning. It is being physically restructured as a weblog so that postings of current activities and developments can be added. It is also interactive and comments and postings can be made. It includes exemplars of good practice from all educational sectors. There is, as yet, less on the workplace and lifelong learning but the work we are doing on the workplace and employability is helping to enrich it. It can be found at /nilfs/ and through the project website http://www.gcal.ac.uk/ils/framework.html .

Next Lou McGill, an elearning and Information Management Consultant reported on a JISC funded study Learning Literacies for the Digital Age (LLiDA) - http://prezi.com/vv_ynswlwwkv/ see also Project website http://www.academy.gcal.ac.uk/llida/ . LLiDA is a study of academic, ICT and information literacies across a range of HE institutions including Glasgow Caledonian and takes the form of institutional audits with overall analyses and best practice exemplars drawn from participating institutions. She found that IL people were further ahead in their thinking than other learning literacies areas. Flexible education will be needed as it is impossible to predict future employer needs. She feels that there are still to many ‘silos’ in HE each with its own language. Academic teaching is slow to change and there is resistance to a holistic agenda.

IMcCracken Open Meeting 2009

The last speaker was Ian McCracken, Learning Resources Manager at Govan High School - Connections between Information Skills and wider skills: the Future Skills Project where he and his colleagues have developed a Future Skills System of 71 skills which pupils can acquire which includes IL.  The Future Skills System is matched to Standard Grades, local and national business requirements, curricular and extra curricular work and the Curriculum for Excellence. Ian also mentioned the problem of a common language as Lou had. The Framework has been in existence long enough for Ian to be able to identify the most used skills throughout Curriculum for Excellence Experiences and Outcomes as ‘Analytical Skills’, ‘ICT E-Lit’ and ‘Gathering facts’ which have pretty obvious IL implications.

All in all it was a most useful day and a great deal of information was exchanged in informal discussions as well as the formal sessions. Similar issues were identified across a range of sectors and practical difficulties round employability and linking vocational skill training and personal development were reviewed.  The PPTs and accompanying documents will appear shortly on Slideshare as we are running out of space on allocated space with the university and will be linked to the project web event page http://www.caledonian.ac.uk/ils/events.html. All the presentations were excellent and represent a great deal of work by those who gave them and I would like to thank all who contributed.

Post Open Space meeting June 15th

The Post Open Space meeting was held at Glasgow Caledonian University on 15^th June 2009 as a direct result of the Open Space meeting of 27^th March 2009 organised and facilitated by Skills Development Scotland staff (/information-literacy/2009/05/01/open-space-technology-meets-information-literacy/) bringing together key stakeholders from education sectors and employability, skills and information agendas to identify key factors in information literacy promotion. Attendees from the event were invited to the Post Open Space to identify key issues which might be progressed and formulate action points.

Those present included representatives from COSLA, the Scottish Government Information Service, school libraries, the Centre for Lifelong Learning (University of the West of Scotland), STUC and independent researchers. Unfortunately none of the staff who organised the Open Space meeting was able to attend but Lynn Haughton who works for Skills Development Scotland (currently on secondment to LTS) did attend.

There was a lengthy discussion reviewing some of the issues arising from the Open Space event. The main issues identified were:

• The need to agree a common vocabulary across the education, skills, employability and workplace sectors


• Information literacy as part of the employability and skills agenda


• Training trainee teachers in information literacy

Agreed actions:

• Lesley Thomson and Jenny Foreman from the Scottish Government agreed to set up an online community of practice to facilitate further discussion and action


• Information Literacy as part of the wider skills agenda will be promoted by the Centre for Lifelong Learning (University of the West of Scotland) including to the West of Scotland Wider Access Forum staff based there. It was subsequently agreed that the Centre for Lifelong Learning would try to raise interest in training trainee teachers in information literacy among staff in the education department there.


• Contacts would be maintained and developed via the online forum

Govan High School Future Skills Symposium

On Friday 24^th April we attended a Future Skills Symposium at Govan High School.  The school is one of our most active Project partners through the work of Ian McCracken the Learning Resources Manager there. The Framework (Future Skills) of 71 core transferable skills is the work of Philip Graham, the Depute Head and Ian with the full support of the ‘Heidie’, Ian White, and has been in operation since the 2007-8 school year began.

It arose out of the fact that pupils were unable to identify their own skills and confidently use them in a wide range of situations. This led to an unsuccessful search for a comprehensive pre-existing framework of skills with the result that Philip and Ian set out to compile their own with the full involvement of staff and pupils.  An initial list of ‘hundreds of skills’ was pared down to a definitive list of 71 future skills which are prominently displayed around the school and are used in every subject.  This has not meant an abandonment of the curriculum or the teaching skills as a separate subject because an examination of the Curriculum for Excellence showed that the skills were already there. They had not been noticed before.  A matching exercise on skills demanded by a range of employers was successfully carried out. The skills are divided into seven groups – the communicator, the contributor, the doer, the sorter, the originator, the connector and the decider. The communicator, for example, has skills which include creative writing, e-literacy, presentation skills and objective reporting while the contributor has team skills, participation skills and is environmentally friendly. Skills booklets were devised so pupils could self assess the skills they learned in lessons and extra-curricular activities. There are also skill cards for teachers who can nominate pupils who make progress in a particular skill. The details of the skills booklets are fed into a growing computer database which offers interesting analytical possibilities to support further development and to inform key areas.  Information literacy is, of course, one of the skills and occurs regularly in all the booklets. Ian is now analysing the database to identify the frequency of the appearance of IL skills and how they relate to others. The results should be interesting.

The event was attended not only by teachers but also people from other education sectors and those concerned with learning and skills development. The Future Skills Framework is likely to be influential well beyond the school sector.  Some further detail can be found in a Times Educational Supplement Scotland article. See URL http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=2638693. You can also watch two PPTs which describe the developmental processes and outcomes in detail. govan-1-journey-so-far1 govan-2-nuts-and-bolts

Skills for Scotland: information literacy, libraries and learning

This was the title of a Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (Scotland) (CILIPS) conference, held at Glasgow Metropolitan College, on Thursday 19^th March and was chaired by Christine and me.  It was inspired by the Skills for Scotland policy document, published in October 2007 and reviewed the role of information literacy in skills development and economic growth.

After an introduction by CILIPS President, Margaret Forrest, Rhona Arthur, Assistant Director of CILIPS/SLIC spoke about a range of initiatives currently ongoing in Scotland (libraries as learning centres, readership development, workforce development and next generation qualifications) plus how information professionals support skills development and the tools we have.  The Scottish Information Literacy project and framework was mentioned by Rhona. She also referred to the credit crunch and that there was an increase in Public Libraries for IT and skills courses and that 45% use libraries for learning, supporting their studies or homework.

She was followed by Peter Godwin, Academic Liaison Librarian, University of Bedfordshire, who overviewed the main issues in IL teaching and talked about various web 2.0 tools and how they can be used to support IL teaching. Joanna Ptolomey, chair of the Scottish Health Information Network, introduced a health literacies theme by speaking about health inequalities, a particularly important theme in Scotland. Good quality patient information, to be effective must avoid ‘healthspeak’ and use clear, simple language.

The last morning speakers were Jenny Foreman and Lesley Thompson, from the Scottish Government Information Service who are among our most active partners. They spoke about the joint work they did with us on the use of information by Scottish Government civil servants and the actions they have taken which include introducing advanced internet searching training and the development of an information literacy strategy for the Scottish Government.

After lunch, Margaret McKay, a JISC e-advisor talked about assistive technologies which can benefit those with disabilities. This presentation has a strong practical focus with ideas which can be implemented across all library sectors.  Andy Jackson, Teaching and Learning Librarian at Dundee University, returned to teaching themes by demonstrating the Cephallonian method of information literacy instruction with the help of the audience and showed the advantages of moving away from the traditional resource based methods of teaching.

After the afternoon break the focus was on public libraries and prison libraries. This included a joint presentation by Liz McPartlin, Community Access Librarian, Stirling Council and Richard Smith, Reader in Residence about a reader in residence scheme at Cornton Vale women’s prison to develop reading amongst the women and their families, promote use of the library and creative reading and create links between the women and community libraries. The reading groups are also used to help prisoners to explore their problems.

Paul McCloskey, Library development Officer SW Neighbourhood with City of Edinburgh Council reported on various outreach activities in Edinburgh including learning programmes, a book bus and the Libraries4U scheme. Kate King (Edinburgh Prison Library Officer and Sighthill Library Bookstart Worker) finished off the joint presentation with an impassioned and enlightening presentation on the impressive new prison library at Saughton in Edinburgh and the amazing work she does there to develop the 1^st ever Family Event inside the prison and support prisoners for release. She certainly demonstrated that she was “reaching out to the hardest to reach and are helping them discover something that everyone in this room already knows Libraries Can Change Lives – and reading and books can help!”

It was a most useful day with a cross sectoral audience drawn from most library sectors.  The two presentations on IL training were of particular benefit to those outside the HE sector and the training theme was further explored by Jenny and Lesley while there were two useful presentations on health literacy/assistive technology issues. Other speakers covered the role of the public library in education and training, and its continuing role as an agent of community education and development.  Issues like prison provision, deprivation and exclusion were also covered.

Congratulations to Catherine Kearney, Assistant Director of CILIPS/SLIC and her colleagues for efficiently planning and managing the day.