Abstract: This paper introduces a basic conceptual framework that can enrich the more common sources and skills approaches to BI.
My intention in this paper is to introduce an interpretative or "hermeneutic" approach to library instruction. Some of you are no doubt aware of hermeneutics and its general significance in the social sciences. Briefly, the word "hermeneutic" is used in contrast with objectivistic scientific methods that focus on physical phenomena such as behaviors to signify a central concern with meanings as they are understood from the point of view of participants involved in social interaction. These meanings may be particular and subjective, but they are more often intersubjective, that is, constructed and shared by participants in communication. For example, while it is possible, and possibly useful, to examine patterns of library use from an objective point of view (x number of students come into the library during a certain hour on a certain day, making use of certain resources varying percentages of the time, etc., etc.), it is also possible to understand students' personal reasons for doing all those things, and thus to reconstruct the meaning of the library for various students.1 However, as librarians engaged in library instruction, our purpose is neither to explain nor to understand how students actually use the library (although such knowledge might be useful to us). Instead, unless I am mistaken, we want mainly to enable students to learn on their own, particularly by using the kinds of resources available through libraries.With this in mind, we can ask, what is a hermeneutic approach to library instruction? The interpretative or hermeneutic approach begins with a focus on the way library users construct meaning. Other approaches to library instuction focus on the characteristics of research tools (such as the card catalog or specific indexes or selected reference tools); information skills (such as using Boolean operators or critical thinking); or technological innovations (such as using Veronica to search gopherspace). The interpretative approach is applicable to all of these research components, without being identical with any of them. The interpretative approach to library instruction aims to make students aware of the need to understand (construct meaning from) information before it can be put to use. We then introduce students to certain conceptual tools that increase their ability to interpret (construct meaning from) unfamiliar information in order to put it to use cognitively. This approach encourages students to become, not consumers of information related to a topic, but participants in at least one discourse related to their own research interests (I will say more about "discourse" below).
This brief description raises a number of questions. For example, one might argue that since people already use information, they must also already know (even if implicitly) how to interpret it; therefore, to set out to teach anyone to interpret information is redundant. In my view, however, some people do indeed try to use information without understanding it. This is certainly true of some of the students with whom we work at HCCS.
Consider a typical situation. A student has to write an argumentative essay or research paper (that is, a paper in which they take a stand on one side of an issue or another, and then support their position). A student faced with this situation often comes into the library looking for materials (either books or articles) that are, in fact, argumentative essays of the kind they are supposed to write and which espouse the student's own position. The student then quotes or paraphrases part of the book or article that is supposed to reflect his or her own position.
In this case, you might say that surely the student in question "understands" the information source, if he or she can choose a relevant source. But in fact, writing instructors report to us that student compositions often consist of a patchwork of almost unrelated quotations, paraphrases, and, yes, plagiarized snippets, catchphrases, buzzwords, and cliches. Often students merely repeat an author's conclusions without bothering to substantiate those conclusions by analyzing or reconstructing the author's arguments. Keyword searching actually contributes to this problem.
In 1993 we at the Houston Community College System libraries began a formative evaluation of our library instruction programs. (There was no formal "program," only an accumulation of programs and projects.) As part of our formative evaluation, Virginia Brohard and I conducted a focus interview with a group of HCCS faculty. The comments of one English instructor stuck in our minds: "Teach them to think," he said. "They don't know how to think about what they're doing."
Thus, the interpretative approach to library instruction aims to teach students to think about how they use information. This means that it builds on the nature of information itself. In doing so, the interpretative approach is, I believe, a natural and necessary development of the way we teach students to use information. I want to emphasize that I am not arguing against teaching students to find information. To use information, students have to find information--but we must realize that even finding information already involves using information. I therefore teach students to read and interpret citations as a kind of "information genre" (something they must interpret in an appropriate way). At the same time, however, the interpretative approach is a fundamentally new approach to library instruction, and only partially developed. I hope at best to sketch for you the basics of this approach. I will also mention some other ways I hope we can incorporate the interpretative approach into library instruction at HCCS.
Before I get into the issue of how to teach students to think about information in this way, I want to summarize in a necessarily brief and over-simplified way what I take to be the key elements of the interpretative approach to library research.
Information. Although the concept of "information" is already familiar to you, there is no consensus as to the meaning of this word--and especially not in terms that are meaningful to librarians or library users. Therefore, I want to introduce a definition that does meet these criteria. I define information as that which represents claims about states of affairs. As representations, information has a semiotic aspect; that is, it exists objectively in signs that can only be understood intersubjectively. However, these signs do more than refer to objective states of affairs (e.g., in an indexical manner); they also refer implicitly to the validity of claims, and therefore require--whether or not this requirement is acknowledged--a yes/no response. Finally, "states of affairs" may be subjective (where the possibility of confirmation is limited to one person); objective (open to confirmation by anyone); or intersubjective (open to confirmation only by participants in practices, i.e. "those who understand"). Understood as representations of claims about states of affairs, information embodies claims about what is true, authentic,and right to conscious agents who can respond to those claims by accepting or challenging them on the basis of reasons.
Situation. All communicative interactions occur in "situations." People enter situations with personal identity (a life history and aims); social context; and cultural background. Situations are defined relative to these individual, social, and cultural backgrounds. Even more: for communication as such to occur, participants in communication must share some understanding of at least one situation. Most of these shared elements always remain unspoken. But it is primarily in cases where participants lack common situation definitions that communication failures appear. Examples abound among everyday situations, whether at the reference desk, for example, or at home. There is all the more reason to anticipate problems between the authors of journal articles, say, and high school and college students--as well as the lay public.
Communication community. People who share situation definitions constitute "communication communities." This concept is based ultimately on Charles Sanders Peirce's concept of a community of inquiry. It was subsequently reworked by Karl-Otto Apel (Apel, 1972/1980), who understands the communication community as the inescapable presupposition of all possible processes of communication leading to mutual understanding. According to Apel's colleague Jürgen Habermas, to use language itself is to aim for mutual understanding--which is to participate in a universal communication community (Habermas, 1980/1984; 1984/1987). If we accept some such premises as these, then it follows that student efforts to understand and use information are mediated by the linguistic practices current within their own communication communities on the one hand and those practices current in the community from which an information source originates on the other. In some cases this other community is the community of librarians; but more often the relevant community is defined by the questions and problems under investigation by another group. (In the second group of cases, librarians can at most hope to mediate the communication process.)
Discourse. A discourse is a thematization of communicative contexts of relevance; in other words, it is the sum of written or spoken "texts" in which certain, selected states of affairs related to a potentially shared situation are questioned and brought up for discussion. Discourses typically arise in response to problems. A common and useful way to thematize problems in a research context is through the use of a research question. Thus, composing a research question puts a student in the context of both a problem and a situation that other participants share.
Argument. Reasons for accepting or rejecting claims are supported by arguments. If entering into a participative relationship with the authors of information requires accepting or rejecting the claims that are represented, then students (and other information users) must enter into an argumentative relationship with the information (i.e., with its author). In other words, information users are constrained to accept or reject information (and the claims it represents) only on the basis of the force of the better argument. (I believe this is the basis of all evaluation of information.) To do so, they must be able to analyze arguments.
There are a number of ways to analyze arguments; I prefer the model proposed by Stephen Toulmin (1958). Figure 1 illustrates Toulmin's model of a substantial argument.
Place Figure 1 about here.
This model of analysis is meant to represent the actual way people justify claims in arguments. It can be applied to arguments with either empirical (probabilistic) or moral-ethical (normative) warrants. In Figure 2 I have analyzed a simple argument for banning cigarettes in the United States.
Place Figure 2 about here.
I cannot overemphasize the importance of arguments within the interpretative approach to library instruction. The rationale for this is quite simple. To use information it is necessary to evaluate information.3 To evaluate information is to respond to at least one claim. To respond to a claim is already to participate in argumentation. To enter into argumentation, I must do so as a participant--that is, in an interpretative manner.
At HCCS some of us have been trying to integrate instruction in interpretation with the skills approach to produce a more complete library instruction curriculum. So far, in my view, our success has been limited. First, there are institutional barriers to a full implementation. The librarians in our institution have been doing things differently. The faculty are accustomed to doing things differently. Both groups identify with professional groups outside HCCS that do things differently.
During the past two years we have developed a noncredit course for students writing a research paper. Our efforts to implement an interpretative approach in this course have met resistance from students themselves, who, when they are interested in actually "doing research" (rather than merely being told how to wite their papers), want to do it without becoming involved as a participant with the materials they're researching.
In this paper I have done no more than introduce an interpretative approach to library instruction. Much work remains to be done, but I believe that the conceptual framework I have described warrants continued effort on this project and the hope that the results might be worthwhile. It also provides a foundation for further work.
For example, some instructional objectives appropriate to this curriculum might include:
- Students will understand and be able to analyze arguments.
- Students will understand and be able to compose research questions.
- Students will be able to identify warrants in arguments, and will be able to identify and locate warrants for arguments through library research.
- Students will understand the use of data in arguments, and how to find it in libraries.
Many questions remain unanswered about the interpretative approach. Here are a few: 1. What instructional methods and techniques are best suited to helping students learn this approach? 2. How can the interpretative approach to information use be adapted to all kinds of information--graphic as well as textual, electronic as well as print, mass media as well as private communication, popular as well as scholarly sources? 3. How can the interpretative approach be integrated with other approaches to library instruction (sources, skills, etc.)? 4. How can this approach to library user education be integrated with the rest of the curriculum? I hope this paper has raised other questions.
References
Apel, K.-O. (1972/1980). Towards a Transformation of Philosophy (G. Adey & D. Frisby, Trans.). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Habermas, J. (1980/1984). The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume One: Reason and the Rationalization of Society (T. McCarthy, Trans.). Boston: Beacon Press.
Habermas, J. (1984/1987). The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume Two: Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason (T. McCarthy, Trans.). Boston: Beacon Press.
Kuhlthau, C. C. (1993). Seeking Meaning: A Process Approach to Library and Information Services. Norwood. NJ: Ablex Publishing.
Kuhlthau, C. C. (1994a). Impact of the information search process model on library services. RQ, 34, 21-26.
Kuhlthau, C. C. (1994b). Teaching the Library Research Process (2d ed.). Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press.
Toulmin, S. E. (1958). The Uses of Argument. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.