Information Literacy in the Home:

1. Information Literacy in the Home: A study of the use and understanding of information by parents of young children Christopher G. Walker PhD Researcher LILAC 2008

2. Introduction ‘Information literacy is the Zeitgeist of our times’ (Bundy, 2004) ‘A typical child spends only 15% of their time in school, and remaining 85% at home.’ Stephanie Makin, Deputy Head Teacher ‘Parental involvement in a child’s schooling between the ages of 7 and 16 is a more powerful force than family background, size of family and level of parental education’ (Feinstein, L & Symons, 1999)

3. The problem • Much of the existing literature deals with information literacy in a pedagogical context. • There is little research into the application of information literacy in a ‘real world setting’. • There has been comparatively little investigation into the information seeking behaviour of parents.

4. Aims • To increase our understanding of information literacy theory in the social context of parenting. • To examine information literacy in its widest context and determine how parents identify an information need, search for, evaluate and use the information they obtain. • To provide a new perspective on the concept of information literacy, moving it away from more accepted behaviouristic understanding and applying the concept to the sociological context of modern parenting.

5. Objectives • To fully define the term information literacy for the purpose of this project. • To obtain high quality data determining the information needs of parents. • To obtain high quality data determining the sources of information parents use. • To devise a measure to obtain high quality data to assess the information literacy skills of parents.

6. Objectives • To gain an understanding of how a parent’s gender, ethnicity, age, education and social economic background affects: • Their attitudes to the internet as a beneficial source of information; • Their ability to make sense of the internet as a source of information. • To gain and determine the suitability of existing information literacy models in the social context of parenting.

7. Why parents • Very little research into the information literacy of parents • Parents ‘overloaded’ with help and advice from ‘professionals’, family and friends, TV, books, magazines and the internet (Mumsnet) etc. • A lot of recent government activity: • Every Child Matters • The Children’s Plan

8. questions parents have • Health issues such as, ‘is the MMR safe?’ • What is the truth about healthy eating? • Child development questions e.g. childhood illness, academic stages. ‘Parents needed information on: health for the child, child care, and child development.’ (Nicholas and Marden 1997)

9. method • Interview between 60 – 90 parents of primary school aged children in Leeds • Mixed socio-economic backgrounds. • Parents recruited with help from: • Primary school head teachers • Leeds Health and Wellbeing project • Leeds Parental Advisors

10. The interview • Semi-structured lasting about an hour. • Each interview will be recoded, transcribed and coded. • NVivo 7 will be used to help analyse and code the data.

11. Thank You – Questions? Christopher WalkerPhD ResearcherFaculty of Innovation NorthLeeds Metropolitan University Priestley Hall - Room 206Beckett ParkLeeds LS6 3QS Phone: 0113 812 8669Email: c.g.walker@leedsmet.ac.ukWeb:  www.cgwalker.org.uk