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The purpose of this paper is to provide a selected bibliography of recent resources on library instruction and information literacy.

The paper introduces and annotates periodical articles, monographs, and audiovisual material examining library instruction and information literacy.

Information about each source is provided. The paper discusses the characteristics of current scholarship, and describes sources that contain unique scholarly contributions and quality reproductions.

The information in the paper may be used by librarians and interested parties as a quick reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.

This paper aims to discuss the concept of “literacy” within the new literacy, new literacies and library and information science (LIS) discourses. It proposes widening the prevailing LIS conceptualization of adolescent literacy, which focuses largely on information literacy in academic settings, to a broader, information practice-based, sociocultural framing that encompasses the full range of adolescents’ everyday life contexts.

The author presents a literature review and personal reflection on a series of adolescent information activities to show the value of framing the LIS discourse on adolescent literacy within a broader sociocultural perspective.

Based on the discussion, the author proposes a framework for future investigations of adolescents’ literacy practices that views adolescent literacy as fundamentally social and communicative; multiformat; multicontextual; multigenerational; and culturally situated.

A broader sociocultural approach to the LIS information literacy discourse can lead to deeper understanding of the co-constructed and collaborative nature of adolescents’ new literacies practices. It can also enable stronger recognition of the impact of power and privilege on adolescent literacy practices. Finally, this essay shows the value of reflecting on adolescent information activities for challenging narrow views of literacy and highlights the social embeddedness of new literacies activities in adolescents’ everyday lives.

The purpose of this paper is to combine conceptual and documentary research.

Drawing on a range of New Zealand curriculum documents and on the history of English subject in the New Zealand context, it maps aspects of the contestation that has accompanied the development of various versions of the subject over time. It also explores ways in which the subject has always drawn on a range of primary disciplinary discourses through a process of recontextualization (Bernstein, 2000).

Based on this analysis, it problematizes the conventional location of literary study within the English curriculum, arguing that this arrangement disadvantages English as an additional language (EAL) students with an interest in literature. As another plank in the argument, it argues that literary study is itself currently disadvantaged by being linked to narrowly conceived notions of textual practice and the pervasive power of high-stake assessment technologies in constructing content and pedagogy.

A solution to both problems is offered, arguing a case for relocating literary study in an expanded Arts curriculum. The paper then goes on to draw on the concept of disciplinary literacy, to argue a case for the “reinvention” of the English teacher as a cross-disciplinary resource teaching a re-framed subject renamed “Disciplinary Rhetorics”. It concludes by discussing the implications of these two re-envisionments for English teacher identities and the construction of their professional content and pedagogical knowledge.

This paper aims to propose a new literacies approach to get insight into young people’s capability to detect fake news.

This study is a replication of a US empirical study in The Netherlands to examine whether schoolchildren were able to identify the spoof website “Save The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus” as fake.

In The Netherlands, only 2 out of 27 school children (7 per cent) recognized the website as being a hoax; results that are worse, even, than those of the 2007 US study, where the website was recognized as being unreliable by slightly more than 6 out of 53 school children (11 per cent).

A similar but large-scale quantitative empirical study should be conducted in several countries to see if the trends in the US and The Netherlands are indeed significant.

It is important to start teaching children at an early age how to critically evaluate online information.

The perceived reliability of digital information is a hot issue, given the frequency with which fake news is circulated. Being able to critically evaluate digital information will help to have access to trustworthy information.

Instead of using technological fact checking by Google, Facebook and Twitter, this paper suggests the adoption of a new literacies approach, focusing on young people’s capability to detect fake news.

Changes in digital communication technologies have impacted on society so rapidly that educational researchers, policy makers and teachers are challenged by the application of these changes for curriculum design, pedagogy and assessment. The multimedia facilities of digital technologies, particularly mobile hand held devices and touch pads, encourage the processing of several modes simultaneously. Thus the traditional concept of literacy as reading and writing has changed as these rarely occur in isolation within digital communication. Many students are engaged in more sophisticated use of technologies outside school than they experience at school. Moreover, participation in gaming and social networking has created significant social and cultural change.

At the same time there have been many initiatives in classrooms to adapt to the learning potential of new technologies with schools introducing laptops, iPads, or students’ own devices. While issues such as pedagogy and equity offer challenges there are new and exciting ways forward for literacy education in an inclusive learning environment. This chapter will examine attempts to re-define literacy with theories such as ‘multiliteracies’, ‘multimodality’ and ‘new literacies’. These have developed to explain the changes in communication and to offer educators ways to balance the incorporation of new modes of communication with those skills of reading and writing that are seen as core for a literate person.

Within the context of forced migration, literacy can facilitate liberation and participation, though literacy often serves instead to exclude. Given the ongoing global refugee crisis, literacy researchers must work toward understanding how literacy shapes the livelihoods of those impacted by forced migration. The purpose of this study was to interrogate the ways in which certain literacies were valued or disregarded in the pursuit of a college degree and to uncover the ways that refugee-background students navigated these limitations. Using a multiple case study, this research explored the experiences of six students from refugee backgrounds as they navigated the literacy expectations of the college program. This chapter highlights two themes – our way versus their way and playing the game – that highlight the ways that participants pushed against the literacy constraints that they perceived in the program.

The purpose of this theoretical essay is to discuss recent scholarship in sociocultural studies of literacy – including two recent books by Peter Smagorinsky (2011) and Luis Moll (2013) and recent articles by Gutierrez and Engestrom – and to synthesize ideas from this scholarship into a coherent lens for understanding innovations in language and literacy education and in education more broadly, when language is seen as the means through which transformation of thought is achieved.

This essay uses ideas from Vygotskian theory, as interpreted by Moll, Smagorinsky, Gutierrez and Engestrom, to re-conceptualize innovation – a theme of current importance in literacy education and indeed education broadly – as culturally mediated. The author discusses specifically two examples of recent innovations in educational practice – the notion of multiliteracies and approaches to teacher education based on hybrid activity settings that link researchers and teachers, university and school.

As this is not an empirical study, there are no findings per se. However, the author’s discussion of innovation through a sociocultural lens focuses on re-mediation and the deliberate, conscious setting of goals as a means for construction knowledge in, and about, innovations in literacy teaching and learning. Also, the author concludes the essay with several principles by which to evaluate innovations from a sociocultural perspective.

This conceptual paper has the potential to contribute to new ways of applying sociocultural theory in literacy teaching and research, particularly research that involves the study of innovative, transformative practices in teaching and learning.

This essay offers a theory-driven reconceptualization of innovation for use in educational research and practice, which has a potential value as an antidote to shallow, narrow and/or prescriptive models of language and literacy innovations that are offered to practitioners. Put another way, it offers readers a new way to think about innovation in sustainable and culturally relevant terms.

This paper reports a sub-set of results from a mixed-method ethnographic study of literacy among female graduates and undergraduates of a United Arab Emirates public university. With reference to survey data and two in-depth interviews, the paper focuses in particular on the predispositions and preferences of these women with regard to reading and writing in English and Modern Standard Arabic. Employing a New Literacy Studies theoretical framework along with a number of concepts developed by Bourdieu, the paper finds that literacy practices in this context are developing rapidly, influenced by the diverse transnational linguistic marketplaces in which these women grow up. Suggestions are made with regard to possible directions for curricular development in higher education in this region based on the opinions expressed by these young women.

Digital technologies have transformed what it means to be literate and to experience literacy. Various literacies have been coined to capture this transformation including established literacies like computer literacy, information literacy, digital literacy, media literacy and internet literacy, to newer conceptions like transliteracy, metaliteracy and multimodal literacy. The purpose of this paper is to assimilate the various conceptions of literacy and literacy types is becoming increasingly more complex. There is a need for a taxonomy of literacies that reflects more recent developments, one that more comprehensively captures the current literacy landscape and one that might have affordances in the future.

“Library and Information Science Abstracts” (LISA), “Education Resources Information Center” (ERIC) and “British Education Index” were searched for documents relating to digital technologies and literacy. Relevant documents were retrieved and reviewed. This was followed by selective backward and forward citation searching and a further review of relevant documents.

Based on a review of the literature, two significant dimensions of literacy were identified. These dimensions were used to create a literacy framework to enable the classification of literacies and literacy types, i.e. a taxonomy of literacies. This taxonomy was successfully applied to various prominent literacies and literacy types.

The literacy framework was only applied to those literacies and literacy types that are directly or indirectly related to digital technologies.

There have been a few attempts to classify some literacy types. When conceived, these classifications comprehensively captured some aspect of the literacy landscape. However, they are now dated and there is a need for a taxonomy of literacies that meets the needs identified above. This paper proposes a taxonomy that meets these criteria.