To Support Information Literacy, Give Students Time to Reflect

By Jeff Wilhelm, Michael W. Smith, Hugh Kesson, and Deborah Appleman

In our view, the most essential and neglected “small teaching move” teachers can employ in teaching information literacy is structuring opportunities for student reflection. As we argue in our most recent book Fighting Fake News , we think this reflection should take two forms.?

Knowing your own mind. The first is what we call knowing your own mind. The media landscape is littered with texts that were created to delude and deceive.? But here’s the good news: ? Despite the immensely powerful manipulations of artificial intelligence and social media as well as the cognitive biases embedded in our minds, research demonstrates that we can be more consciously aware, reflective, and rational about news and other forms of information; that we can critically evaluate sources; and that we can control for our own biases. But in order to do so, we have to be mindful of our susceptibilities and learn to set aside, at least temporarily, our automatic and usual lenses for seeing and thinking so we can see and think in new ways.??

We believe that all instruction should ask students to reflect on their automatic and usual lenses for seeing and thinking, should engage them in trying on new perspectives, and should require them to reflect on the benefits gained in doing so.?

Identify and reflect on strategies used when reading conventional text. The second kind of reflection we endorse is having students identify and reflect on the strategies they employ in their reading of conventional linear texts in school so they can modify and apply those strategies to the digital texts that supply them with the bulk of their information.? As we argue in our book, it’s crucial to understand that we can’t count on our students’ effectively applying what we’ve taught them about linear school texts to digital ones because their knowledge may well be inert instead of easily applied and because digital texts are manifestly different from linear texts. ?

We are convinced that learning developed in one context can only transfer to another if students have conscious control over what is to be transferred.? Transfer of learning depends, then, on reflection.?

For this reason, we suggest engaging students in applying what we call rules of notice.? Rules of notice are conventional understandings authors employ to point readers’ attention to particular aspects of their texts, thereby alerting readers to work to understand how those aspects work to create a text’s meaning and effect.? For example, authors expect readers to notice what we call ruptures, that is, surprising departures from the norm.? If, for example, we’re reading a linear text comprised of long paragraphs and then come to a paragraph that’s a single sentence in length, we know that we need to pay special attention to the shorter paragraph.? Digital texts have a wider array of possible ruptures.? Fonts can change as can color schemes, for example, embedded video may appear in text at a surprising time.? Our purpose here is not to provide a comprehensive catalog of potential ruptures or of other rules of notice but rather to make the point that reflection, in this case reflection on how the creators of texts do their work and what that means for readers, is necessary for transfer of learning, something that should top the list of all teachers’ goals. Given that reflection is essential to all learning, let’s resolve to encourage our students to do it.?