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[John Royce Participant]

Great question, Elizabeth  – and a very pertinent article to share, thank you.

I rather think that the proactive approach suggested in the article may be too abstract, too advanced and not sufficiently structured for most of our students.   The Framework for Information Literacy which gets a mention in the article is intended for Higher Education – and even there not all students appreciate or even want to know how knowledge is built; I think Doug Brent’s Senior Students’ Perceptions of Entering a Research Community holds true.

Which is not to say that aspects cannot filter down into secondary and primary education, in age-appropriate ways. They should and they do – especially schools which are inquiry-led, learner-focused.

While I agree that CRAAP and CARDS and ACCORD and ABCD and similar evaluation tools may be too simplistic and unhelpful, I would not give up on SIFT just yet – and nor do the authors of the article, their proactive strategy is built upon SIFT, “Building on SIFT strategies,.. ” they say, and this is very possible, even at our levels of education.

A huge element of SIFT is lateral reading – seeing what others say about the article, following up the sources used (and seeing what others say about these sources, looking for accuracy, looking for bias or vested interest), looking for what is not there as well as what s there, eventually going to The Source.

I wonder what our students will make of the May/June 2021 edition of The American Journal of Health Behavior, bought up by JUUL to promote research into electronic smoking;  JUUL just happens to be one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of e-smoking devices so might just have a vested interest; there are also questions to be asked about a journal which allows itself to be bought up, even for just one issue.

One advantage of acronyms is that they make for a set of easy-to-remember strategies and help ensure that we remember to cover all the bases.  Perhaps what we need is not something better than SIFT (or even CRAAP etc) but a better and maybe deeper set of questions to ask as we pursue each element of our chosen evaluation tool?

John

[John Royce Participant]

I do like your approach, Merrilibrarian, brainstorming possible questions and then categorising the questions.

Possibly not suitable for grades 3 and 4 but probably suitable for your colleague’s grade 6s, Elizabeth, is to get the students sub-categorising the hardest questions, what makes them hard to answer? Thoughts that come immediately to mind are

>  the information (data?) needed to answer these questions is difficult to find
>  there is too much information available (suggesting that the question is too broad) so refinement or narrowing of the question is needed
>  there are different points-of-view and/or conflicting information.

All could lead to healthy discussions:

>  is the necessary information really impossible to find or is it a matter of search and find skills, knowing where to look, how to frame the search terms etc etc (might teacher or librarian might be able to find it?)
>  how then to narrow or refine the question?
>  how to frame the answer/s? are they all equally valid? do all viewpoints need to be discussed?  does the question need reframing?
etc etc

I’m also wondering, Merrilibrarian, if you (will) have situations where some of those easy questions turn out to be harder than they first appeared.

Beginning to get an appreciation of the messiness of research – and that this is normal?

John

[John Royce Participant]

Ruth, I’m with Darryl here, citing and referencing feature at every stage of the research and writing process.

I hold that academic honesty is only a very small part of the reasons for citing and referencing and as such it comes out in the actual writing (or other form of presentation), in the Express stage.  Even here, there are other reasons for citing and referencing, from showing the breadth of your investigation to showing who you know the key writers in your topic are, from helping readers follow and understand your journey and themselves obtain (some of) the sources you found useful to demonstrating your worthiness to be a part of the academic conversation and the academic community.  (That last is where “correctness” of formatting of citations and references comes in – and mistakes in the correctness of the formatting do not necessarily equate with academic dishonesty.). And there are other reasons too, few of which connect with (academic) honesty but are totally about academic writing.

I am a strong supporter of note cards and/or research journals so that, even in the earliest stages of the cycle, the researcher has a record of sites and articles read or viewed, along with notes of what might be significant and/or usable and a record of the elements which together will inform the reference if the researcher decides to use it.  The note cards or research journals can take any form or format, maybe several, but they make for memory-joggers and enables retrieval of the original if closer reading is needed at a later stage of the investigation.  And maybe not the current investigation but a later and a different one.   As the investigation progresses, the research journal or cards could be in constant use.

When noting the bibliographic details in these early stages, correctness of formatting does  not come into it – as long as the writer provides a reminder for him/herself of where the material was found, and at least enough information to allow the writer to find it again.

In the presearch stage, the exploration stage of a research project, the connecting, wondering, investigating stages especially, one is reading widely so making notes, making connections, raising questions … so that when it comes to the closer reading of the construction and expression stages, one has ready-made reminders of what to look at more closely and what you will find useful in the actual writing/ presentation.

I agree with Darryl – using peer review to consider the quality of the sources and not just the notional “correctness” of the references can be useful. As can asking the peer reviewer to retrieve the sources based on the information given and checking for completeness.

Not harsh at all, Ruth, starting as early as you can, inculcating good habits so that honesty becomes engrained.

One other thought – academic honesty is not simply about citing (and referencing) – and in this sense it again features at every part of the FOSIL cycle. There are other aspects of research and writing in which honesty and academic should be the norm, the expectation, the requirement – else the integrity of the work (and thus of the writer) is at risk.

John

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