This book is the result of a work first published by Mackey and Jacobson (2011) in 2011. It is designed to expand and expound the theory and ideas around formulating “metaliteracy” as the new approach to information literacy. Metaliteracy as a term is introduced and discussed both as a theoretical framework and as a working model for information literacy instruction.
The term “metaliteracy” expands information literacy to include media literacy, digital literacy, cyber literacy, visual literacy, mobile literacy, critical information literacy and health literacy. Metaliteracy, the authors explain, is also a “response to the convergence of social media, social networking, and mobile, online and open learning” (p. 17). As noted in the first chapter, there are intersections with theories of multiple intelligence, multiliteracies and transliteracy, and with terms such as metacompetency and convergence.
The first three chapters explore the concept of metaliteracy as a framework to promote metacognitive learning (Chapter 1), what it means in the context of social media (Chapter 2) and what it means for developing “metaliterate” learners (Chapter 3). Chapter 4 places the metaliteracy framework within international trends in information literacy, and Chapter 5 is a report on a survey of 361 librarians, faculty and instructional designers, asking how educators “were addressing the continuously evolving nature of information gathering and usage” (p. 128). Chapters 6 and 7 examine practice in the light of an expanded approach to information literacy, drawing on the authors’ experience and a range of examples of practice where a number of literacy are included in the course design.
The contributions made by this book are many: a new framework for information literacy is proposed and explored, and this is an important turning point for information literacy, which has relied on the American Library Association standards for over two decades (p. 45). The authors have also surveyed current practices and attitudes within the field; a number of real-world examples of learning programmes that have the potential to empower learners as “metaliterate” are described; and a range of literacy types is explored. This provides a rich basis for discussion and debate and puts “metaliteracy” and “metalearner” as theoretical concepts firmly into the information discipline.
Furthermore, the authors have contributed a massive open online courses (MOOCs) and developed a number of learning objectives (http://metaliteracy.org/). The framework and metaliteracy learning objectives are accessible and a welcome addition to the information literacy educator’s toolkit.
There is more work to be done on the theoretical framework, and a closer examination of the relationship with multiliteracies theory (as discussed in Cope and Kalazantzis’s work, 2000; Kalantzis and Cope, 2012) would be informative. The inclusion of health literacy seems somewhat random, given that other disciplines such as law, music, accounting, etc. could all also be included for similar reasons, although work on digital and other literacy may not yet be apparent in those disciplines. This speaks to the challenging nature of information literacy in general; access to, understanding and use of and critical reflection on information and information sources are fundamental to learning. The fact that multi-modal learning is discussed in a wide range of disciplines emphasises both the difficulty with and necessity of shaping robust theoretical frameworks. Metaliteracy: Reinventing Information Literacies to Empower Learners highlights the generality of these learning needs and authoritatively includes these within a redefined information literacy framework, going further than most work in this area by including remixing and repurposing as a learning objective. The book and the associated MOOCs, blog and metaliteracy learning objectives (http://metaliteracy.org/) provide a bridge to a broadened framework for the information/library discipline.
