Emotional Intelligence and Information Literacy Competency
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Feeling Our Way: Emotional Intelligence and Information Literacy Competency Miriam L. Matteson, Omer Farooq, and David B. Mease Introduction growing learner can inform approaches to the prac- Information literacy (IL) continues to be a major tice of delivering IL instruction that may more sound- area of focus for academic librarians. Even as forces ly resonate with students, meeting them where they of change in the form of severe budget reductions, are in their cognitive and emotional development. In loss of positions, shifts in collection management, this paper, we explore IL from this wider lens, exam- and changing technologies, have hit libraries hard in ining relationships between affective dimensions of a the early 21st century, their commitment to providing students’ personality and IL competency. high quality IL instruction remains strong. An exami- nation of recent strategic plans from academic librar- Literature Review ies reveals continued emphasis on the teaching role The research presented here develops in part from a of librarianship with organizational units dedicated to call in the literature to more strongly connect IL and IL instruction and student engagement.1 IL initiatives information seeking behavior.3 Although these two across campuses have moved well beyond the tradi- concepts share important overlaps, as they have been tional face-to-face instruction session and now librar- conceptualized and addressed in the literature, they ians deliver instruction in a variety of styles, varying have remained somewhat unconnected. Julien and in length, format, and emphasis. Williamson attribute this gap to a larger disconnect As IL instruction initiatives have developed, many between practitioners and scholars.4 They write, “In- librarians have centered their efforts around the As- deed, we believe it is increasingly apparent that there sociation for College and Research Libraries (ACRL) is a conceptual gap between practitioners (librarians) IL standards,2 with emphasis placed on teaching the who are tasked with information literacy instruction skills outlined in the standards, diversifying the de- of users, and scholars (academics) who theorize the livery methods with new technologies, and assessing concept.”5 Our research begins to bridge this gap by learning outcomes. Less attention has been paid to using theory from information seeking behavior to understanding IL in a broader context as a set of skills underpin the research questions we ask about stu- or abilities at least partly influenced by dimensions of dents’ information literacy skills. Specifically, we draw a student’s personality, learning style, or level of cog- on theory that speaks to relationships between affect nitive development. There is benefit in examining IL and information seeking behavior. from a wider lens. A greater understanding of the in- Early work that focuses on affect in information dividual dimensions within a student as a developing, behavior is found within the construct of “library Miriam L. Matteson is Assistant Professor at Kent State University School of Library and Information Science, e-mail: [email protected]; Omer Farooq is at Kent State University School of Library and Information Science, e-mail: ofarooq@ kent.edu; David B. Mease is at Kent State University School of Library and Information Science, e-mail: [email protected] 200 Emotional Intelligence and Information Literacy Competency 201 anxiety.”6 Mellon’s theory was grounded in exploring related to IL competency, Farmer found that specific the feelings that students have about using the library dimensions of a measure of socio-emotional maturity, for research and she found that an overwhelming ma- emotional resilience and getting along, were signifi- jority of students described their initial response to cantly correlated with a measure of IL competency.13 library research in terms of fear. These feelings were Julien uncovered predominant affective experiences described as inadequacy, shamefulness, and desire to of IL from customers of public libraries, describing avoid any interaction such as asking questions.7 the three categories as “1) a sense of empowerment, The landmark research that revealed the affective personal mastery, and control; 2) a sense of normal, dimension of students’ information seeking behav- everyday experience, with no particular affective ele- ior was Kuhlthau’s Information Search Process (ISP), ment; and 3) a sense of frustration by those who do presented as a six staged “holistic” information seek- not believe themselves to be information literate.”14 ing experience.8 Central to the ISP is the notion that In demonstrating a connection between affective uncertainty, both affective and cognitive, increases experience and IL and more general information be- and decreases in the process of information seeking. haviors, these studies establish the directionality of As students move through the stages of the informa- that connection as the role of affect influencing -in tion search process, they experience emotions rang- formation behaviors. Bell conceptualizes the relation- ing from uncertainty, confusion, and frustration, to ship in the reverse direction, investigating the effect optimism, confidence, and satisfaction.9 library instruction has on students’ affect.15 The data Building on Kuhlthau’s framework, Nahl theoriz- showed that students’ positive affect increased after es the role of social and emotional factors that impact taking a library-skills course, even though the library information literacy.10 She states that the psychody- skills course was not directly intended to target stu- namics of information behavior are determined by dents’ affect.16 This finding increases the richness of personality and individual social competence. These the affect–information behavior relationship by sug- individual emotional traits, in turn, can contribute to gesting that it may be reciprocal. Individual affect may outcomes such as information adjustment problems, have an influence on one’s competency with informa- search process problems, and personal information tion behaviors—while building information behavior problems.11 skills also influences an individual’s affective domain. As the theories described here show, there is an With the theoretical and empirical evidence of a affective component to interacting with information. relationship between affect and information behavior The processes of recognizing a need for information, established, we seek to explore that connection fur- of locating the information, of making sense of what ther by investigating a more specific relationship be- we find, and of putting it to use in some way are linked tween affect and IL. A criticism of the literature on to a range of emotions. In addition to being supported IL is that it has tended to focus too narrowly on the with theory, the link between affect and information mechanistic aspects of IL, as defined by the ACRL behavior is further explored in empirical research. standards and measured by the corresponding indica- Discrete emotions in the context of information tors. Our interest in IL takes a step back from the stan- behaviors were the focus of Given’s research of under- dards and seeks to explore how individuals develop IL graduate students. Through in-depth interviews and competencies, looking not at the specifics of one de- walks around campus with participants, she identified livery approach over another, but focusing instead on micro and macro level events in students’ lives that stable, affective personality dimensions that might be resulted in discrete positive and negative emotions related to an ability to develop IL skills. Gatten mod- such as fear, sadness, alienation, anger, love, joy, and eled this approach to understanding IL by mapping surprise which affected the students’ ability to look theories of psychosocial and cognitive development for information and complete assignments.12 This re- to the steps of IL.17 He argued that librarians need to search shows the range of emotions experienced by be aware of the influences of these individual-based students as they enact information behaviors related characteristics of students and recognize that students to their studies. move through psychosocial and cognitive develop- In research that examined the socio-emotional ments stages–not necessarily in a linear fashion–as development of 9th and 11th grade high school students they mature. We continue in this direction by looking April 10–13, 2013, Indianapolis, IN 202 Miriam L. Matteson, Omer Farooq, and David B. Mease at two affective constructs, emotional intelligence and search also tells us that PA and NA are asymmetri- dispositional affect, to investigate relationships with cal—we tend to recall and process negative informa- IL competencies. tion more than positive information, resulting in the sense that “bad is stronger than good.”26 Larsen ex- Emotional Intelligence plains this phenomenon this way: “…there appears to Emotional intelligence (EI) “…involves the ability to be a gain in function built into the negative affect sys- monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, tem such that this system produces a larger response, to discriminate among them and to use this informa- per unit input, than the positive affect system.”27 The tion to guide one’s thinking and actions.”18 EI is an in- differences between PA and NA are further explained telligence because it involves abstract reasoning about by the observed actions resulting