Book Review: Teaching Information Literacy in Higher Education

Abstract

This chapter connects to the normative basis of information literacy, and the values and attitudes of academic production of new knowledge. It starts with an introduction to the phenomenon of “Academic Bildung,” understood as independence and personal engagement, in other words the process of adopting and being integrated into academic ways of thinking and learning. This process is also desired to be a process towards academic integrity and critical thinking. Academic integrity can be described as the moral code of academia, and this chapter argues that it has its source in research integrity. Critical thinking is the activity of seeking out valid and justified reasons, and it is a set of skills as well as an educational ideal. Academic integrity and critical thinking, as parts of Academic Bildung, are vital for truly being information literate in higher education. This chapter finally explains how motivation theory in the form of Self-Determination Theory (SDT) can be seen as an empirical and descriptive counterpart of the normative education-philosophical theory of Academic Bildung.