Conceptualizing students´ written assignments in the context of information literacy and Schatzki´s practice theory

Trine SchreiberRoyal School of Library and Information Science, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze the ways to practice the written assignment in a university setting in the context of information literacy and in perspective of Schatzki´s practice theory.

Design/methodology/approach – The analysis is based on both a qualitative in-depth study involving individual interviews with students from higher education and the practice theoretical perspective.

Findings – By analyzing informants´ negotiations of the “acceptable” way to perform the written assignment practice, a configuration of the particular practice has been made. In perspective of Schatzki´s practice theory, a study into information literacy involves focussing on the changing character of the activities performing the practice in question. In this paper the changing character is analyzed by comparing the configuration of the written assignment practice with a description of the genre of scientific articles. The article draws the conclusion that the configuration consists of both regular and irregular occurrences. Job orientation and use of social media seemed to influence the written assignment practice as it was performed by the informants.

Originality/value – This paper contributes to research into information literacy in educational settings by proposing an analysis based on Schatzki´s theory combined with concepts of routinization, reflexivity and genre.

Keywords Information literacy, Practice theory, Genre theory, Study practices, Written academic assignments

Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction

In information literacy research, students´ written assignment has from time to time been used as a context for investigating information behavior and learning processes (Kuhlthau, 2004; Limberg and Sundin, 2006). Investigations of the practice of writing assignments in school or university settings has contributed to the understanding of what makes information meaningful in study life. In recent years, research into information literacy has focussed on theories of practice (Cox, 2012; Limberg et al., 2012; Lipponen, 2010; Lloyd, 2010a, 2010b, 2012). The paper continues this application of the practice theoretical approach by making an information literacy study of students´ written assignments practice. The aim of the paper is to analyze the ways to practice the written assignment in a university setting in the context of information literacy and in perspective of Schatzki´s practice theory.

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When a practice theoretical approach is used, information literacy is not seen as an individual phenomenon involving an assessment of individual skills, but as a collective phenomenon, which is developed in a field of social activities and interaction. In this paper students´ written academic assignments is seen as a social practice consisting of a constellation of activities. Therefore, information literacy unfolds and is shaped within this practice. As such this paper presents an empirical study based on a theoretical approach. Further, in perspective of Schatzki´s practice theory, a study into information literacy involves focussing on the changing character of activities performing the practice in question. Therefore, in the paper, information literacy is expressed in informants´ negotiations of the “acceptable” way to perform the written assignment practice. By analyzing these negotiations, it is possible to construct a configuration of the particular practice.

This analysis of the written assignment practice in a university setting shows what kind of analysis Schatzki´s theory enables. The analysis is based primarily on Schatzki´s (2001, 2002, 2003, 2010, 2012) own works; but also on the interpretation of his theory by Reckwitz (2002) and Halkier (2010, 2011; Halkier and Jensen, 2008, 2011). The concepts of the analysis are “practice” and the organizing elements of “understandings, rules and teleo-affective structures” from Schatzki´s theory, and “routinization” and “reflexivity” from the works of, respectively, Reckwitz (2002) and Halkier (2010). Further, the paper introduces the concept of genre developed by Miller (1984) and Bazerman (1988) (Andersen 2006, 2008).

The use of practice theory involves making certain assumptions about the process of understanding social action. Practice theory as defined by Schatzki leads to an analysis of the micro processes which make up everyday interaction, where social action is at one and the same time both conditioned and constituting. The act of doing something is constituted by a flow of actions and agency processes, where the action is done, re-done and often slightly differently from before, thereby initiating possible change (Halkier, 2010, p. 35). By using the concepts mentioned in the analysis of the written assignment practice it is possible to discuss whether some activities in this practice are indeed done “slightly differently from before”. In this way it is possible to come closer to information literacy as it unfolds and is shaped within the particular practice.

During the analysis the written academic assignments practice will be configured. The configuration is based on interviews with students from different disciplines within a higher education setting. Further, this configuration of the written assignment practice will be compared with Bazerman´s description of the genre of scientific articles. The comparison points towards some possible regularities as well as irregularities of the practice.

The article is structured as follows: First, Lloyd´s application of Schatzki´s theory in the field of information literacy is briefly described followed by a presentation of Schatzki´s theory itself. Next, I describe the production of the empirical material for the analysis of the written assignment practice. After this, the concept of genre is explained, and the genre of the scientific article as described by Bazerman (1988) is presented. Then, there is the analysis of the written assignment practice based on interviews with students from higher education and on the theory and concepts mentioned. Finally, the article draws some conclusions about the way to practice the written assignment in the context of information literacy and in perspective of Schatzki´s theory.

2. Information literacy

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The application of a practice theoretical approach to information literacy research was originally based largely on the works of Vygotsky and Säljö (Wertsch, 1998; Säljö, 1999; Sundin et al., 2008; Sundin and Francke, 2009), gradually also embracing Lave and Wenger (Lipponen, 2010; Lloyd, 2008, 2010a, 2010b, 2012, Moring, 2011; Tuominen et al., 2005) as well as Schatzki´s theory (Francke et al., 2011; Lloyd, 2010a, 2010b). As it is mainly Lloyd who has applied Schatzki´s theory to the field of information literacy, her work will be briefly mentioned here.

Viewed in the perspective of Schatzki´s theory, Lloyd defines information literacy as a complex sociocultural information practice seen as part of a “practice architecture which shapes and maintains practices within a social site” (Lloyd, 2010a, p. 29f.). She regards it as a “dispersed practice” (Lloyd, 2010b). According to Schatzki dispersed practices cover those kinds of actions that are typically part of other practices, i.e. asking, typing on a keyboard, reading, moving things, etc. (Schatzki, 2002, p. 88). In contrast, integrative practices are more complex than dispersed practices and are characterized by a multiple dynamic. Lloyd describes information literacy as “a dispersed practice that hangs together as a bundle of information focused activities that are constituted within the larger integrative practices” (Lloyd, 2010b, p. 249). Information literacy is understood as situated in a specific setting, and this means that a central task for future research is to investigate how information literacy as a practice is formed and enacted within each social setting (Lloyd, 2012, p. 781).

For Lloyd an important area of research is the process by which newcomers become experts in a particular information landscape. However, “learning” per se does not feature strongly in the vocabulary of Schatzki´s theory. Therefore the concept of learning used in Lloyd´s work is based on Wenger´s theory and his notion of “community of practice”. In the following sections a further combination is proposed, namely Schatzki´s theory combined with both the work of Reckwitz (2002) and Halkier (2010) on the concepts of routinization and reflexivity, and genre theory as developed by Bazerman (1988). This means that it is not newcomers becoming experts, but rather the changing character of the written assignment practice which forms the pivotal point of the analysis.

3. Practice theory

According to Schatzki the concept of practice is defined as an organized constellation of activities. In an article from 2002, Reckwitz highlights the fact that we talk about routinized types of activities: “A ´practice´[…] is a routinized type of behavior which consists of several elements, interconnected to one other: forms of bodily activities, forms of mental activities, “things” and their use, a background knowledge in the form of understanding, know-how, states of emotion and motivational knowledge” (Reckwitz, 2002, p. 249). Examples of practices from the educational field would be, for example reading, teaching, negotiating, and political practices.

Traditionally, philosophical thought in the European modern era has been characterized by a dichotomy between subject and object. In contrast practice theory emphasizes that subject and object have to be connected. As mentioned in the definition by Reckwitz, the idea of practice involves activities of the body as well as the mind. The actions that compose a practice are bodily doings and sayings, and the latter, sayings, is seen as a “subclass” of doings (Schatzki, 2012, p. 15). These doings are seen as organized activities. Schatzki defines practice in the following way: “As indicated, practices are organized nexuses of actions. This means that the doings and sayings that

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compose a given practice are linked through (1) practical understandings, (2) rules, (3) a teleoaffective structure, and (4) general understandings” (Schatzki, 2002, p. 77).

Taking Schatzki´s four parameters in turn, firstly, practical understandings refers to the kind of practical sensibility required in order to know how to carry out and recognize the desired actions. Particular practical understandings can belong to multiple practices. Secondly, rules constitute explicitly formulated procedures, instructions, laws etc. Thirdly, by the teleoaffective structures Schatzki wants to highlight the importance of both teleology as the orientation towards an end and affectivity as the question about what things matter. The actions are carried out for the sake of particular ends, while simultaneously embracing beliefs, hopes and emotions expressed in an appropriate way. It is a kind of normative structure implying “acceptable and correct ends” and “acceptable and correct beliefs” (Schatzki, 2001, p. 60f). As already mentioned above, people do what makes sense for them to do, and what makes sense is determined by the teleology and affectivity, i.e. the normative orientations concerning acceptable ends and feelings. In other words, the organization of a practice is a normativized array of mental states (Schatzki, 2003, p. 192). Finally, general understandings refer to an abstract kind of knowledge about for instance the worth, beauty or value of an action (Schatzki, 2012, p.16). The pools of understandings of both a practical and general character would then determine what makes sense to people to do.

Practices are seen as a kind of context, but Schatzki translates context into the concept of “a site” where activities occur (p. 54). In Schatzki´s theory the concept “arrangement” also plays a central role. He defines an arrangement as a layout of material entities consisting of people, organisms, artifacts, and things, where these entities establish positions in relation to one another. As an example of an arrangement he mentions teacher, students, desks, blackboard, plants in a classroom (Schatzki, 2001, p. 52). Every practice deals with the material entities of the arrangement by giving meaning to the entities, while the entities might enable or constrain the practice. Arrangements do not only exist within practices, but are also established across practices. Practices and arrangements form “bundles”, where arrangement and practices might constitute each other, and together these bundles form the “sites” (2012, p. 16f; Schatzki, 2002).

According to Schatzki, “agency” is “the central motor of a constant becoming that sweeps the social site” (Schatzki 2002, p. 189). In sociological studies, the concept of agency has commonly been associated with notions of freedom, free will, action, creativity and the possibility of change through the actions of free agents (Barker 2000, p. 182). For the sociologist Giddens, individual actors are influenced by social forces which lie beyond them as individual subjects, but which at the same time enable them to act. However, Schatzki takes another view. By agency is meant just “doing” (Schatzki 2002, p. 191). To perform an action means carrying on the practice of which it is a part. The actions of individuals are therefore not determined by social structures at all. On the contrary, activity is indeterminate in the sense that it is not fixed or laid down prior to a person acting. It is only with the performance itself that what a person does becomes definite. In addition, as mentioned above, activities which make up practices are regarded as being organized. Participating in a practice involves operating in an arena where certain actions and ends are prescribed, and therefore can be correct or acceptable on certain occasions (Schatzki 2002, p. 75).

The individual is doing something as part of a practice, but the organization of practices as such is not contained in the mind of the individuals. People who carry out the actions have developed versions of the mental states but cannot be said to possess the organization of the practice as such. The versions of the organization which the individual holds are developed through training and

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learning through participation in the practices. As Reckwitz expresses it, the individual is a body or mental agent who acts as the “carrier” of a practice. The individual is a carrier of patterns of bodily behavior and at the same time “also of certain routinized ways of understanding, knowing how and desiring” (Reckwitz, 2002, p. 250). The mind and the mental states have a central position in the theory but they do not belong to the individual “deep inside” as Reckwitz (2002) puts it (p. 252). Instead the mind and the mental states have to be seen as part of the practices.

In Halkier and Jensen´s use of practice theory, the concepts of negotiation and social interaction play an important role (Halkier and Jensen, 2008, 2011). The normative element is not seen as being made up of permanent rules but rather of performed practices, where the appropriate conduct is under negotiation. When people carry out a practice, there is negotiation of the “right” way to perform the practice. Thus, social interaction is seen by Halkier and Jensen as a kind of productive social process. They describe normative regulations as continuous practical and discursive “accomplishment” between practitioners as they negotiate acceptable and expected conduct (Halkier and Jensen, 2011, p. 106).

Every individual carries out a multitude of different practices, and therefore Reckwitz maintains that the individual is the unique crossing point of practices (Reckwitz, 2002, p. 256). The multiplicity of different practices in the crossing point challenges one another through the different understandings, rules and teleoaffective structures. Halkier and Jensen have seen this aspect as important for explaining changes and dynamics of practices (Warde, 2005, p. 139f; Halkier and Jensen, 2008, p. 55). Practices and bundles arise, persist, and dissolve principally through human activity. Halkier describes practices which “come into being in the processes of activities carried out in front of, together with, and in relation to others” (Halkier, 2010, p. 30); further, these practices are “practically done, re-done and slightly differently done” (Halkier, 2010, p. 35). By being the unique crossing point of practices, the individuals´ small adaptations, adjustments and experiments can potentially change the way of performing certain practices.

A central question is whether the routinisation of activities implies a procedure which is taken for granted by the individual. This would lead to a kind of “doings”, a performance which is based on tacit knowledge or practical consciousness but without reflexivity (Halkier, 2010, p.63ff). The concept of reflexivity is inspired by Giddens (2001) but adapted to Schatzki´s theory. Halkier defines reflexivity as occurring “when understandings, procedures and engagements in practices and performances are explicit and reflected upon through discursive consciousness” (Halkier, 2010, p. 63). Halkier describes how performances may be conceivably as neither simply routine nor exclusively reflected upon. She thus divides the concept into three categories: The first is “routinisation of reflexivity”, where reflections have become a routinely integrated element of the practice. The second is “routinisation as release from reflexivity” and means virtually the opposite, in that the reflexivity is facilitated by routinised doings. The activities belonging to this category may come close to constituting a kind a rationalization. Finally, the third category is “ambivalence between routinisation and reflexivity”, which indicates a potential conflict in a practice. Although reflexivity is placed at the level of general understandings, at the level of concrete doings, it is still the routines which dominate, and together this causes a tension and ambivalence of the practice (Halkier, 2010, p. 65). The three categories, thereby, provide a tool to express how bodily and mental procedures may interact.

In the analysis of the written assignment practice (see Section 6), the organizing elements of a practice will make up the structure. The empirical material for examining this practice comes from

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interviews with students from different disciplines at university level. The use of practice theory means that no attempt has been made to look for specific explanations such as social structures or user segments behind the doings and sayings of the students as informants. Instead my intention is to lay out the multiple processes and variety found in the empirical material. Rather than claiming that the written assignment practice has some kind of stability as a social category, the assumption is that it has a dynamic and changing character. One of the objectives of the analysis is therefore to capture some of this complexity.

4. The concept of genre

The concept of genre is useful for the study of the written assignment practice. Human activity, texts, and social practices are brought together in the concept of genre defined as “typified rhetorical actions based in recurrent situations” (Miller, 1984, p. 159; Bazerman, 1988, p. 7; Andersen, 2008). This means that a genre is socially recognized as a way of formulating responses in certain situations. As typified rhetorical actions, genre is shaped by recurrent communicative actions by students and teachers in the university setting; genre in turn shapes the knowledge-producing activity into a typified activity (Bazerman, 1988; Andersen, 2008, p. 349f). It is therefore typified activities which form the unit of the analysis below and which are presented as the written assignment practice. Information activities are seen as a subsection of human activities, which together with texts, a pool of understandings, rules, and a teleoaffective structure (to use Schatzki´s vocabulary) are organized in a particular way in order to accomplish social actions. The written assignment practice is a genre in which the communication and organization of knowledge and information take place. Therefore, to study the written assignment practice is to study how knowledge and information “is regulated, codified, and altered by people and their communicative activities” (Andersen 2008, p. 355).

Bazerman has described “typified rhetorical actions based in recurrent situations” (Miller, 1984) in relation to scientific articles. His presentation of the regulation of knowledge in scientific articles will be used below as previously established practices which the recent written assignment practice can be compared with. In the book “Shapen written knowledge” from 1988, Bazerman presents three scientific articles representing three different kinds of knowledge construction in scientific communities. The three articles come from three different disciplines representing the three traditional academic divisions: natural sciences, social sciences and humanities, although it is not claimed that they are typical of their disciplines (Bazerman, 1988, p. 24ff).

The first article from the natural sciences is an article where an object is given and exists independent of the people who want to observe it. The purpose of human action is the process of getting to know this object (Bazerman, 1988, p. 31). There is a well-established framework of existing scientific knowledge in which to fit their claims about the object. The authors of the text place their contribution within this framework. The object will be fully understood when a formulation that describes all its features is found. The text cites work relevant to the assessment of the claims made in the article. The literature referred to is used first of all to present claims that contradict or support the discovery. The dominant criterion of the scientific value of the text is that the statements correspond to the object, i.e. that the chosen symbolic representation matches the real world.

The second article is from the social sciences and, in contrast to the first article, does not have a given object which rests on shared knowledge. The object is not universally recognized as a discrete

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phenomenon (Bazerman, 1988, p. 34). Therefore it is the author who has to establish the phenomenon; this is achieved by being open to reconsidering broad parts of the literature of the field. The author refers to the literature with the purpose of finding examples of the phenomenon confirming that the phenomenon exists. They challenge the reader by using language involving not only concepts from the social sciences, but also metaphors and other implicit terms. There is not the correspondence between language and phenomenon that there is in the article from the natural sciences. The author´s purpose is to convince the reader about the existence of both the phenomenon and a framework of knowledge in the field. Although they might use the literature of the social science discipline as evidentiary documents, it is still difficult to establish a codified body of knowledge supporting claims about the discussed phenomenon. Therefore, the language used in the text must be carefully shaped by the author to persuade the reader of both the claims and its framework of knowledge.

The third article comes from the humanities. In this particular case it is about a poem. The purpose of the article is to ask the audience to accept a new way of reading it (Bazerman, 1988, p. 39). The author wants to tell the reader about new dimensions in the poem. The intention is to transform the traditional way of reading it, but the existing experiences of reading the poem constrain what the author can convince the audience about. The poem is well-known and in that sense a given object, but the author must unfold the new way of reading the poem. At the same time, the author must show that his interpretation is consistent with both the wording and structure of poems by the same poet, and the knowledge about the poet and his period (Bazerman 1988, p. 42). The language used has a kind of subjectivity related to the mediating of the author´s own literary experience. The literature referred to may for instance be biographical information about the poet, information about the historical period or samples of writings by the same poet or by other poets.

In the later part of the paper I contempt to compare the configuration of the written assignment practice with Bazerman´s description of the three articles. Bazerman´s description of the scientific articles points towards some possible regularities of the practice. The idea is to compare the configuration of the written assignment practice with these regularities. This analysis may involve findings of both regular and irregular occurrences.

5. Empirical data and analysis

The research question of the study is to analyze the ways to practice the written assignment in a university setting. The analysis is based on both Schatzki´s practice theory and empirical qualitative in-depth study involving 27 individual and semi-structured interviews. First, in May 2011, seven students from a Norwegian university were interviewed about their study practices. All the students came from the same discipline from the faculty of humanities. Then, in June 2011, 20 students from two Danish educational institutions were interviewed about their study practices. Ten students came from a Danish university, and represented five respectively from social sciences and human sciences. The other ten came from a Danish university college and represented again five, respectively, from the pedagogical and the health sciences. In sum, 17 students belonged to the humanities and five came from the social science. The natural sciences were represented by the five students from the health sciences.

The duration of each interview was about one hour. The majority of students had been studying from one to three years of a bachelor degree. Four of the students from the Danish university had continued their education at master level. During their education the majority of the students had

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mainly worked with their written assignments individually. However, the five students from the health sciences had mainly worked in groups.

All interviews took the point of departure in conversations about the students´ study practices. The interview questions were aimed at gathering information about the students´ activities in everyday study life, their choice of education, learning experiences, tasks in relation to the courses, written assignments, use of teaching and guidance, information seeking, use of web-based educational tools, use of Internet and Facebook, examinations, homework, and participation in other practices related to job, family, sport and so on. Part of the interview consisted of the informant doing a “walk-through” of a web based tutorial about information seeking and written assignments. This provided a background for the conversations between the informant and the researcher.

The first phase of the analysis was done by using qualitative coding. Through a careful examination of the interviews, empirical grounded themes emerged. Similarities and differences across the interviews formed the basis for these themes. Examples of the themes were “how to get started with the written assignment”, “how to understand the analysis”, “how to find information”, “use of digital media” etc. In the second phase of the analysis, the first reading was combined with an application of a number of concepts from Schatzki´s practice theory, especially from his definition of social practice, i.e. the concepts of understandings, rules and teleoaffective structure. In this second phase the interviews were studied anew and analyzed more in depth. Further, this new analysis formed the basis of an aggregation into two themes: “a pool of understandings” and “rules and routines” used in the following presentation of the analysis. The interview excerpts used in the presentation are the result of the coding and analysis of the most significant examples regarding the understandings of the particular activities. The interviews were in Danish and Norwegian and they have been translated into informal written English in spite of the difficulties that may give.

6. The written assignment practice

The following analysis focusses on the elements organizing the written assignment practice, i.e. understandings (practical as well as general), rules and the teleoaffective structure. First the understandings will be analyzed, and then the rules. During the analysis, the informants´ description of their activities related to the teleoaffective structure will be included. The purpose of this is to develop a configuration of the written assignment practice based on the interviews and the theory.

6.1 A pool of understandings

This section presents a variation found in the understandings of the written assignment practice. First, the analysis shows two kinds of understandings, which seem to organize the doings and sayings of the practice. It concerns the understandings of knowing how to start working on the assignment and how to make the analysis part of the assignment. These two kinds of understandings are, respectively, “making the good idea” and “making the well-founded assumption”. The distinction is not clear-cut because some of the informants had statements belonging to both. Second, the analysis presents four kinds of understandings of the information activities which the students carried out during the work on the written assignment. The understandings of these activities also form part of the organization of the practice.

6.1.1 Making the good idea versus making the well-founded assumption. One of the ways in which the informants understood the practice concerning both how to get started with the written

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assignment and how to continue with the analysis can be described as “making the good idea”. This implied an understanding of the written assignment as a task which was initiated by the student coming up with a good idea for the topic of the assignment. One of the informants described how he could get an idea while sitting on the train. Another described it just as a process of thinking. However, the choice of topic could depend on some contact with the world outside the university. One of the informants described the process of choosing the topic for her master thesis in the following way:

Every day I tried to think of something, and then I would rush to write it down. In fact it ended up with me posting on Facebook: “Help, topic wanted for my research paper”. Then I got some ideas to choose between, and I took one of them. This came from someone who was completely outside my own discipline. (Maria, female, social science, Danish University)

However, developing the good idea was not always such a problem-free process:

I think it can sometimes be a problem if you have a really good idea and you want to investigate something, and then somehow you have to force something theoretical on to it. You think you have a really good idea, but it does not fit the theory. (Anne, female, human science, Danish University)

To move on from the good idea to the analysis section of the assignment involved applying theory to the idea. Some of the difficulties of using a theory could be described in relation to the task of writing an academic text, and this was explicitly remarked by some of the informants. One informant, David, studying film science, described how at the beginning of his time at university he found it difficult to understand what an academic text was and how it could be useful, but later, when he had worked with this sort of text, he understood how it could give the topic a particular perspective:

When I began to understand it and I was reading the texts, then I felt that I gained a greater understanding of things, films and how they worked as art and that kind of thing, and exactly why it had to be written in an academic way. It was one type of understanding. (David, male, human science, Norwegian University)

When the doings and sayings of the practice were organized by the understanding of “making the good idea”, the organized nexus of actions seemed to involve a specific orientation towards a specific end as part of the teleoaffective structure. The students expressed the choice of topic of the assignment as being based on personal desire. For some their personal interest was linked to a desire for a specific job after finishing their education.

Another way the informants understood the practice can be called “making the well-founded assumption”. Some of the informants described the period prior to beginning the task as a time of discussion together with the teacher and other students. This discussion was planned by the teacher as part of the curriculum and involved teacher and students discussing potential topics related to what it was possible to make an assumption about. One of the informants described it as a process of finding gaps in the literature:

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I have chosen to go more deeply into the subject of municipalities, because not so much has been written about it. Actually, it was also what our teacher said; it was good if we - so to speak - could find holes in the literature, gaps in the literature. (Martin, male, social science, Danish University)

For Martin the choice of the assignment topic depended on finding an assumption which seemed to be well-founded and in that way a potential starting point for writing a synopsis and later the assignment.

Concerning the teleoaffective structure of the practice, the understanding of “making the well-founded assumption” was not linked to a personal interest in the same way as “making the good idea” was. The teleoaffective structure of “making the well-founded assumption” more revolved around passing the examination.

There was no clear division between the disciplines followed by the students and the way the initial work with the assignment was carried out. For some students the way to get started with the written assignment seemed to belong to “making the good idea” as well as “making the well-founded assumption”: their statements could be interpreted as both. Further, some students also described cases, where the choice of a theme for the assignment was decided by the teacher. In these cases the possibility of finding a topic of personal interest was reduced.

Compared with Bazerman´s description of the three scientific articles, “making the good idea” is a kind of understanding which does not fit neatly into the structure of the article from natural sciences where the object and established framework of knowledge are given. Instead the understanding of “making the well-founded assumption” might be more consistent with this kind of article. However, “making the good idea” might fit the article from either social sciences, where the author has to establish an object or a social phenomenon, or humanities, where new dimensions of an object have to be presented. In this way the practice seemed to involve some regularity. On the other hand, compared with the scientific article, “making the good idea” might involve an irregularity as far as it was presented without any arguments, meaning that the students did not refer to the establisment of a social phenomenon or to a reconsideration of the literature of the field. Instead they referred to their personal interest. Another irregularity might be the use of social media such as Facebook to find the good idea, as mentioned in the first excerpt.

6.1.2. Four ways of understanding information activities. The following section presents the variation found in the empirical material of different understandings of the information activities done in relation to the work with the written assignment. There are four ways of understanding what the information activities included.

The first is called “using the safeguard”. The main information activity described by the informants was to apply the literature from the syllabus of relevant courses to the written assignment. Many of them described some variation in the teachers´ requirements concerning new literature. Some expressed the view that it was a risk to go outside the set of literature from the syllabus. Others were of the opinion that the teacher actually preferred students to use literature from outside the syllabus, but that it was not always necessary:

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I stuck to the syllabus mostly, again, because there is a reason why they have chosen this syllabus. You just have to be careful when searching for literature outside the syllabus. (Christian, male, social science, Danish University)

One student, Martin (male, social science, Danish University) called the literature list from the syllabus the “safeguard”. The same informant described how he read an article recommended by the teacher and later when he had decided to use the article in his assignment, he just followed the literature list in this paper and thereby got the relevant information.

The second understanding can be called “searching for information”. All the informants used different information resources as part of their homework and assignments, often online resources. These could include anything from discipline-specific information resources to Google and Wikipedia. Many used Google when they had a concrete question, the name of a writer or a particular publication, or a word from the lecture they wanted to know the meaning of. Some used the library physically as well as digitally, others only digitally. Some used the library primarily as a place for doing homework. The aim of these activities was to support “making the good idea”, “making the well-founded assumption”, ´”using the safeguard” as well as “collecting evidence” and “gathering empirical material”, which are described below.

The third understanding is called “collecting evidence”. The informants from health science talked explicitly about collecting evidence in their description of their information activities; students from social science also described this kind of understanding, although they did not use the word directly. However, there did not seem to be a direct link between working with the written assignment as a kind of “making the well-founded assumption” and the understanding of the information activities as “collecting evidence”. The students from social science, who performed assignment activities belonging to “making the well-founded assumption”, also described the information activities in the form of “using the safeguard”.

The informants from health science described how, on every course, teachers highlighted the importance of making every assumption evidence-based. A couple of years earlier the discipline had been changed by the introduction of knowledge as primarily evidence-based. One student describing the difficulties of working with the analysis emphasized the importance of finding regular evidence. She explained that the demarcation of the assignment depends on finding the right information:

I think it is difficult to start, to get the project delimited, and especially to search for literature; and then just when you think you have found the topic, there didn´t seem to be enough literature on it. We didn´t felt we could find enough articles about the topic we had chosen. That was where I think we struggled a bit. (Emma, female, health science, Danish University College)

For these students, the main difficulty with writing the assignment was how to carry out a “good” analysis with evidence based on for instance empirical material:

We have really been taught that there can be no claims without evidence. (Nina, female, health science, Danish University College).

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Another student from the same discipline described how they used several different resources when searching for information:

We have carried out searches of a whole lot of databases to find empirical material, scientific studies and so on. I think it has really been complicated to find out, but then again, once you have learnt it, it is actually quite easy. I think it is a bit difficult, but in any case I am able to do it now, searching databases and so on. (Stine, female, health science, Danish University College)

Thus, the information activities as “collecting evidence” were based on an intensive interplay between information seeking and writing the assignment. Concerning the teleoaffective structure of the practice there was, for these students from health science, a connection between “collecting evidence” and their interest in belonging to the profession of the discipline and further to be part of the development of the profession. The understanding of “collecting evidence” was linked to the expectation of the future labor market and to the desire for higher status as a professional.

The fourth understanding of the information activities is called “gathering empirical material”. Many of the informants had collected empirical material in the context of the written assignment. Some students had carried out interviews or collected documents with the purpose of creating a foundation for the discussion of the text or getting more deeply into the topic they had chosen for the assignment. This kind of understanding in relation to information activities occurred across the disciplines.

As shown, the doings and sayings seemed to be organized through at least four different understandings of the information activities. Compared with Bazerman´s description of the three scientific articles, the understandings of the information activities seemed to include a number of regularities.

The information activity called “using the safeguard”, i.e. applying the literature from the syllabus to the written assignment, can be seen as an activity where the student presents a well-established framework of scientific knowledge. In this way it could fit the article which, following Bazerman, belongs to natural science. However, it could also be in line with the articles from respectively social sciences and humanities, where the author has to reconsider or transform the existing framework of knowledge.

The understanding of information activities as “collecting evidence” can be seen as a feature of the scientific article belonging to natural science. It was the students from health science who explicitly used the word “evidence” in the sense of providing scientific arguments for the assumptions. In this way the framework of scientific knowledge in a particular field can be used to support the assumptions.

Furthermore, the understanding of information activities as “gathering empirical material” can also be regarded as being in line with the natural science article. However, the aim of these kinds of activities was not to produce any support for a particular claim or assumption, but rather to establish a phenomenon, which could lead to the topic of the written assignment, by giving examples confirming that the phenomenon existed and therefore the topic. In this way it seemed to be a feature more in line with the social science article.

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6.2 Rules and routines

Many of the informants described the specific requirements of the educational institution concerning the structure of a written assignment. Method, theory, analysis, and result constituted a well-known structure. Thus the rules concerning the structure of the assignment seemed to be quite similar for the most of the informants in spite of their belonging to different disciplines. Some had been taught on the courses what a written assignment consisted of. For others the teachers had written on the website which criteria the assignment had to fulfill. Another group reported that once they had made a kind of structure for the assignment, they then used the model many times, and because the teachers did not raise any objections, they concluded that the model was the right one and they had used it ever since.

Being at the university for a few years led to a kind of routine becoming established concerning the structure of the assignment. As described above, Halkier has laid down three categories concerning the relationship between routines of the activities and reflexive knowledge.

The first, “routinisation of reflexivity”, was expressed when the informants combined the work with the structure of the assignment with for instance the analysis. In the following excerpt the student explains how she needed knowledge about the structure as a tool for doing the analysis:

I would say that on this course the pieces started falling into place: “So that´s the way we are going to build it”, because I have sometimes had the feeling that I have been groping in the dark for what the structure of a good written assignment is and what it actually means when you conduct an analysis. It is not because I haven´t carried out analyses before; but it was back in primary and secondary school, several years ago. So, to conduct a good analysis you need some tools to be able to do it, really, to keep the main thread. (Nina, female, health science, Danish University College)

For some of the other informants the knowledge about the structure implied a kind of routine. In the following excerpt it might be a kind of “routinisation as release from reflexivity” which the student is expressing:

The more assignments you write, the better you know what the teachers and what the university want in an assignment. So, the structure is the same from assignment to assignment. (Kerstin, female, human science, Norwegian University)

Other students were quite relaxed about the requirements for structure. They revealed they had knowledge about the structure, but in spite of this they described their own way of managing the requirements of the assignment. In the following excerpt there might be a kind of tension or ambivalence behind the formulation:

It must be like this: it must have an introduction, material, result and method, but I don´t think a lot about it. I just write. I write what I think of. If I am thinking of a small thing, then perhaps I just write one sentence, in order to keep going, like lining it up …. But it is not so highly structured. (Niklas, male, human science, Norwegian University)

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The excerpts above indicate how the informants understood the rules and procedures in relation to construction of knowledge. In the first excerpt routinisation seems to support reflexivity, while in the second the structure of the written assignment seems to be more routine than part of knowledge construction. The third excerpt might suggest the risk that rules reduce creativity. Thus, following the three excerpts the routinisation concerning the structure of the written assignment seemed to be taken for granted, but in the first and third excerpt it included reflexivity.

6.3 Central aspects of the configuration

The analysis of the written assignment practice revealed that the practice is extremely complex. The ways to perform the written assignment based on the empirical studies were informed by “making the good idea” and “making the well-founded assumption”. Next, the empirical studies found that the information activities which seemed most relevant to the written assignment practice were “using the safeguard”, “searching for information”, “collecting evidence”, and “gathering empirical material”. Further, the kind of routinisation found in the study might involve reflexivity. The use of the two concepts “routinisation” and “reflexivity” in the analysis suggested that routines did not necessary exclude reflexivity, but at the same time the analysis led to questioning whether the routines might in some way reduce reflexivity.

Configuration of the written assignment practice is therefore made up of four aspects, two of which can be considered as regular occurrences of the practice, while two might be considered as being irregular. I will now look at each of these aspects in turn.

First, the understandings of the four activities, namely “making the well-founded assumption”, “using the safeguard”, “searching for information”, and “collecting evidence”, show that a central factor in writing the assignment is to demonstrate that they are able to describe and use the well-established framework of scientific knowledge in the particular field. This is in line with Bazerman´s scientific articles in the sense that all three articles emphasize the importance of involving an established framework of knowledge. At the same time it indicates that practicing scientific language is a challenging task for many of the informants. They have to master the scientific language of their disciplines in order to write in accordance with an established framework. It seemed to be a matter which the informants paid particular attention to.

Second, the written assignment practice involves a variety of information activities. As mentioned above, the aim of these activities was to a great extent to support the demonstration of knowledge about the framework of the field. Another purpose was to back up the idea of the phenomenon or the topic the student wanted to write about. The latter concerned mainly the informants from social science and humanities. In contrast, for the informants from health science the aim of information activities was to find regular evidence for the assumptions they made. The latter was in accordance with Bazerman´s description of the natural science article.

The two aspects mentioned are in line with Bazerman´s statements about the three articles and therefore it seems to be understandings of activities that represent regularities of the practice. In contrast, the next two aspects (i.e. the “third” and “fourth” aspect) might indicate new doings and sayings and in that way they might be considered as irregularities in the perspective of Bazerman´s description.

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Third, using “making the good idea” seemed to be widespread among the informants in tackling the written assignment. In addition, “making the good idea” was carried out for the sake of fulfilling a personal interest which for some of the informants seemed to be connected to a desire for specific jobs after finishing their education. A salient question here is whether or not “making the good idea” expresses a new doings and sayings and constitutes a novel task as part of the practice. It represents another way of getting started on the assignment than Bazerman´s description of the three scientific articles indicates. One explanation is that the informants´ desire for specific jobs exerted some kind of outside influence on the activities.

Fourth, the informants were carriers of other kind of practices than just the written assignment. Examples of practices they described in the interviews were family doings, jobs, use of Facebook, leisure time reading, and so forth. On the basis of the empirical material it is difficult to make an assessment of intersecting practices. An exception is the use of Facebook. In the first excerpt above, the informant mentioned that she asked people on Facebook to come with suggestions for her topic for the written assignment, and indeed she ended up choosing one of these. This can be seen as an example of an intersection of at least two practices: the written assignment practice and the Facebook practice. The latter might challenge the former with different understandings, rules and teleoaffective structures, involving as it does a new way to perform the practice. It might be an example of a changing doings and sayings implied by the use of new social media. It could involve the use of the information activity described as an “interacting phase”, where asking for and listening to information from the world outside the university play a central role (McKenzie, 2003).

7. Conclusion

The configuration of the written assignment practice demonstrates the use of concepts like “practice” and the organizing elements of “understandings, rules and teleo-affective structures” from Schatzki´s theory, and “routinization” and “reflexivity” from works of, respectively, Reckwitz (2002) and Halkier (2010). Further, the configuration has been based on informants´ statements from interviews with the researcher. The analysis of the configuration has used the concept of genre from Miller (1984) and Bazerman´s description of the scientific article (Bazerman, 1988) to find both regular and irregular occurrences.

From a practice theoretical perspective, information literacy is related to learning processes, but these are themselves embedded in the particular practices. When the informants described the practice, the negotiation of the “acceptable” way to perform the practice was going on. In this case the negotiations did not consist of direct interactions between the informants but were mediated through the interviews. As a learning process, information literacy is expressed in these negotiations. Thus, when we talk about information literacy, it is the changing character of the practice which attracts our attention. Therefore, the focus is on the activities that compose the particular practice in both a regular and an irregular way. It is the combination of these activities which might indicate the changing aspects of the practice. In the case of the written assignment practice, information literacy was represented by four aspects mentioned above. Two of the four aspects were in line with the regular statements found in the genre of the scientific article, while the rest of the aspects might indicate irregular occurrences. The two regular occurrences consisted of, first, the description and use of a well-established framework of scientific knowledge, and second, the use of information activities to demonstrate knowledge about the framework, to back up the topic the informants wrote about, or to find regular evidence for the assumptions. The two

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irregularities were the use of “making the good idea” in relation to the written assignment, and the intersection of the two practices, namely the written assignment practice and the Facebook practice.

A central question is what status the irregularities mentioned have in general. “Making the good idea” seemed to be a routinely repeated activity among the informants expressing another way to understand the practice of how to get started with the assignment rather than the way described by Bazerman concerning the knowledge construction process. The organized nexus of the activities described by the informants involved an orientation towards fulfilling a personal interest as part of the teleoaffective structure of the practice. For some their personal interest was linked to wishes for specific jobs after their education. Further, it was possible to find the good idea by developing contacts with the world outside the university through for instance Facebook. Therefore, job orientation and use of new social media seemed to influence the written assignment practice as it was performed by the informants. An important issue for future research is how digital media in general as well as expectations for specific job competences may further influence the practice in question.

Seen in a practice theoretical perspective the analysis contributes to research about the wide variety of ways to practice the written assignment in a university setting. As Halkier (2011) is saying, one of the analytical capacities of practice theory is to focus on variation and complexity in the performing of practices and in the analysis above, this capacity is transferred to the field of information literacy. The analysis has produced a configuration of the written assignment practice, which is by nature specific and context bound. However, as a specific and context bound configuration, it may represent ambivalences and irregularities which can be compared with the results from other studies of the practice. Halkier (2011) has proposed “category zooming” as a way to prepare a generalization on the basis of qualitative data, and the use of Bazerman´s genre description can be regarded as being an example of this kind of “zooming”. When we combine the study of the written assignment practice with genre theory we gain the opportunity to identify irregularities and thereby possible changes of the practice over a particular period of time.

However, the analysis also shows the use of practice theory involves a risk of isolating the configuration of the particular practice to a degree where the social context is lost. Lloyd defines information literacy as practices organized and arranged through the site of the social (Lloyd 2010b, p. 252) rather than organized through only one social practice. Therefore, future research has to contextualize the analysis of the written assignment practice to other practices to a greater extent than has been done above. Furthermore, by using practice theory the analysis remains at a micro-level, and therefore a central issue for the future could be to extend the contextualization mentioned to include subjects like power, reproduction, and transformation on a macro-level (Halkier, 2010, p. 180).

It is not my intention to use the configuration of the written assignment practice to make normative assessments of this practice in higher education. There will no doubt be differing opinions about the performing of the practice. In any case, holding a dialogue with the students about the specific genre will be a useful thing to do. For Bazerman it is always of importance that the user of the genre understands the genre itself:

“So the largest lesson that this study holds is not that there are simple genres that must be slavishly followed, that we must give students an appropriate set of cookie cutters for their anticipated careers, but rather that the student must understand and rethink the rhetorical choices embedded in

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each generic habit to master the genre. Although genre may help stabilize the multiform rhetorical situation of scientific writing and may simplify the many rhetorical choices to be made, the writer loses control of writing when he or she does not understand the genre” (Bazerman, 1988, p. 8).

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