We are a team of passionate researchers, teachers and librarians working across New Zealand to explore the embedding of Information Literacy into secondary and tertiary curricula to improve student learning.
Lisa Emerson
Professor Lisa Emerson is Director of Teaching and Learning in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Massey University in Palmerston North and she is the IL spaces project director. Lisa is an award winning teacher with two key research focuses: science writing and information literacy in transition spaces.
Lisa’s doctoral thesis focused on the integration of writing into the science curriculum in higher education, and this led her to a career teaching science writing and researching scientists as writers. She was awarded a Fulbright Senior Scholarship in 2012 to develop scholarly work on mathematicians and senior scientists as writers and has published The lost tribe: Scientists as writers with Parlor Press and the WAC Clearinghouse (see here for access: http://wac.colostate.edu/books/emerson/). She is currently investigating the beliefs, attitudes, experiences and development of scientists and mathematicians as writers.
Her teaching-related research also investigates attitudes to plagiarism, New Zealand writing programmes, information literacy, learning advising, writing centres, peer tutoring, and the attitudes of tertiary teachers. She was the Principal Investigator on a Teaching and Learning Research Initiative (TLRI ) grant in 2013 – 2014, where they integrated academic literacy into the senior curriculum of 5 low-decile schools in the Palmerston North-Whanganui regions.
In May, Lisa was named a principal fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and we were very proud! For more info, see here.
Ken Kilpin
Ken brings over 30 years of experience in secondary and tertiary education sectors across a number of roles. He has a comprehensive overview of school operations, classroom teaching and learning, and ways to effectively consolidate and extend teacher capacity to respond to contemporary educational environments. He is committed to enhancing the professional knowledge and efficacy of teachers by developing, demonstrating and embedding pedagogically grounded ideas, approaches and concepts made real as instructional programmes and strategies. He challenges teachers to alter existing teacher dominant/student passive instructional approaches to methods that promote students’ potential to be confident and independent learners, capable of high levels of achievement in secondary and tertiary environments. By nurturing and sustaining quality professional relationships in bicultural and multi-cultural settings in tertiary and secondary sectors, he assists learning institutions to focus on the future possibilities and implications of teaching in a 21st Century environment through academic honesty, information literacy, critical and creative thinking, concepts-focussed learning, learning support and assessment.
Angela Feekery
Angela’s research interests are centred on communication, information and digital literacies in academic and professional contexts. The focus of Angela’s two recent major projects has been in the secondary and tertiary educational context, with the research exploring the transition into tertiary learning, and engagement with learner-focused pedagogies to enhance student learning. Her research focus has recently extended to explore information and digital literacy and demands in the transition into, and performance within, professional contexts. Of particular interest is human resource capabilities of employees connected to communication and information literacy, including management and employee engagement with informed decision-making, knowledge management, and workplace learning practices.
Angela has a varied teaching background including communication, academic writing, science and business communication, and public relations. Her commitment to quality teaching centres on socio-constructive learner-focused pedagogy, which sees learning as a partnership between teachers and students. She takes a genuine interest in student learning, getting to know them as individuals and understanding what a diverse student body brings to the learning context. Angela aims to foster connectedness in both research and teaching through collaboration and authentic learning opportunities, basing tasks and assessments on real-life contexts/materials as much as possible.
Senga White
Senga has worked in school libraries for almost two decades and has been developing and growing an information literacy framework, which she uses to collaboratively plan with teachers to embed information literacy and research skills into the curriculum, and then to explicitly teach these skills to students. As part of her ongoing work in supporting independent learning, she has also developed the Tertiary Prep Programme which is designed to enable those wishing to be successful in learning beyond secondary school to achieve and succeed.
She is a passionate advocate of quality library services for every student in New Zealand, provided by enthusiastic and knowledgeable practitioners who love working with young New Zealanders, and is a professionally registered librarian. She is a continuing learner, who has completed a postgrad certificate in Applied Practice through the Mind Lab and is about to undertake a Master of Contemporary Education.
Her philosophy is that by harnessing the power of collaboration, sharing ideas, and knowledge, and by putting your “money where your mouth is” you can achieve more than working alone, and is currently investigating the place of librarian leadership in education.
Senga recently accepted a new role as research librarian at Invercargill City Libraries and Archives, where she hopes to continue to explore education requirements and opportunities for all walks of life.
Anne Macaskill
Anne’s research investigates student success, gambling, and impulsivity. The over-arching theme is: why, when they have options, do people sometimes fail to choose the alternative with the best long-term outcome for themselves? Anne focuses on using quantitative analyses to understand how decision-making and learning processes combine with environmental events to shape such non-optimal choices.
In the student success context, Anne’s research addresses the question: how can teaching and learning practices support students in achieving their own long-term goals? Students are typically studying because they know that academic success will help them achieve valuable long-term goals, yet in spite of this they often procrastinate. Why, and what can we do about this?
Heather Lamond
Heather was a valuable member of our team, who sadly passed away before the project was completed. Her experiences and insights helped establish a clear focus for our tertiary sector projects, and her project management skills kept us all on track.
She had experience in both public and tertiary libraries and is responsible for the strategic oversight of the library support for learning and teaching at Massey University. She had research interests in integrating information literacy into curricula, and particularly how the affordances of eLearning and digital technologies can be leveraged to develop information and digit literacy skills in all learnings, with a special interest in online and distance education.
Catherine Doughty
Catherine is a qualified and registered information professional. Since 1994 she has worked in tertiary and secondary education and public libraries in a variety of roles including information services, information literacy teaching, and services to children and young adults. During that time she has been a member of an academic journal board, a LIANZA mentor to new librarians, and she is currently a member of the LIANZA Professional Registration Board. She has supported staff and student research activities and developed information literacy initiatives with academic teaching colleagues. She is a passionate advocate for information literacy learning at all levels of education.
After many years based at Whitireia New Zealand, Catherine has recently started in a new role as Law Subject Librarian at Victoria University of Wellington. This role involves supporting students and academics from the Faculty of Law in their studies and research outputs. She will continue to have a role in teaching information literacy with these groups, including providing input to some digital IL approaches.
Rose O’Connor
Rose is training to be a Child and Family Psychologist at the University of Canterbury, and is passionate about writing within her discipline.
Rose’s understanding of information literacy has really grown over the two years she’s been in the IL Spaces Team. As the student voice she brings a unique perspective, and tries to bridge the gap between what academics think students need to be successful and what students want/think they need.
Rose has been in charge of the social media and blog site, and is now focusing on what is needed to develop a true community of practice that can live on beyond the IL Spaces team.
Information Literacy Spaces 