Causal Recipes for Information Literacy in Higher Education: A Practice Perspective

Abstract Information literacy in higher education has encompassed ideas from constructivism, where students are viewed as active, critical learners. However, educators’ inward-facing view tends to portray students as passive information consumers who lack critical thinking and ethical responsibility. Yet, existing literature has not empirically examined these conflicting views in detail. This study investigates learners’ information literacy from a practice perspective. To do so, this study takes a configurational approach in that information literacy has been conceptualized as a complex constellation of social and contextual factors that depend on each other from the practice perspective. This study analyzes a large-scale survey of preservice teachers in higher education institutions ( N = 1,247), using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), which aligns with the configurational approach. This study discerns the necessary conditions and sufficient solutions for achieving a high level of information literacy. For sufficient solutions, this study identifies three configurations of information literacy practices that, when multiple factors are combined simultaneously, result in a high level of information literacy. From these three configurations, this study characterizes learner types and further discusses the discrepancies between the empirical evidence of this study and the inward-facing view. This study marks a significant first step toward empirically providing the non-linear interdependencies among relevant factors, as the existing literature has remained theoretical. This study hopes that this empirical characterization could facilitate a shift from a generic, one-size-fits-all approach to a more nuanced and refined understanding of information literacy in higher education.