The need for this book

Never has independent learning been so complex and challenging for the individual as it is today. In times gone by, the major sources of formal information tended to be restricted to organisations such as news agencies, broadcasters, publishers, schools, libraries and the workplace, with the materials themselves taking relatively few forms – typically books, scholarly journals, professional periodicals, magazines, newspapers, leaflets/pamphlets and programmes transmitted by radio and television. We could take confidence from the proven standing of the author or body responsible for the content and from the fact that, in most instances, some kind of quality control was imposed, frequently as a result of the publication process or, in the case of libraries, the acquisitions procedure adopted by the organisation facilitating access to the items. Nowadays, however, information comes to us from a range of disparate providers; its originators – whose identities may not even be known to us – vary in their motivations and the quality of what they offer is similarly diverse. With material as contrasting as social media postings and highly authoritative content, easily accessible through the ubiquitous World Wide Web and frequently retrieved via the same search, distinctions between informal and formal information have become blurred, whilst the prevalence of ‘fake news’ and misinformation makes what we might consider ‘the real situation’ increasingly difficult to establish. It was against this general background that the national lockdowns imposed in 2020 and 2021 in response to the coronavirus pandemic – which prevented direct, face-to-face contact between school staff and many students for extended periods – underlined in an unprecedented context the importance of effective independent learning, its centrality in an ever-changing and uncertain education world and the need for the skills that support it.

It is often said that patterns in our practices in finding and using information can be traced back to our formative years and, in the lives of young people, only the home has greater importance as a learning environment than the school.