Information fluency: critically examining IT education

Abstract

IT education has become a key skill for higher education students, but the teaching of this subject is often ineffective. Office‐related, “button‐pushing” skills are passed onto students via standardised packages with little regard for context and individual needs. Attempts to use IT to foster more critical and foundational faculties are lacking. The potential impacts of this approach are investigated with the aid of the critical theory of Jürgen Habermas, and his concept of colonisation. As they are amongst the agents for the transmission and reproduction of society, educators in any subject have a responsibility to structure and deliver their teaching in a critical, bottom‐up fashion. This especially applies to IT education.