Emotional Literacy and its Relationship to Information Literacy

 

 

By Lilian H. Hill

 

Emotional literacy refers to recognizing, understanding, and effectively expressing emotions. It involves being aware of your feelings, the ability to label them accurately, and understanding the reasons behind them. Additionally, emotional literacy involves being able to manage and regulate your emotions in healthy ways while at the same time empathizing with others and their emotional states. Ninivaggi (2022) describes emotional literacy as a “deep understanding of one's emotions, empathetically listening to others, and responding effectively and meaningfully” (para. 1). emotionally literate People are often better equipped to navigate social interactions, manage conflicts, and build strong relationships. They can communicate their needs and boundaries more effectively and are often more resilient in the face of challenges because they have the skills to cope with difficult emotions.

 

Emotions and Vocabulary

A limited vocabulary can limit your world. Author Brené Brown (2021) stated that “language is our portal to meaning-making, connection, healing, learning, and self-awareness” (p. 242). Language allows us to make sense of our life experiences. The stronger your vocabulary is, the better you can understand your own life and share your experiences with others close to you.

 

As human beings, we make meaning of our life experiences. We seek to understand ourselves, our place in the world, and the world itself. No other species we know has this urge to assign meaning to different life experiences. As humans, we want to understand ourselves, our loves, our work, our world, and our place. We can think about our lives and our interactions with other people. Humans need meaning, and humanity is made from meaning.

 

Making meaning involves our emotions, which serve as the link between learning and memory. We literally must feel something is true before it can be believed and learned. Emotions increase the strength of memories and help us recall the context of an experience, rendering it meaningful. Brown (2021) asks her readers to imagine what life would be like if we could only name three emotions: happy, sad, and angry.

 

A limited vocabulary can significantly restrict our understanding and expression of experiences. Language is vital for making sense of life, connecting with others, and fostering self-awareness and growth. The richness of one's vocabulary directly correlates with one's ability to comprehend and articulate life's complexities to oneself and those around one.

 

Brown (2021) highlights the importance of an expansive emotional vocabulary, suggesting that a limited range of emotions hampers our self-understanding. A narrow emotional lexicon, consisting primarily of “happy,” “sad,” and “angry,” fails to capture the breadth and depth of human emotional experience. By expanding our emotional vocabulary to encompass a wider array of positive and negative feelings, we gain a more nuanced understanding of ourselves and our interactions with the world.

 

Furthermore, Brown (2021) emphasizes that our emotional vocabulary influences how we experience and manage emotions. Refining our ability to identify and articulate our feelings enables us to navigate life's challenges more effectively. Additionally, a diverse emotional vocabulary facilitates better communication and empathy, improving our relationships with others. In summary, cultivating a rich emotional vocabulary is essential for enhancing self-awareness, shaping our future, managing emotions, and fostering meaningful connections.

 

Relationship of Emotional Literacy to Information Literacy

Emotional and information literacy are essential skills in today's complex world. Matteson et al. (2013) explored research documenting an affective component to interacting with information. They stated that information literacy processes, including identifying the need for information, finding it, comprehending it, and applying it, are associated with various emotions. Connections between the emotional and information literacy are described below:

 

Critical Thinking: Both emotional literacy and information literacy require critical thinking skills. Emotional literacy involves understanding and critically evaluating one's own emotions and the emotions of others, while information literacy involves critically evaluating sources of information for credibility, bias, and relevance.

 

Decision Making: Both skill sets contribute to effective decision-making. Emotional literacy helps individuals consider their emotions and how they might influence their choices, while information literacy enables individuals to gather and assess relevant information to make informed decisions. Recent studies have underscored the importance of emotion in rational decision-making. Our emotional responses significantly influence our decisions, and our overall welfare could hinge on our capacity to comprehend and analyze these emotions, integrating them with logical reasoning to arrive at suitable decisions (Ratson, 2023).

 

Communication: Emotional literacy involves expressing emotions effectively and understanding the emotions conveyed by others, which is essential for clear and empathetic communication. Information literacy includes effectively communicating ideas, findings, and arguments, whether in written or verbal form.

 

Self-awareness and Self-regulation: Emotional literacy fosters self-awareness and self-regulation by helping individuals understand their emotional responses and manage them appropriately. Similarly, information literacy encourages self-awareness about one's knowledge gaps and biases and self-regulation in seeking out and evaluating information to fill those gaps and mitigate biases.

 

Problem Solving: Emotional and information literacy contribute to effective problem-solving skills. Emotional literacy helps individuals understand the underlying emotions and find constructive ways to address them, while information literacy enables individuals to gather and analyze relevant information to solve problems effectively.

 

While emotional literacy primarily focuses on understanding and managing emotions, and information literacy focuses on finding, evaluating, and using information, both skill sets are interconnected and mutually reinforcing. Developing emotional and information literacy proficiency can enhance an individual's ability to navigate various aspects of life, make informed decisions, communicate effectively, and solve problems.

References

Brown, B. (2021). Atlas of the heart: Mapping meaningful connection and the language of human experience. Random House.

Matteson, M., Farooq, O., & Mease, D. (2013, April 12). Feeling our way: Emotional intelligence and information literacy competency. Association of College and Research Libraries Conference, Indianapolis, IN.

Ninivaggi, F. J. (2022). Emotional Knowing and Emotional Literacy: A new model for understanding emotion optimizes performance. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/envy/202209/emotional-knowing-and-emotional-literacy

Ratson, M. (2023, August 7). The power of emotions in decision making. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-wisdom-of-anger/202308/the-power-of-emotions-in-decision-making#:~:text=Emotions%2C%20especially%20at%20a%20high,and%20proportional%20to%20the%20situation.

Media Literacy: Skills Needed to Function in Society

 

 

Media literacy involves interpreting and creating information in multiple media, including radio, television, videos, social media, printed text, and digital information. In this podcast episode, Lilian Hill defines media literacy, compares it with digital literacy, and identifies the problems with the lack of media literacy and the skills needed today to function in society.  

 

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 Information Literacy Episode 18 Transcripts

 

References

 

Grisham, J. (2021, October 27). Media literacy and digital literacy: How they differ and why they matter, Retrieved https://echo-breaking-news.com/blog/media-literacy-vs-digital-literacy/  

Lynch, M. (2023, May 18). What are the 7 skills of media literacy. The Edvocate. Retrieved https://www.theedadvocate.org/what-are-the-7-skills-of-media-literacy/#:~:text=The%20seven%20skills%20of%20media,become%20more%20responsible%20online%20users

Media Literacy Now. Retrieved https://medialiteracynow.org/about/ 

National Association of Media Literacy Education. Retrieved https://namle.net/resources/ 

Schwartz, A. B. (2015). The Infamous “War of the Worlds” Radio Broadcast Was a Magnificent Fluke: Orson Welles and his colleagues scrambled to pull together the show; they ended up writing pop culture history. The Smithsonian. Retrieved https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/infamous-war-worlds-radio-broadcast-was-magnificent-fluke-180955180/ 

Adult Literacy: Definitions, Types, and Competencies

 

The classic sense of literacy involves reading, writing, and arithmetic, sometimes referred to as the three Rs. Some people may think that literacy and reading are interchangeable, however, literacy also includes language, writing, speaking, and listening. Literacy helps us to understand and interpret information and our experiences. In this podcast episode, Lilian Hill defines adult literacy and explains the different types of literacy competencies. Listen to the episode and join the online forum.

 

Listen to Podcast

  

Information Literacy Episode 17 Transcripts

 

References

Belzer, A., & Greenberg, D. (2010). Adult basic education. In C. E. Kasworm, A. D. Rose, and J. M. Ross-Gordon (Eds), The handbook of adult and continuing education (pp. 189-197). Jossey-Bass.

UNESCO. Functional literacy. Retrieved from https://uis.unesco.org/en/glossary-term/functional-literacy

UNESCO. Literacy. Retrieved from https://uis.unesco.org/en/glossary-term/literacy

Digital Citizenship: Meaning, Practices, and Examples

 

With all the responsibilities of adult life, you may be distressed to learn there is another type of citizenship that is currently under discussion. With all the great things the internet makes possible, there are dangers. Therefore, there are practices we must learn to use the internet responsibly. In this podcast episode, Lilian Hill explores digital citizenship– its meaning, practices, and examples. Listen to the episode and join the online forum.

 

Listen to the Podcast

 

 

Information Literacy Episode 16 Transcript

References

Ellipsis Education (n.d.) How to be a good digital citizen. Retrieved https://ellipsiseducation.com/good-digital-citizen

Terrell (2021, December 13). The definition of digital citizenship. Retrieved https://www.teachthought.com/the-future-of-learning/definition-digital-citizenship/

Experimenting with ChatGPT

 

ChatGPT has become a common talk among educators lately. It has raised concerns, but also shown it has value. On this episode, Dr. Lilian Hill explains what ChatGPT is and what can be done with it by sharing her own experiences with ChatGPT. She also assesses ChatGPT capabilities and drawbacks. Listen to the episode and join in the online forum.

You may be interested in reading this article on Critical Information Literacy for Collective Action, published by the American Association of University Professors.

Listen to the Podcast

 

Information Literacy Episode 11 Transcript

References

Hanlon, R. (2023, March 15). What does "ChatGPT" Stand For? Everything To know about the AI that’s growing at a faster pace than TikTok and Instagram. Parade. Retrieved https://parade.com/living/what-is-chatgpt#:~:text=Assisted%20Editorial%20Tools-,What%20Does%20the%20Name%20'ChatGPT'%20Mean%3F,or%20phrases%20in%20each%20input

Wingard, J. (2023, January 10). ChatGPT: A threat to higher education? Forbes. Retrieved https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonwingard/2023/01/10/chatgpt-a-threat-to-higher-education/?sh=78f3e0151e76

All You Need to Know about Banned or Challenged Books

By Lilian H. Hill

 

Some of my favorite books when I was growing up were Call of the Wild (Jack London, 1903), Are you there God? It me, Margaret (Judy Blume, 1970), and A Wrinkle in Time (Madeleine L’Engle, 1963). They have all been banned or challenged. Other banned books include classics we read in high school including Of Mice and Men (John Steinbeck, 1937), The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Mark Twain, 1876), To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee, 1960), and Lord of the Flies (William Golding, 1954). Many have read In the Night Kitchen (Maurice Sendak, 1970), Where’s Waldo? (Martin Handford, 1987), or the Junie B. Jones series (Barbara Park, 1992-2011) to their children, and their children may have read the Goosebumps (R.L. Stine, 1992-1997) or the Captain Underpants (Dav Pilkey, 1997-2015) series. However, you may never have realized the books were so “dangerous” that they would be banned.  

All of these books are on the Top 100 Banned Books list. There are several lists of the Top 100 banned books. The American Library Association has been keeping track through their Office of Intellectual Freedom (American Library Association, 2019), but they have only been doing so since 1990. Other lists such as the one found on Wikipedia contain some of the older books I mention here. 

 

Why are these books being banned?

As of 2020, reasons for banning books include: 

• Sexual content (92.5%) 

• Offensive language (51.5%) 

• Unsuitable for age group (49%) 

• Religious viewpoint (26%) 

• LGBTQIA+ (23.5%) 

• Violence (19%) 

• Racism (16.5%) 

• Use of illegal substances 

• “Anti-family” content (7%) 

• One of the silliest reasons for banning a children’s book was for encouraging poor spelling because it used silly spellings. (American Library Association, 2019)  

   
  

The reason these percentages don’t appear to make sense is that books are often challenged for multiple reasons. The American Library Association (2019) estimated that more than 82% of challenges remain unreported. They compared results from several independent studies of third-party Freedom of Information Act requests documenting school and library book censorship with the information in its database.

 

What is the difference between a challenge and a book ban?

A book challenge occurs when a book is questioned. In response, portions of a book’s content may be redacted, its circulation restricted, or relocated to an adult section of a library. When a book that was available is removed from the collection completely, it would be considered banned (Haupt, 2022). It means a book is removed from school curricula and possibly public libraries because someone has objected to its content (VanDenburgh, 2022). 

 

Where do these challenges come from? 

Many of these challenges come not from concerned parents, but instead from advocacy organizations with a political intent. These advocacy organizations have made censorship of certain books and ideas in schools a large part of their mission. Unfortunately, many of the book challenges are by authors that have had to fight hard to be published including books by and about people of color, people who are LGBTQIA, and people who have suffered violence or abuse. Even books that provide clear and medically appropriate sex education are under attack. In other words, these are books that can help normalize human experience, represent the full range of human experience, and answer people’s questions. Friedman and Johnson (2022) comment that these actions are deeply undemocratic and that it is: 

 

having multifaceted, harmful impacts: on students who have a right to access a diverse range of stories and perspectives, and especially on those from historically marginalized backgrounds who are watching their library shelves emptied of books that reflect and speak to them; on educators and librarians who are operating in some states in an increasingly punitive and surveillance-oriented environment with a chilling effect on teaching and learning; on the authors whose works are being targeted; and on parents who want to raise students in schools that remain open to curiosity, discovery, and the freedom to read. (para. 8) 

How many of these organizations exist?

Estimates indicate that there are more than 700 of these organizations, and that more are being created.  The proliferation of advocacy organizations responsible for book bans and challenges is a very recent phenomenon (Friedman & Johnson, 2022). The organizations operate at the regional, state, and national levels and are loosely coordinated in sharing lists of books to question and attack. Some organizations' members use tactics like appearing in large numbers at school board meetings, creating arbitrary rating systems for libraries, accusing school officials of providing books that are “pornographic” or that “groom” students, filing criminal complaints, or in extreme cases harassing librarians online, in public, and in their homes. There have been instances of people filing the complaints who did not have children enrolled in school.  

 

Are these organizations acting alone? 

Approximately 40% of these actions are connected to legislative initiatives or enacted legislation (American Library Association, 2019). Legislation is being enacted in multiple states including Utah, Missouri, Mississippi, Michigan, Texas, Pennsylvania, and Florida. Politicians are actively condemning critical race theory and the idea of wokeness, although there is doubt that they fully understand these concepts. The politicians are against books that center racism or discuss sexuality and gender identity.  

Recent Mississippi legislation would affect a ban on digital books that are “sexually oriented.” It references another bill that provides an extremely broad definition of what sexually oriented means. The new bill is intended to protect minors from “sexually illicit material”; however, because it will control school and public libraries, it will also deprive adults of content. Apparently, the inclusion of adults will be fixed but now Senate Bill No. 2346 was approved 82-32 (Pittman, 2023). Legislators argued that adults can still purchase the books they desire, but this statement ignores people without the means do that. And Mississippi has a lot of rural, low-income, and poor people.  

 

So far, the bill only references digital material, but it is easy to imagine that it won’t take long before print books are on the radar. The legislation has gone so far that one Mississippi legislator wondered if they had effectively banned the Bible (Pittman, 2023). Protestors, including the Executive Director of the Human Rights Campaign, registered concerns about any initiative that would limit information for young people (Pittman, 2023). 

How do these initiatives relate to politics?

These actions do not stand alone. Instead, they are part of a larger social phenomenon of polarizing politics known as culture wars. The American Library Association reported that the challenges were targeted at “the voices of the  marginalised… books and resources that mirror the lives of those who are gay, queer or transgender, or that tell the stories of persons who are Black, Indigenous or persons of colour.” The challenges are becoming much more frequent and Suzanne Nossel, the CEO of the free-speech organization PEN America,   comments that it is “part of a concerted effort to try to hold back the consequences of demographic and social change by controlling the narratives available to young people.”  

 

Art Spiegelman, author of Maus, the only graphic novel to win a Pulitzer Prize in 1992, believes that anyone should be able to read anything. He would prefer that children read a book in a classroom or library with informed adults who can provide guidance than read the book by themselves if they found them on their parents' bookshelves. His graphic novel was threatened with being removed from a school  library in Tennessee. A local comics shop learned of the ban and sought donations to purchase remaining copies of the book to students in the U.S., shipped with a study guide written by a local teacher. 

 

Actions of this nature should spur us all into action.  

 

References  

 

American Library Association (2019). Top 100 Most Banned and Challenged Books: 2010-2019. Retrieved https://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/decade2019

Armistead, C. (2022, March 22). ‘It’s a culture war that’s totally out of control’: the authors whose books are being banned in US schools. The Guardian. Retrieved https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/mar/22/its-a-culture-war-thats-totally-out-of-control-the-authors-whose-books-are-being-banned-in-us-schools 

Friedman & Johnson (2022, September 19). Banned in the USA: The growing movement to censor books in schools. Retrieved https://pen.org/report/banned-usa-growing-movement-to-censor-books-in-schools/ 

Haupt, A. (2022, June 19). The rise in book bans, explained. Washington Post. Retrieved https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/06/09/rise-book-bans-explained/  

Pittman, A. (2023, March 9). Ban On Library Books Depicting ‘Homosexuality,’ ‘Lesbianism’ Passes Mississippi House. Mississippi Free Press. Retrieved https://www.mississippifreepress.org/31797/ban-on-library-books-depicting-homosexuality-lesbianism-passes-mississippi-house#:~:text=Mississippi%20could%20ban%20digital%20books,Bill%20No.%202346%20on%20Wednesday 

"Top 10 Most Challenged Books Lists", American Library Association, March 26, 2013. http://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/top10 (Accessed March 16, 2023) Document ID: 8417fa9e-ceff-4512-aca9-9fbc81b8bd81 

VanDenburgh, B. (2022, June 29). Book bans are on the rise. What are the most banned books and why? USA Today. Retrieved https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/books/2022/06/29/banned-books-explained/7772046001/  

Wikipedia (n.d.). List of most commonly challenged books in the United States. Retrieved https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_commonly_challenged_books_in_the_United_States