Critical Incident Technique Chapter 4: Exploring Methods in Information Literacy Research Overview of Critical Incident Technique (cit) Origins and Ongoing Development of Cit Defining 'critical Incident' Cit in Practice Background to the Study

Introduction What are the key attributes of an effective IL educator? What difficulties do students encounter in using online information resources? These are the types of qualitative questions that Critical Incident Technique (CIT) is well suited to exploring. This chapter outlines the origins, ongoing development, implementation, advantages and disadvantages of Critical Incident Technique and its potential for information literacy research. I draw on my current research into international students' use of online information resources to demonstrate the application of CIT in an information literacy context. Defining CIT Critical incident technique (CIT) is a well proven qualitative research approach that offers a practical step-by-step approach to collecting and analysing information about human activities and their significance to the people involved. It is capable of yielding rich, contextualized data that reflect real-life experiences. Its creator John Flanagan described it as: A set of procedures for collecting direct observations of human behavior in such a way as to facilitate their potential usefulness in solving practical problems and developing broad psychological principles. The critical incident technique outlines procedures for collecting observed incidents having special significance and meeting systematically defined criteria (Flanagan 1954, p. 327). The value and efficacy of CIT is attested by research studies in a widening range of social science disciplines over fifty years. As its name suggests, critical incident technique involves the study of critical incidents-or significant instances of a specific activity-as experienced or observed by the research participants. Detailed analysis of critical incidents enables researchers to identify similarities, differences and patterns and to seek insight into how and why people engage in the activity. People assign meanings to their experiences, and when we group together collections of such meanings in order to make sense of the world, we engage in a kind of research, a seeking of understanding. The critical incident technique provides a systematic means for gathering the significances others attach to events, analyzing the emerging patterns, and laying out tentative conclusions for the reader's consideration' (Kain, 2004, p.85). CIT findings generally support practical outcomes – often related to education or training-and provide a knowledge-base for further research. Critical Incident Technique (CIT) was developed in the nineteen forties by John Flanagan, an American researcher in the field of occupational psychology (Flanagan, 1954). Its original emphasis on human behaviour reflects the prevailing positivist research paradigm. Flanagan devised it as a means to gather and analyse objective, reliable information about specific …