Workplace learning and information literacy in the Kente-weaving landscape

Abstract

This study investigates how workplace learning is enacted to make a novice Kente (a hand-woven fabric in Ghana) weaver information literate in the Kente-weaving landscape. Ethnography was used as the research design. Interview and participant observation were used as the data collection methods. For the interview, semi-structured interview techniques were used to solicit information from all three levels of weavers (Master, junior and novice weavers) in Bonwire Kente Centre in Ghana. Out of the 62 weavers at the Bonwire Kente Centre, 24 weavers representing 8 each from each level of weavers were purposively chosen. The findings of this study show learning is enacted to make a novice Kente weaver information literate of the Kente-weaving craft by the affordance of guidance provision, conversations, observation and learning by doing. This study contributes to the information literacy literature and workplace learning that learning and becoming information literate do not relate solely to the cognitive activities of the mind, but also to the body through the affordance of the workplace.