Riding waves of information: information literacy and critical thinking skills in seafarers' education

Other conference contribution, 2018

Increased worldwide societal expectation demands that graduates of tertiary education, including seafarers in management positions, must have developed essentioal critical thinking skills before shouldering professional roles. For seafares in managment positions, critical thinking may involve ability to deal objectively and relevantly with both written and spoken information that can literally hold very critical importance for the preservation of human life. However, critical thinking for this target group also implies critical and goal-oriented leadership in complex intercultural settings when effective communication becomes a decisive factor for success. There is strong reason to believe that critical thinking skills tightly interconnect with language proficiency and information literacy skills, which fundamentally condition objective and relevant understanding of facts and their implication in critical decision making. This paper investigates how secondary and tertiary maritime education and training in Sweden is scaffolded to support the development of good communicative, critical thinking, and information litercy skills as expected by the industry, according to changing employment requirements and job descriptions.