What exactly is Information Literacy and how can we implement an Information Literacy plan in our schools?

Information Literacy is one of many literacies we are required to master  living in the Information Age.

The American Association of School Librarians defines Information Literacy in the following way:

“Learners need to be able to access quality information from different perspectives, make sense of it, draw their own conclusions or create new knowledge and share their knowledge with others”

(Standards for the 21st Century Learner in Action (AASL 2007).

So, it is about the skills and dispositions required to locate information, understand it and make decisions using the information. Both reading and inquiry make up the foundations for Information Literacy.

Information Literacy includes digital, textual and technological literacies, meaning that learners are required to develop skills in these areas in order to build their abilities in Information Literacy.

The learning dispositions associated with Information Literacy are persistence, flexibility and divergent thinking.

An Information Literacy plan

Beginning in the first year at school, plan to explicitly engage learners in understanding the purpose and layouts of books and libraries. Discussions about books and identifying main ideas and key points are one place to begin.

Moving towards formulating their own questions, learning about book categories and responding to texts in Year 1 and 2, and then scaffolding experiences in locating, organising and presenting information from books and given websites in Year 3.

In Year 4, beginning to use Google search function and interpreting information found.

In Year 5 and 6, learners can engage in using a critical literacy tool to locate credible sources of information and analyse it. Year 6 students can learn how to create a bibliography of resources used, beginning with a scaffold to do so.

Having learners evaluating their own learning throughout the process will enable them to reflect on their learning as well as seeing where they can go next.

How do you develop Information Literacy skills and dispositions in your school?

A comprehensive reference on Information Literacy in school libraries: 

American Association of School Librarians. (2007). Standards for the 21st Century Learner. Chicago: American Library Association. https://www.epsnj.org/site/handlers/filedownload.ashx?moduleinstanceid=7770&dataid=32216&FileName=AASL%2021ST%20C%20LEARNER.pdf