I did my first assessment for ETL401 on Information Literacy, so this is kind of an area that I semi-understand — can anyone really ever know what ‘information literacy’ is when there are no agreed-upon definitions of it? The way I like to understand is that information literacy is and are the processes by which a learner finds, understands, evaluates, and applies information for specific purposes (Abilock, 2004).

I’ve definitely noted that in schools I’ve been at, ‘literacy’ is often just a term thrown around by people to refer to traditional literacy, that is, reading, writing, viewing, speaking, listening and understanding. As far as I’m aware, it’s very rarely used to refer to any other sort of literacy — whether that’s information literacy, literacy with ICT, etc. I fully believe, however, that for students to be considered ‘literate’ in the 21st Century, they must be able to do more than read and write, but also locate and critically evaluate information — from all sorts of texts — to gain their own understanding and meaning about a particular concept or piece of information. Assessing understanding, particularly in younger students, is quite difficult to do though.

I went out with some colleagues after work last night, and at one point, they began bemoaning the fact that in their assignments, they were encountering so many students who clearly do not know how to locate information, and when they do, reference it correctly. This is obviously something that I can attempt to address in (at this point in time) one-off lessons, but staff haven’t been reaching out despite my previous offerings. I am reluctant to force my services upon them. I’m also curious as to why they are seemingly not addressing these things in advance of handing out assignments. Surely when they go through an assignment with students, they include notes on how they want it presented, referenced etc.? Especially given that so many of our assignments at school seem to be independently-research focussed.

There’s more work to be done here, and as the current TL, I have to be — and will be — on the ground floor.

Reference List 

Abilock, D. (2004). Information Literacy: From Prehistory to K-20: A New Definition. Knowledge Quest, 32(4), 9-11