When I was a child in primary school, I think that teachers would have had an easier time answering this than teachers of today. Teaching literacy meant ensuring that s student could read, write and spell. Students needed to be able to demonstrate retention and comprehension of what was learnt and this is largely how I was assessed as a student. If I could do these things I would be considered literate.
Fast forward to today and while the term still means what it used to mean, it now has a more complex meaning depending on context. Teachers now need to consider literacy across many platforms to ensure that their students are going to be able to function in the information landscape or environment they find themselves in. Teaching a student to read, write and comprehend only traditional texts will not provide them with the skills they need. Enter multi-model literacy, music literacy, visual literacy, internet literacy, the list is almost unending, just think of a way of presenting information and add ‘literacy’ on the end.
I think for the modern teacher literacy now means that a student has all of the required skills to understand, interpret, evaluate and apply information within a given context, for example visual literacy (see links below).
Does a teacher need to explicitly teach new skills so students can become literate in all of the areas or are skills in one area, for example, traditional literacy (reading writing, etc.), transferrable to visual or multi-modal literacy? I think that this is not a simple yes or no question. Certainly, being traditionally literate would help me understand, evaluate, interpret and apply information presented in different ways but I do not think it would be enough. Additional skills would be required to become completely literate with the new form of information.
Against this new definition of literacy, I need to recognise that I am not universally literate. Teacher librarians need to up-skill themselves so that we can pass on the necessary skills to students so that they can be multi-literate information consumers. In essence we are teaching information literacy (all forms of information) and our end goal is to create information literate students.
https://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/f-10-curriculum/general-capabilities/literacy/