The “Information Age”
The mass of available information is one of the key characteristics of life in the modern Western world. In no previous era has so much information been available in so many different forms and from so many diverse originators. Although some of it is presented to us unsolicited, much of it we actively seek in relation to activities we undertake in our capacities as, for example, learners, hobbyists, consumers, parents, carers, employees, managers and citizens. Whilst many of these roles do not pertain to children, it is, perhaps, young people who feel the greatest impact from the proliferation of information. Much of the information with which children came into contact at school in the past was either provided by the teacher personally or accessed via the school library. In both cases, the quality and quantity of the information was controlled. Since a lot more material is now available, much of it from the World Wide Web and of dubious accuracy and trustworthiness, skills that help learners deal with information have never been so fundamental.
Teaching Information Literacy
No single, universally-accepted definition of information literacy exists. Nevertheless, the term is widely applied by information specialists, such as librarians and informatics academics, to that body of knowledge, skills and understanding required by an individual to find information effectively and use it appropriately. It must be stressed that “information literacy” is not the same as “computer literacy”. Rather, it provides a set of strategies for coping with the complexities of modern life by employing information to solve problems and address emerging issues.
The phrase, “information literacy”, is not the product of the current Internet age. In fact, it substantially predates the widespread use of the World Wide Web. However, modern developments involving telecommunications and computers, with their attendant effect on the volume of information, have added to the need for it. It is generally believed that the expression dates back to the mid 1970s, when Zurkowski (1974) highlighted the importance of information-related skills that would enable people to meet the demands of a society and its developing technologies.
In the 1970s, many of the skills that teachers and librarians aimed to foster in children were developed with the use of individual information sources, or with elements of what we would now regard as traditional library “user education”, such as familiarisation with the classification scheme and how the catalogue should be exploited. Over time, however, attitudes have changed markedly and, today, the teaching of information literacy typically focuses on promoting a more transferable, problem-solving mindset that goes far beyond the exploitation of sources and organisations such as libraries.
A turning point came with the work of Marland (1981), who, in his seminal Information Skills Curriculum, proposed that youngsters should consider a series of nested questions when undertaking tasks associated with finding and using information. Marland’s work may be considered an early model for the teaching and learning of information skills and, in more recent years, many other approaches have appeared. Whilst the emphases of the individual models vary, typically they stress the need for learners to receive training in
- recognising a need for information, based on a situation that has arisen in the person’s life;
- forming a question to represent the need;
- determining a course of action involving the pursuit of information in order to answer the question;
- collecting the material required;
- assessing it with a view to determining its trustworthiness and relevance;
- putting the information to use in such a way as to meet the need effectively and ethically.