Page 93 - DLIS102_LIBRARY_AND_ITS_USERS

Library and its Users

Notes 13.2.2 K-12 Education Restructuring

Educational reform and restructuring make information literacy skills a necessity as students seek
to construct their own knowledge and create their own understandings. Today instruction methods
have changed drastically from the mostly one-directional teacher-student model, to a more
collaborative approach where the students themselves feel empowered. Much of this challenge is
now being informed by the American Association of School Librarians that published new standards
for student learning in 2007.
Within the K-12 environment, effective curriculum development is vital to imparting Information
Literacy skills to students. Given the already heavy load on students, efforts must be made to avoid
curriculum overload. Eisenberg strongly recommends adopting a collaborative approach to
curriculum development among classroom teachers, librarians, technology teachers, and other
educators. Staff must be encouraged to work together to analyze student curriculum needs, develop
a broad instruction plan, set information literacy goals, and design specific unit and lesson plans
that integrate the information skills and classroom content. These educators can also collaborate on
teaching and assessment duties.
Educators are selecting various forms of resource-based learning (authentic learning, problem-based
learning and work-based learning) to help students focus on the process and to help students learn
from the content. Information literacy skills are necessary components of each. Within a school
setting, it is very important that a students’ specific needs as well as the situational context be kept
in mind when selecting topics for integrated information literacy skills instruction. The primary
goal should be to provide frequent opportunities for students to learn and practice information
problem solving. To this extent, it is also vital to facilitate repetition of information seeking actions
and behavior. The importance of repetition in information literacy lesson plans cannot be
underscored, since we tend to learn through repetition. A students’ proficiency will improve over
time if they are afforded regular opportunities to learn and to apply the skills they have learnt.

The process approach to education is requiring new forms of student assessment.
Students demonstrate their skills, assess their own learning, and evaluate the
processes by which this learning has been achieved by preparing portfolios,
learning and research logs, and using rubrics.

13.2.3 Efforts in K-12 Education

Information literacy efforts are underway on individual, local, and regional bases.
Many states have either fully adopted AASL information literacy standards or have adapted them
to suit their needs. States such as Oregon (OSLIS, 2009) increasing rely on these guidelines for
curriculum development and setting information literacy goals. Virginia, on the other hand, chose
to undertake a comprehensive review, involving all relevant stakeholders and formulate it own
guidelines and standards for information literacy. At an international level, two framework
documents jointly produced by UNESCO and the IFLA (International Federation of Library
Associations and Institutions) developed two framework documents that laid the foundations in
helping define the educational role to be played by school libraries: the School library manifesto
(1999).
Another immensely popular approach to imparting information literacy is the Big 6 set of skills.
Eisenberg claims that the Big 6 is the most widely used model in K-12 education. This set of skills
seeks to articulate the entire information seeking life cycle. The Big 6 is made up of six major stages
and two sub-stages under each major stages. It defines the six steps as being: task definition,

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