The 8th European Conference on Information Literacy (ECIL) was held in Krakow, Poland, from October 9 to 12, 2023. This major event brought together researchers, practitioners, and educators from around the world to discuss the latest advances and best practices in the field of information literacy. Organized jointly by Hacettepe University (Turkey), University of Zagreb […]
Background Research details that our present ‘digital-by-default’ society structurally supports inequalities, where users without the requisite skills to enable meaningful engagement in the digital world are at an increasingly severe disadvantage (Eynon & Malmberg, 2021). These disparities are particularly felt by older adults, who while already challenged by structural issues related to their age cohort
In 1974, Paul Zurowski coined the term “information literacy” (IL) (Badke, 2010, p. 48) and brought attention to the burgeoning production and complexity of information and the need to study and understand it, given its power and possibilities for shaping/influencing daily life. Writing in 2013, Zurkowski made clear that “[w]ays must be found to enable
In my dissertation (Alamettälä, 2022), I investigated how lower secondary school teachers (n=3) developed their instruction practices of online research skills after having been introduced to a pedagogical framework, Guided Inquiry Design (Kuhlthau, Manioites & Caspari, 2015), and examined the short- and long-term effects of the intervention on students (n=58). It was a longitudinal study:
The basis of all learning is information. The notion of learning lies at the heart of information literacy. For example, information literacy is sometimes promoted as an approach to learning, or a way of learning. Very often the exercise for children in early school age is to investigate beyond the textbook about an item or
Sociocultural approaches to information literacy, which recognise that information literacy is shaped through dialogue and debate, have not always been welcomed within our field, being variously critiqued as ‘fashionable,’ of no interest to practitioners or as irrelevant given the availability of other conceptual work. Yet, it could be argued that these ideas have irrevocably changed
Ian Malcolm’s observation from Jurassic Park, “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should,” insightfully illustrates the complex maze of academic referencing. Given the myriad citation styles available, authors confront a significant information literacy challenge: selecting the right style, pinpointing it in their citation
Attention to the challenges of mis- and disinformation has increased along with the recognition of the influence of mis/disinformation on successive United States presidential elections, the Brexit vote, other elections and ballot initiatives worldwide, and response to the antiviral vaccine for the COVID-19 virus. In 2013, the World Economic Forum identified mis/disinformation as one of
Even before the outbreak of COVID-19, agendas worldwide had been emphasizing the need for the 21st century citizen to develop a wide array of competences and literacies. Hence, digital literacy is an urgency in schools, particularly for teachers, who need to be aware of the advantages and challenges posed by these new contexts, namely those
Introduction In the last decades, our society evolved from information scarcity to information abundance. For the many things that we need to do in everyday life, we often find ourselves overloaded with information on how to do things. A visit to an Internet search engine (e.g., Google) or a visit to an online video library
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