Proposing a 6+3 model for developing information literacy standards for schools: A case for Singapore

Abstract

Several comprehensive information literacy (IL) standards have been developed worldwide for use in the education sector, specifically for students and teachers. Apart from the more generic International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) IL standards, such standards are more appropriate for their countries of origins. If these standards are to be applied to schools in Southeast Asia, then some form of contextualization and customization is necessary to cater for gaps that surface due to their different and unique education environments and cultures. In addition, as a result of the growth of Web 2.0, information seeking moves rapidly in the social dimension. It is therefore timely to review ongoing research in the areas of collaborative information seeking and behavior, as well as education values in order to derive a set of up-to-date, relevant and holistic IL standards for schools. This paper proposes a model to help to develop IL standards for schools in Singapore that was constructed using the aforementioned standards as a guide, based on the paradigm of a popular information and technology literacy process model known as the Big6, and steered by related educational initiatives and education values that have been recently implemented in Singapore. The proposed model expounds each of the Big6 categories in terms of Techniques and Tools, and supplements those categories with three important mindsets of Ethics and Social Responsibility, Collaborative Information Behavior, and Attitudes and Perceptions.