The aftermath of the crisis generated by the Covid-19 pandemic, and the dangerous infodemic that has emerged in parallel, has made the importance of fostering information literacy even more evident. Information literacy is fundamental in all ages to enable us to participate in contemporary society, and is therefore specifically a key competence to be developed starting from early childhood (Baji, Bigdeli, Parsa, & Haeusler, 2018; Batool, & Webber, 2019; Chu, Tse, & Chow, 2011; Gardner, Goldstein, Pavey, & Secker, 2020).
In some countries, for the primary education stage, the socio-educational need to promote information literacy has obtained an institutional response with the inclusion of information and digital competence in the school curriculum and in current legislation. But the reality is that there is no sound educational approach, no updated and transferable curricular design, no substantial support for the school library, and the results of both the PISA Programme (2018) and recent academic research (Martínez-Piñeiro, Gewerc, & Rodríguez-Groba, 2019) regarding information literacy of primary school students show huge gaps that urgently need to be addressed.
The aim of this panel is to describe the preliminary results of the research carried out within the European project BRIDGE (“Information and Digital Literacy at School. A Bridge to Support Critical Thinking and Equality Values for Primary Education Using Children’s Literature and Transmedia”). Current legislation, curricula, and practices of promoting information and digital literacy in the six countries of the project, Spain, Turkey, Italy, Finland, Greece and the United Kingdom, have been reviewed and accompanied with results from a questionnaire survey for teachers and librarians working with 8-11-year-olds. The questionnaire addressed how primary school teachers and school librarians support their students in developing information literacy, digital literacy, critical thinking and equality values as part of their teaching practices, and also included open-ended questions to collect information on the challenges they encounter, as well as their suggestions for materials and best practices. In the panel, the main results obtained in the six countries of the project will be presented to identify and reflect the needs and challenges shared and those that are specific to each country.
References
Baji, F., Bigdeli, Z., Parsa, A., & Haeusler, C. (2018). Developing information literacy skills of the 6th grade students using the Big 6 model. Malaysian Journal of Library & Information Science, 23(1), 1–15.
Batool, S. H., & Webber, S. (2019). Mapping the state of information literacy education in primary schools: The case of Pakistan. Library and Information Science Research, 41, 123–131.
Chu, S. K. W., Tse, S. K., & Chow, K. (2011). Using collaborative teaching and inquiry project-based learning to help primary school students develop information literacy and information skills. Library & Information Science Research, 33, 132–143.
Gardner, G., Goldstein, S., Pavey, S., & Secker, J. (2020). Information Literacy for Education. A call for expressions of interest. Retrieved January 3, 2021 from https://www.informall.org.uk/news/il-school-education/
Martínez-Piñeiro, E., Gewerc, A., & Rodríguez-Groba, A. (2019). Nivel de competencia digital del alumnado de educación primaria en Galicia. La influencia sociofamiliar. Revista de Educación a Distancia, 19(61). https://doi.org/10.6018/red/61/01
PISA. Programme for International Student Assessment (2018). PISA 2018 results. Retrieved from https://www.oecd.org/pisa/publications/pisa-2018-results.htm
