Akin,
L. & MacKinney, D. (2004). Autism, literacy, and
libraries. Children and
Libraries: The Journal
of the Association for Library Service to Children, 2,
2.
TFIV:
Assessment and Evaluation
Bucher (2000) explains that while
teachers have worked to
integrate curriculum and instruction across the core curricular
subjects, they
have ignored or slighted the related domains and that in the case of
information literacy or “library skills”, some educators assume that
because
students do not receive a grade in “library”, the content of the
information
literacy skills curriculum cannot be very important in addition to few
educators are even aware of the existence of national guidelines for
student
information literacy (AASL, 1998) or the various models that can be
used to
teach information literacy skills.
Students
can become competent, independent users and evaluators of information. The key is for educators to help them develop
the skills to evaluate information and to separate superfluous data
from
essential details (Bucher). Moreover,
mere exposure to information does not mean that students are informed
(Kehoe,
1993).
According
to Hancock (1993) information literacy is a resource-based approach to
learning
in the classroom, library media center, and community.
Bucher points out that the goal of the
information literacy skills curriculum, as identified by the American
Association of School Librarians (AASL) and the Association for
Educational Communications
and Technology (AECT) in the publication they coauthored, Information
Power: Building Partnerships for Learning (AASL, 1998),
is the cognitive development of young adolescents through their
engagement in
more sophisticated research and problem solving than in the past (AASL,
1998). Loertscher and Woolls (1998)
suggest that to
be information literate, students need both a basic understanding of
the
research process itself and the ability to develop their own
internalized
strategies for finding, evaluating, and using information.
Bucher
contends that the information literacy skills curriculum is especially
important in the middle skills and indicates that it stresses several
of
Loonsbury’s (1996) major programmatic areas of middle school education:
a
challenging and integrative curriculum, varied approaches to teaching
and
learning, and a flexible organizational structure both in individual
classrooms
and on interdisciplinary teams. Bucher
cites (Howe, 1998); information literacy skills also help to “deliver”
the
curriculum, improve computer skills, develop cognitive skills, improve
student
relationships with adults, and strengthen democratic values by teaching
about
academic honesty, copyright, and plagiarism.
The author refers to Howe’s position that the goals of the
information
literacy skills curriculum is not to bring the fish
(resource/information) to
the student; rather it is to help the student learn how to fish.
As Information Power (AASL, 1998) states,
to be most effective information literacy skills must be integrated
into the
curriculum and in the middle school, this means that the school library
media
specialist must work closely with interdisciplinary instructional teams
in both
planning and implementing instruction. The
library media specialist works with teachers to identify, purchase,
and/or
borrow resources to match learning styles of middle school students,
and
teachers likewise need to welcome the library media specialist on
instructional
teams; they should involve him or her in planning and implementing
instruction
and identifying developmentally appropriate resources for young
adolescents before instruction begins (Bucher).
When
subject matter and information-seeking skills are integrated and when
teachers
and library media specialists plan together, students have the greatest
opportunity for learning (Pitts, 1994).
This was a
concise article. In its brevity, it
spoke to the important point of the role of information literacy
curriculum in
middle schools, which too often goes unaddressed and provided descriptions of models developed to teach information literacy and problem-solving skills to students as well as web resources for
information
literacy. This article has provided me
with valuable professional resources that I can refer to and use as I
study to
become and eventually work as a school library media specialist on the
middle
or secondary levels.