InfoLit K-20
The American Association of School Libraries (aasl@ala.org) and the Association of College and Research Libraries (acrl@ala.org), divisions of the American Library Association jointly own a list called InfoLit to explore the issues of information literacy for K-20. Here is a post that I wrote on September 25th, 2005. I think that more and more people should be exploring and contemplating these issues. So many of our “ills” are a result of these issues.
Here is my summary of K-20 issues to this point:
Students do not have a set of skills needed for post-high school education.
There is no agreed upon K-20 national information curriculum nor agreement upon who is responsible for the teaching of these skills.
K-12 schools continue to suffer catastrophic budget cuts of resources and staff.
K-12 educators focus upon the immediate needs of the school including discipline, testing, and local concerns.
Students’ immediate needs are not met on-demand, in the manner they need, during research so they do not experience success.
Students forget what they are taught.
Faculty members are recalcitrant to schedule whole classes for information skills instruction in sufficient time blocks to allow mastery learning.
K-12 educators have not had training in how to frame research questions and assignments that elicit student interactions we seek.
K-12 educators and Academic librarians have no opportunities to address these issues.
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So then, now where do we go and should we attempt to solve these issues? Who would be willing to work on these?
