SCHOLARSHIP, PRACTICE, AND LEADERSHIP

Scholarship, Practice, And Leadership

Scholarship, Practice, And Leadership



The purpose of this final report is to outline the importance of information literacy and recommendations for the future. Specifically, it argues for the importance of Information Literacy to individuals, business, and citizenship. It suggests opportunities to develop information literacy and also addresses the information age in school. For a personal, business and national integration of knowledge and need for information literacy for personal happiness, as well as the good of the nation as a whole(Presidential committee on information literacy: Final report,1989). For example, businesses and individuals need to have opportunities to have up-to-date technology. “How our country deals with the realities of the Information Age will have enormous impact on our democratic way of life and on our nation's ability to compete internationally. Within America's information society, there also exists the potential of addressing many long-standing social and economic inequities. To reap such benefits, people---as individuals and as a nation---must be information literate” (Presidential committee on information literacy: Final report,1989 pp. 1-9).

According to this report, producing information literate individuals, businesses and nations will require that schools and colleges appreciate and integrate the concept of information literacy into their learning programs and that they play a leadership role in equipping individuals and institutions to take advantage of the opportunities inherent within the information society. It suggests that education needs a new model of learning-learning that is based on the information resources of the real world and learning that is active and integrated, not passive and fragmented. Such a learning process would actively involve students in the process of:

1. Knowing when they have a need for information

2. Identifying information needed to address a given problem or issue

3. Finding needed information and evaluating the information

4. Organizing the information

5. Using the information effectively to address the problem or issue at hand

(Presidential committee on information literacy: Final report).

Thus, according to this perspective, teachers would work consistently with librarians, media resource people, and instructional designers both within their schools and in their communities to ensure that student projects and explorations are challenging, interesting, and productive learning experiences in which they can all take pride (Presidential committee on information literacy: Final report).

According to Lauer and Yodans (2004), the Social Survey Programme (ISSP) is “an invaluable tool for increasing global literacy and scientific literacy in sociology lectures and class activities. They argue that American students are globally illiterate because they only learn about their own country in sociology classes, and that there is a need to expand this to a global literacy. They also argue that students lack and need scientific literacy. In reference to the former, they say it this way: “Teaching for global literacy should increase students' awareness of the global nature of issues and encourage students to ask questions that transcend national boundaries. Globally literate students have the confidence, knowledge, and skills needed to apply sociological concepts, theories, and questions to societies different from their own and to ...