Information literacy skills of secondary school students in Singapore

Foo, S., Majid, S., Azura Mokhtar, I., Zhang, X., Chang, Y. K., Luyt, B., & Theng, Y. L. (2014). Information literacy skills of secondary school students in Singapore. Aslib Journal of Information Management, 66(1), 54-76.

Background

The author highlighted the importance of students being information literate in this increasingly digitized information age. A proper means to measure and assess information literacy (IL), as well as exploring pedagogies to improve it, are essential in preparing our young with future-ready skills.

Aims

This exploratory study aimed to investigate Singapore secondary students’ IL skills in searching, evaluating and using information.

Sample

The participants included 31,467 students from 41 secondary schools.

Method

The data was collected through an online survey platform. The questionnaire comprised 30 multiple-choice questions to test IL skills, including task definition, information seeking strategies, location and access, information use, information synthesis and information evaluation.

Findings

The scores demonstrated that the overall IL skills among the students were low. ’Task definition’ was the best-performing area, whereas ‘information synthesis’ was the poorest-performing area. Female students performed slightly better than male students. The school stream was also found to have significant impact on the students’ performance. Students from the ‘Express’ stream scored higher than students from the ‘Normal Academic’ and ‘Normal Technical’ streams. The differences were significantly correlated with skills used in ‘task definition’, ‘information seeking’, ‘location & access’ and ‘information use’. Students from government-aided schools scored higher than those from government schools. The results revealed that the higher the parents’ qualifications were, the higher IL scores their children were likely to obtain. The father’s highest qualification had a significant impact on child’s skills related to ‘information seeking’, ‘location & access’ and ‘information use’ while the mother’s highest qualification had no significant impact on each specific IL skill of the child. Students with Internet access at home scored significantly higher, especially for skills related to ‘information seeking’, ‘location & access’ and ‘information use’.

Implications

The author highlighted that the students rarely visited and used resources in public libraries including their school libraries, and few students consulted librarians while conducting information tasks. He recommended that more attention be placed on school libraries so as to ensure that they had adequate resources for expansion. To improve students’ information searching skills, the schools should integrate into the curriculum various forms of information sourcing, and dialogue with parents to surface challenges students might experience using various information sources at home. The author also recommended collaborative teaching or coaching as potential ways to enhance the teachers’ competencies to teach students the higher order thinking skills, such as information synthesis and evaluation, required in IL.

Original article retrieved from Google Scholar.