Information Literacy Preparation of Pre-service and Graduate Educators

With the development and adoption of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for K-12, there has been a shift toward challenging students to demonstrate higher-order thinking skills. This shift includes specific goals in the area of information literacy (IL). Recently, however, as one of the authors reviewed student writing in her undergraduate pre-service and graduate teacher education classes at a public suburban university, the lack of IL skills exhibited by teacher candidates at both levels was evident. This is a major concern since these are the teachers that will be expected to model and teach these skills to K-12 populations. A large part of the problem may simply be semantic, of course, but we believe the lack of a common terminology between and among disciplines is a critical factor in what we are teaching and how we assess learning of IL skills at all levels and across disciplines. That is, while a review of standards across disciplines demonstrated some level of emphasis on IL skills, the specific terminology used to address IL varied across disciplines, and without a shared framework and terminology, the focus on IL in both K-12 and higher education is fragmented. This is evident in analysis of IL standards and review of research studies addressing interventions in pre-service and graduate educator preparation programs. Thus, the final section of this chapter includes possible solutions to begin improving IL skills in teacher preparation programs.