Teaching Information Literacy through Multiple Intelligences and Mediated Learning: a Quasi Experimental Study

Although it is widely believed that information literacy (IL) skills are useful in helping students perform better, academically or otherwise, limited empirical evidence is available showing the relationship between IL skills and IL education. A quasi-experimental pretestposttest control group study was carried out to investigate the impact of IL teaching approaches, which are grounded in pedagogy, on students’ level and applicability of IL skills. The study was carried out with a cluster of 13to 15-year-old students from four schools in Singapore. The 476 students who participated in the study were given a preintervention test in the beginning. Out of this, 279 students (from two schools) were put through the mediated learning intervention programme (with experimental and control sub-clusters), while the remaining 197 students (from the remaining two schools) were put through the multiple intelligence intervention programme (with experimental and control sub-clusters). A post-intervention test was administered to all students at the end of the intervention programmes. From the results of the preand post-intervention tests, it was found that the application of mediated learning (or close coaching) helps students perform better in the learning and application of IL skills, whilst the application of multiple intelligences in helping students learn, facilitated better student learning. (204 words)