Seeking Information about Information Literacy in Early Childhood

A Quick Google Search

When I had a few moment to spare I thought I would begin my search for articles about information literacy in early childhood with a quick Google Search using the phrase “information literacy in early childhood education”. This returned over 4000000 results. When I scanned down the titles of the first 10 items I realised that the search had return results that included either ‘information literacy’ or ‘early childhood education’ and that the most likely results were at the top. So of the millions, only two appear directly relevant to my project. Both were conference papers.

Information Literacy for Students in Early Childhood by Ayshe Talay-Ongan, Trish Edmonds and Maree Gosper from Macquarie University, Australia

Information Literacy - Implications for Early Childhood Teaching by Donna Berthelsen, Gail Halliwell, Judith Peacock, Jess Burke and Irene Ryan from Queensland University of Technology

I thought that conference papers might afford some practical insights.

The first paper, by Berthelsen, Halliwell, Peacock, Burke & Ryan, 2000, begins with a quite limited definition of information literacy. “Information literacy encompasses both technological skills and skills to locate, evaluate, and use information from a range of sources.”  They state that there is an increasing expectation that children will begin developing information literacy skills as soon as they enter formal school programs, and that this early childhood ‘technoliteracy’ (Synder, 2000 in Berthelsen, et al., 2000) is a “largely uncharted territory” (Berthelsen, et al., 2000). They cite Lankshear, Snyder & Green (2000) in elaborating on a socio-cultural view of technoliteracy that comprises operational, cultural and critical dimensions (Berthelsen, et al., 2000). They deduce that greater attention needs to be paid to understanding the “complex connections between literacy, technology and learning” in the education of young children (Berthelsen, Halliwell, Peacock, Burke & Ryan, 2000). However the rest of the paper is devoted to research on the information literacy competencies and attitudes of pre-service early childhood teachers.

Similarly, Talay-Ongan, Edmonds & Gosper’s (2001) conference paper focussed on information literacy training offered by the Macquarie University’s library for students of the Institute of Early Childhood (IEC). So it had little relevance to my topic.

I assumed from my poor result that there might be little research in the area, or that I needed to use alternate search terms and advanced searches.

Science Direct Expert Search

Next I tried a basic Boolean search in the Expert Search section of Science Direct.

I used the Boolean search query “early childhood” AND “information literacy”.

This resulted in 28 items. I then used the filter to exclude book items and items related to encyclopedia entries, and unrelated topics.

By scanning down the titles, I identified the two most likely articles to meet my project needs. These were both research articles published in 2011.

Using collaborative teaching and inquiry project-based learning to help primary school students develop information literacy and information skills. Library & Information Science Research, Volume 33, Issue 2, April 2011, Pages 132-143. Samuel Kai Wah Chu, S.K. Tse, Ken Chow.

Collaborative inquiry project-based learning: Effects on reading ability and interests  Original Research Article. Library & Information Science Research, Volume 33, Issue 3, July 2011, Pages 236-243. Samuel Kai Wah Chu, Shek Kam Tse, Elizabeth Ka Yee Loh, Ken Chow

After reading the abstracts in the item previews, I found that the articles were about a study done with Year 4 primary school children.