The Information Literacy Movement of the School Library Field: A Preliminary Summary of the Research.

This paper summarizes the proceedings of two major conferences in 1997: the Treasure Mountain Research Retreat VI and the International Association School Librarianship conference. In addition, this paper examines the history of information literacy and brings together the theory development, research, and practice in school libraries since the late 1980s. Information literacy and critical thinking ideas from the fields of education, cognitive psychology, and educational technology are included. The paper provides a variety of definitions of information literacy, and lists the most prevalent information literacy models being used in the field. Since most readers will have access to those models, they are not reproduced in this paper. The models in current use are derivation of important earlier works, so the paper traces the development of the models from the beginning with work done in Great Britain and its importation into the United States and several other countries. The paper also looks at research done in teaching information literacy as a process, and monitoring student behavior during the research. (Contains 116 references.) (Author/SWC) ******************************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ********************************************************************************