Beyond AI Literacy – Is it time for Information Literacy?

There is no point in teaching AI literacy – it is a project doomed to failure due to the rapid evolution of the field in question. 

Or at least there is no point to teaching AI literacy as some bolt on to IT policies or as subset of IT. Our fragmented approach to dealing with the complex information environment in which we find ourselves is unsustainable in the long term – we are forever on the back foot and playing catch up with the tech.

Just look at the mess schools made of social media literacy – it either comes up once a year in a desultory PSHE assembly or or if you are lucky a well meaning Media teacher uses The Social Dilemma as part  of his teaching a shocks the hell out of a handful of students in each year group…(is it solipsistic in here or is it just me?)

Teaching students about AI is a necessity –  I don’t think that’s up for debate. However, I believe that we need a much more comprehensive view of the information landscape than current curricula offer and AI is only one part of this.

The National Curriculum for England does include IT literacy, but at secondary level students who don’t opt for IT or Computer Science at GCSE level will leave behind any formally structured programme of instruction and it will be the luck of the draw as to whether any exposure to IT, AI or information literacy occurs. 

Now this is not to say that the vital underpinnings of information decoding skills go untaught; History teachers will deal with source analysis and evaluation; English teachers will look at critical analysis of texts and authorial perspectives; Science teachers will cover the scientific method and so on across the subjects. 

But this does not address the fundamental issue – how can students, or adults for that matter, navigate our information saturated world without a coherent skill set that is adapted for that specific purpose.

Scam emails, online portals for tax returns, filtering through search engines, dealing with social feeds – there is a lot to filter through on a daily basis, never mind when you end up in a job or on a course that entails dealing with more sources again.

And I’ve not even got close to considering fake news and deep fake images – how do you begin to unpick that Gordian knot? 

So what foundations do we need to be teaching in education? 

Let’s go back to first principles – the aim of mass education in the first place.

Initially it was to provide essential literacy and numeracy skills. To allow people to read enough to acquire more learning from books if needed, to navigate basic signage, transactional texts such as letters etc and to have the numeracy needed to either a) handle everyday transactions and accounting or to b) give them the foundations to go further and perhaps to progress in to more rarified endeavours such as accounting or even science and engineering. Essentially to centralise the system of education to provide a capable and educated workforce to drive economic and social advancement.

This gave a baseline and foundation that allowed the bulk of the population to deal with the increasing availability of written information and the increased need to deal with this on a daily basis as recording ideas and transactions became increasingly common. 

With the decreased cost of and increased access to writing implements and written materials the written word became more and more a component of our lives. 

Steadily as our world grew in complexity more knowledge was created and the greater the need became to understand and decode this. This also ran concurrently to the increase in literacy levels in the general population.

However mass media and then broadcast media accelerated the spread and the quantity of information that became available. Not only did this become available it became all pervasive. At first this was exclusively print, but soon radio and then television. Then information became multi-modal and multi-channel, more and more information pouring in at us. 

Then of course the explosion in information types and spread brought about by the computer and then the internet and now we all have access to the sum total of human knowledge sitting in our pockets.

Our education systems, conceived during a time when information was static and text only, have been overwhelmed, outpaced and rendered barely operable in the face of this. It is only by the will and the skill of the educators themselves that the system has remained in any way fit for purpose.

So what would a framework like this entail?

So with the shortcomings of current approaches established, let’s explore what foundational skills are needed in an information literacy curriculum.

Literacy, Numeracy and Oracy

Literacy and numeracy lie at the heart of understanding the world – this is still true. However, we have neglected oracy, taken it out of our curricula as it has been devalued as either ‘soft’ or ‘easy’. In the UK curriculum speaking and listening was made optional – and which school in their right mind would teach something that made no difference to the outcome of the performance measures, no matter how much real world value the skills have.

Metacognition

Beyond these core skillsets, however, students also need insights into the learning process itself. This metacognitive understanding is crucial for developing a sense of how we establish ‘knowledge’ – the IB theory of knowledge component is an example of how metacognition can be included in a syllabus. Giving students the knowledge of how learning takes place is a vital component in creating information literate adults and this should be available to all, not just the top performing students in highly academic settings – it needs to be woven throughout the school system. Metacognition is one of the most reliably effective means of improving student performance and yet we have very few systems for integrating this.

Critical and Evaluative Thinking

Armed with an understanding of how we learn, students can then develop skills in evaluating and analysing the information they encounter critically. I am proposing that this kind of a framework works alongside a curriculum with domain specific content still included, but I’d envisage a modernised curriculum might look more like an IB pathway with more project work and cross curricular links. However, if I were to suggest a content area that should be added to something like the UK national curriculum (apologies to my international audience, it’s just the one I’m most familiar with) then I would propose Media Studies – not because I’m a Media Studies teacher, that’s been far more by accident than design, but because I genuinely believe that teaching students to decode media texts is a vital skill.

AI and IT Literacy

While interpreting traditional media remains important, any modern information literacy must also account for the explosion of digital technologies. Therefore, explicit instruction in AI and IT literacy – how computer systems work, how to work with them, the computational logic behind AI etc – is necessary. This is not the technical understanding and skills of coding, but a good general understanding of how systems work – you don’t need advanced computational mathematics skills, but it’s useful to at least understand what this is and why it is important. I also believe that students need a strong grounding in a range of IT applications. I’m constantly staggered by the number of my students who display no knowledge at all of basic application such as spreadsheets and word processors, let alone graphic design software, even when these are presented in their most accessible forms. Digital natives seem more digitally naive than the preceding generations.

Data Literacy

This could arguably be subsumed into the category of numeracy, but I think this deserves a section all of its own. There are direct correlations between lower levels of data literacy and critical thinking and the belief in conspiracy theories and other fringe ideas. Building in data literacy will allow students to make informed judgements about the nature of the information that they are presented with and as such I feel it needs a separate category in any information literacy framework.

Collaboration, teamwork and communication

Interpreting data effectively is one component, but working with others on collective sensemaking is equally vital in our networked world. Whilst not a knowledge domain in of itself I still believe this is a skill set necessary to facilitate information literacy. The ability to look at and work with different perspectives, communicate ideas, listen and collaborate are all worthy goals in themselves, but also key components in developing the capacity to handle the multiplicity of meanings that information literacy demands of us. If we can see things from someone else’s point of view and negotiate this process then we will be better equipped to understand the multiple ways information can be interpreted and presented.

I am keenly aware that the more I write about this topic the more vague an abstract I am getting. Hopefully this is a good starting place to begin a debate on this topic.

I have added as an appendix to this post a bullet point framework organised around the UK key stages that identifies some core learning objectives that might be established in an information literacy framework. These are drawn from multiple sources, including the national curriculum for England’s framework for computer science, a US national libraries information literacy curriculum and the UNESCO framework on AI in education (the final draft of which is yet to be published).

What should we include in an education system that needs to exist in a data rich environment? I’d be really interested to hear what other thoughts are out there. Can we really just add another framework document or do we need a much deeper re-evaluation of what we do in schools?

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Appendix – a framework for Information Literacy

Key Stage 1 (Ages 5-7):

– Identify needs for information, formulate simple questions, and articulate prior knowledge

– Recognize different types of information sources and understand their basic characteristics  

– Locate and access information from familiar sources in various formats

– Distinguish between different source types with guidance

– Organise and store information using simple methods  

– Communicate learning through creative expression (drawing, speaking, writing)

– Differentiate between living things, machines, and AI (toys/apps) that can learn

– Develop basic computational thinking through unplugged coding and sequencing activities

– Operate simple hardware and use software for creative tasks  

– Understand and apply basic online safety principles

Key Stage 2 (Ages 7-11):  

– Identify and define focused information needs for specific tasks

– Understand subject-specific and general information sources

– Independently identify relevant sources and plan basic search strategies

– Locate, access and collect information representing diverse perspectives

– Assess accuracy, validity, relevance of sources and identify potential biases

– Organise information systematically and understand ethical use principles

– Effectively communicate ideas through various formats for authentic audiences

– Recognize AI applications in daily life and how they learn from data

– Use AI tools for creative projects like storytelling and basic simulations

– Create and debug simple algorithms and understand online safety

Key Stage 3 (Ages 11-14):

– Articulate complex information needs and refine research questions

– Evaluate scope and characteristics of diverse information sources  

– Construct advanced search strategies and identify specialised search tools

– Access, synthesise, and collect data from diverse sources and formats

– Critically evaluate information for accuracy, relevance, and socio-cultural context

– Manage, curate, and demonstrate understanding of data privacy/security  

– Communicate complex ideas through multimedia for intended audiences

– Explore different AI areas like machine learning and natural language processing  

– Analyse data sets and code basic AI programs using block-based platforms

– Design/develop programs for specific goals and understand algorithmic applications

– Collaborate online and develop digital citizenship understanding  

Key Stage 4 (Ages 14-16):

– Recognize information needs for complex research and problem-solving

– Assess scope and limitations of information sources and identify emerging technologies

– Develop comprehensive, tailored search strategies leveraging advanced techniques

– Access, integrate, collect and analyse data from specialised sources

– Critically evaluate information for accuracy, relevance, biases from multiple perspectives  

– Systematically manage information resources with advanced data privacy/IP understanding

– Effectively communicate complex ideas/findings through various media for specific audiences

– Understand machine learning algorithms, future of AI, and impact on professions

– Develop complex AI programs using coding languages and evaluate AI-generated content  

– Analyse problems, design solutions using computational thinking and multiple programming languages 

– Evaluate impact of technology and responsibly navigate online environments

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