Evaluation of a information literacy training program for future secondary school teachers

This study is presented due to the increasing importance of basic skills in secondary education, specifically information literacy. The research aimed to evaluate the efficacy of a specific training program in information literacy for future secondary school teachers. A pre-experimental design with minimal control and pretest-posttest was raised and a real information literacy competence evaluation instrument, designed ad hoc, was applied to a representative sample of secondary school teachers of Castilla y Leon, students of the Master in Secondary Education. In contrast to the hypotheses tested, the results of the calculation of the effect size show that the training program, in online mode, was very effective in teaching conceptual (or knowing) contents (g>1.15), moderately effective in teaching knowing-how contents (1.15>g>0.5) and ineffective in teaching attitudes or knowing how to be (g<0.5). The graphic analysis also shows how the evolution of learning is differentiated in each component depending on the initial level reached in the pretest. The paper concludes by confirming the effectiveness of the program, noting the importance of explicit teacher training in basic skills, specifically in information literacy competences, and analyzing the relevance of this type of training for the integration of basic skills in the teaching-learning processes developed in the different subjects. Finally, the future study of the impact of the information literacy teacher training on learning achieved by students is proposed, considering the limitation of splitting the competence into its constituent parts to evaluate it, without regard to its holistic nature.