Effects of integrated information literacy on science learning and problem-solving among seventh-grade students

How to educate students to be information literates has been an important issue today. The purpose of this research is to investigate the effects of integrating information literacy into science instruction on students' science learning and problem solving. In this quasi-experimental pre-post study, two 7th-grade classes from a public junior-high school in Taiwan were randomly assigned into an experimental group and a control group. The former received an inquiry-based science curriculum infused information literacy using the Big6 model, while the latter received traditional lecture-oriented instruction. The instructional unit in both groups was taught by the same teacher and lasted for about three weeks. Three tests were administered before and after the instruction to examine students' memorization of factual information, comprehension of scientific concepts, and problem solving skills. Results from the analyses of covariance showed that the experimental group significantly outperformed their counterparts on comprehension learning and problem solving, while not on the factual information acquisition. The findings from this study verify that integrating information literacy into regular curriculum using the Big6 model is applicable in school contexts. The instructional time used for the integrated instruction was beneficial to the learning of the subject content.