Case Study on Information Literacy – Hazlehead Academy

The following case study was provided by Diane Scott, Library Resource Centre Co-ordinator at Hazlehead Academy, Aberdeen

One of my first tasks here as school librarian was to create and implement an information literacy programme.

After much research, I created a simple three-step framework of ‘FIND-EVALUATE-USE’ to base the lesson plans on, which offered a single approach to teaching IL across the school. I was keen that IL lessons should take place during a range of curriculum subjects in order for pupils and staff to learn to apply these skills in different contexts and that IL was taught at every stage of a pupils education so that good habits are established and higher level skills developed. Using a common approach with a common language makes pupils aware of a coherent thread running through their lessons, embedding a culture of strong information skills across the school.

This plan was then presented to the staff and a 6 week pilot with two S3 classes was run before Christmas. This was an extremely steep learning curve for me but a successful one – IL will be included into the S1 & S2 timetable next academic year with regular projects from history, RME, science and home economics using the library for IL sessions throughout the year.

“The class as a whole fully engaged in the research through the use of the library. I have taught this class in S2 & S3 and I have never seen them so enthusiastic about a piece of work that was so heavily literacy based. I expected them to resent having to use the online catalogues rather than use Google or Bing however they rose to the challenge and appeared to quite enjoy finding unique articles about various conditions associated with trench warfare. I feel that each member of the class has improved their information literacy in some way. For some it was the simple task of finding information outside of a generic search engine while for others they were able to compare several sources and draw conclusions. As the pupils progress into the senior phase these are exactly the skills they need to build on for the added value element of the National 5 and Higher History courses. This has been somewhat missing from some of the BGE courses so in the future we hope to embed more opportunities for information literacy using the library.”

S3 History Teacher