Information Literacy: Theory And Practice

Information literacy(IL) instruction (amalgamated from library user education and computer education) is being developed vigorously in developed countries represented by USA and Australia after 1970s. There were a great deal of harvests on theoretical research and practice from 1970s until now. The concept of IL has become an important social and educational topic. The significance about the concept has been recognized and accepted extensively. There are so many organizations, such as departments of government, enterprises, professional organizations, and especially library and information institutes, educational institutions, being devoted themselves into the IL Movement actively and widely. Many measures being brought into effect influence the educational reform and cultivating of talents with high IL in developed countries profoundly. For example, the effort on the research of concept, essence, goal as well as practice of IL; establishment of nationwide alliance and organized communication; constituting of relevant policies & criteria and so much practice in IL plans or tasks and so on. In evidence, IL is becoming the international interested subject crossing different disciplines and different industries for fitting in with the development of social mformatization and knowledge economy.In our country, the IL instruction are existing with the forms of library user education, information retrieving education in higher education, and the information technology education(computer education) carried out by education community. Thus, there is no genuine and comprehensive IL instruction in our country. The research in theory of IL had started from 1990s. Though there are considerable numbers of articles and books in this area, the level of these literatures is still superficial comparatively.There were systematical and historical researches in theory and practice of IL in main countries overseas. The findings and experiences had been referenced andcombined with the researches in China in order to discuss the origin, evolvement and essence of the concept IL; to probe into the basic theoretical mode and general approach in practice of IL instruction; to put forward countermeasures and advices based on the facts in China.The prologue of this paper introduced the background and significance about the research. There were the complete review in the concept of IL and its connotation & structure as well as the proposals brought forward on process-structured theory and goal-structured theory in IL creatively based on the existed findings interiorly or overseas in the 2nd and 3rd chapters of this paper. There were the discussions on the common problems in IL instruction and the analysis of its relevant concepts, the argumentation about the main features and principles of IL instruction, the theoretical mode of integrated IL instruction based on the process-goal structured theory of IL in the 4th chapter. The foreign solution of Big6 is the general solution on educational practice in IL in the penman's opinion. Educational practice in IL interiorly & overseas is reviewed in-depth in the 5th and 6th chapters. The conclusion that the integrated IL instruction should be expanded in China and relevant strategies based on the summarization of existed experiences overseas & problems in China were proposed.