Development and Validation of the Information Literacy Assessment Scale for Education (ILAS-ED).

Abstract

Few populations exist where it is more important to produce information literate individuals than teacher candidates, yet few would suggest that practitioners newly entering the field are adequately prepared to model and teach information literacy to their students. Consequently, information literacy has recently been established as a key outcome by a number of teacher education accrediting bodies and professional associations. Only in the last few years has there been an attempt to develop a standardized scale to assess general information literacy skills, and at the time of this writing no standardized tool exists that measures the information literacy levels of teacher candidates. This study documents the development and validation of a standardized instrument to measure teacher candidates’ information literacy skills levels based on the International Society for Technology in Education’s 2000 National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers and the Association of College and Research Libraries’ 2000 Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. Undergraduate students enrolled in the teacher education program at the University of Central Florida were identified and asked to complete a test consisting of 22 multiple-choice test items and 13 demographic and self-percept items. A number of procedures designed to enhance validity and reliability of the scale were integrated throughout its development. Results of the test were also submitted to analysis. This project is part of a national initiative to develop standardized information literacy assessment tools specific to a discipline, and is spear-headed by the Project for the Standardized Assessment of Information Literacy Skills and the Institute for Library and Information Literacy Education. Use of the instrument described herein will allow librarians and teaching faculty a means to inform curricular and instructional decisions, and results can be used for internal and external benchmarking of education students’ information literacy skills levels.

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