Investigating the status of information literacy in Persian and writing textbooks at the first year of high school

Information literacy refers to enabling individuals to determine when they need information and also having the ability to store, evaluate information, and using it effectively when needed. Teaching information literacy through the curriculum is one of the issues that has been considered by curriculum planners in recent years. For this reason, educational systems in different countries have been trying different ways to equip people in communities with information literacy skills. Similarly, in our country, paying attention to teaching information literacy in curricula has been seen in the document of fundamental transformation of education.  Two of the courses through which information literacy can be developed are Persian and writing courses. Therefore, the main purpose of this study was to investigate the status of information literacy in Persian and writing textbooks at the first year of high school.

The research method in this study was content analysis with a quantitative approach. The statistical population included Persian and writing textbooks of the seventh, eighth and ninth grades of the first year of high school (academic year 2018-2019), on the whole comprised of six textbooks. The sampling method in this study was purposeful sampling method and the sample size was equal to the size of the population, because all six books were analyzed. The research instrument is the standard checklist of information literacy, extracted from the checklist of Lotfi Maher (2010). This checklist includes eight components of feeling the need for information and how to express it, gathering information and search strategies, understanding, internalizing and recording information, the correct usage of information, organizing information, evaluating and analyzing information, being successful and laying emphasis on social, economic and legal aspects of information. Indicators of descriptive statistics including frequency, frequency percentage, tables and graphs were used to analyze the data.

The results showed that although quantitatively, on the average, about one third of the messages of all these textbooks (35.45%) had paid attention to the components of information literacy; the components of information literacy were not explicitly addressed, and information literacy content was more implicitly included in these books. Meanwhile, the status of writing textbooks in terms of information literacy components was better than the Persian textbooks, and grade 8 writing textbook with a frequency of 51.82 had the first rank and eighth grade Persian textbook with 23.84% had the lowest rate of information literacy messages among all the studied textbooks respectively. Among the components of information literacy, the fourth component (correct usage of information) was ranked first with the highest percentage and the eighth component (laying emphasis on the social, economic and legal aspects of information) was not considered at all. Very little attention was paid to the seventh (success) and the sixth (information evaluation) components.

The results make it clear that reviewing these textbooks in terms of information literacy messages is necessary for curriculum planners. In this regard, it is suggested that texts or activities would be added to the content of these books to encourage students to conduct research and refer to various sources of information. It is also necessary to develop information literacy skills more explicitly in these books.