Information Literacy and Informational Tools for Education

Information literacy (IL), a typical area of research and practice in library and information science, is a competence that strives to enable individuals to locate, evaluate, and use information critically, ethically, and effectively. It has expanded since the 1970s by converging with other literacies, such as digital, academic, media, data, and algorithmic literacies, reflecting diverse educational, societal, and workplace demands. Developing an IL instruction initiative requires drawing on the available instructional frameworks, considering the mentioned integration of various literacies, adapting to emerging technologies, and addressing the challenges related to the assessment, pedagogy, and evaluation of IL learning, as well as classifying and choosing among the informational tools that support a variety of pedagogical purposes, from search and organization to analysis and communication and that can be classified into four categories: (a) information discovery tools, (b) information management and organization tools, (c) collaboration and content creation tools, and (d) generative artificial intelligence (GenAI)–powered tools. A proposed classroom intervention to integrate IL into diverse classrooms and across educational contexts is based on a scaffolded approach to developing IL competencies in stages while gradually introducing informational tools. This progression, adaptable to diverse disciplines and educational levels and contexts, starts with information-seeking and traditional citation and writing practices and then incorporates GenAI tools for literature discovery and assisted analysis. Each intervention stage specifies its topics, recommended tools, practical activities, and driving questions. Ethical considerations are related to citation practices, originality and plagiarism, responsible use of GenAI, and academic integrity. The challenges of IL instruction can be divided in four categories: (a) IL instruction in general, such as content overload in limited time, insufficient pedagogical training, and adapting to diverse learners; (b) implications related to plagiarism, such as a shallow understanding of authorship and citation practices, which cause difficulties in attributing authorship to a source, and overreliance and misconceptions surrounding “plagiarism detection tools”; (c) implications related to the use of GenAI tools, such as an overreliance on these tools, difficulties in understanding authorship and attribution, risks of biased, incomplete, or fabricated content and references, a lack of transparency in its outputs, and challenges in detecting generated content, which, together with plagiarism, represent the main threats to academic integrity in the early 21st century; and (d) contextual concerns, such as institutional support, resource allocation and access disparities and structural inequities. All the mentioned elements provide an up-to-date vision of IL as both a pedagogical framework and a critical response to the transformations of the digital and informational landscape.