Planting the Seeds of Information Literacy: An Exploratory Study of When and How Australian Teacher Librarians Introduce Information Literacy Skills to Primary School Students

Australian primary school students engage in complex information environments for learning and everyday life, and there are increasing concerns about students’ capacity to navigate these environments. Despite these concerns, employment of qualified teacher librarians with specialist information literacy expertise is declining. Drawn from a larger study of Australian primary teacher librarians’ perspectives on information literacy, this study examined when and how information literacy skills are introduced to students. This article highlights the need for teachers to have the support of qualified teacher librarians to introduce and build students’ capacity to use information critically and ethically. It also underscores the importance of system-level support to embed information literacy as core learning across primary education. These findings will be of value to education policy makers, school leaders and teacher librarians who are seeking clear evidence of the importance of consistent information literacy approaches across the primary school years and the value of qualified teacher librarians to support teachers in this implementation.