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Title Civic information literacy tools

Released 12 Nov. 2024

Format A4, 32 pages.

This report comprises a submission to the Australian Parliament’s Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters’ inquiry into civics education, engagement, and participation in Australia outlines prevailing approaches to countering information pollution, summarises the information literacy methods for schools developed at the University of Canberra since 2021, and makes three key recommendations. The information literacy methods require (a) updating current approaches to critical thinking so that they take information over-abundance into account, e.g., use “lateral reading” in the first instance, and (b) challenging prevailing negative opinions of Wikipedia in the teaching community. The report also includes a poster with the four lessons used when conducting an information literacy pilot program in ten Y11 groups at a Canberra (ACT) senior college (high school) and the edited text of one of the author’s testimony to the Joint Standing Committee.

Recommendations

1. Creation of a national body for the Australian information environment, amongst whose tasks would be the development of effective and non-partisan civic literacy tools.
2. Widespread diffusion of such tools via public information campaigns, via the use of public libraries as diffusion hubs and via inclusion in territory, state and federal public service induction and training programs.
3. To address variable implementations of the national education curriculum, creation of a mandatory Civic Literacy Certificate comprising civics basics and information literacy tools.

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