Chapter 4

The Construction of Information and

Media Literacy in Education Policy:

A Study of Singapore

Tzu-Bin Lin and Li-Yi Wang

Abstract

This chapter aims to explore representations of information literacyand media literacy in Singapore’s educational discourse as part of its21st century skills framework. Currently, information literacy andmedia literacy co-exist in Singapore’s education discourse but there isno related work attempting to clarify these two concepts in Singaporeor to bridge them to propose an overarching framework. In what waysare these two terminologies identical or different in the local educationcontext? We try to answer this question through reviewing relevantofficial documents. We start with a review the literature on the globalscale regarding information literacy and media literacy. Then, we focuson Singapore to explore how various governmental agencies defininginformation literacy and media literacy. This chapter, in other words,is a result from a pilot study to understand how information literacyand media literacy is defined and understood in Singapore’s educationsystem.

Keywords: Information literacy; media literacy; education policy;discourse analysis; teachers; ICT

Developing People’s Information Capabilities: Fostering Information Literacy in Educational,

Workplace and Community Contexts

Library and Information Science, Volume 8, 51–64

Copyright r 2013 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited

All rights of reproduction in any form reserved

ISSN: 1876-0562/doi:10.1108/S1876-0562(2013)0000008008

52 Tzu-Bin Lin and Li-Yi Wang

4.1. Introduction

During the first decade of the 21st century, various countries are attemptingto describe the required and essential skills for their citizens to survive in thenew knowledge economy. Singapore is no exception and its first wave ofpreparation for the 21st century began in late 20th century. To equip citizenswith these 21st century skills education is regarded as the natural conduit.The new education reform agenda, ‘Thinking Schools, Learning Nation’,was announced by the former Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong in 1997(Ng, 2008). In the same year, the Ministry of Education (MOE) Singaporeissued information literacy guidelines (Ministry of Education, Singapore,1997a) and, then, the notion of 21st century skills and competences came outin 2010 (Mokhtar, 2011).

Singapore’s education system has been identified as an excellent one withoutstanding student outcomes. Therefore, it is chosen to represent educationachievement in Asia by many researchers (Stewart, 2012) and organisationssuch as McKinsey (Mourshed, Chijioke, & Barber, 2010). How the MOESingapore construct the discourse of information literacy and media literacyand how they are promoted in schools can be a meaningful case study tothose who are interested in information and media literacy.

4.2. Information Literacy and Media Literacy: A Review of

Literature

We start with the discussion of information literacy first in this section andthe move to media literacy. For each concept, we introduce it by answeringthree questions: What is the context of advocating this literacy concept andwhat is the current trend? How do researchers define the concept? What arethe key purposes of this literacy practice?

4.2.1. Information Literacy in a Global Context

The concept of information literacy, emerging with the advent ofinformation technologies in the early 1970s, has grown, taken shape, andstrengthened to become recognised as the critical foundation for learning inthe 21st century (Bruce, 2004). As information is becoming increasinglydigitised, organisations and countries are becoming more networked, andinformation and communication technologies are rapidly developing. Thishas resulted in a transformed information environment of increasingcomplexity. This escalating complexity has led to individuals being facedwith diverse, abundant information choices in their studies, in the

A Study of Singapore 53

workplace, and in their personal lives (Association of College & ResearchLibraries, 2000). To respond to an ever-changing environment, individualsneed more than just a knowledge base, they also need techniques forexploring it, connecting it to other knowledge bases, and making practicaluse of it (American Library Association (ALA), 1989). Information literacyis thus recognized as not only a necessary personal competency in order tonavigate through the deluge of information that each individual faces(Mokhtar et al., 2009), but also a decisive factor in a nation’s economicsuccess in the information age (Doyle, 1994).

4.2.1.1. Various definitions The initial use of the term ‘informationliteracy’ can be attributed to Zurkowski (1974), who described informationliterate individuals as those who are trained in the application of informationresources to their work. Other descriptions of information literacy in the areaof education have been derived from the one provided by the ALA, in whichinformation literacy is defined as a set of abilities requiring individuals to‘recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate,evaluate, and use effectively the needed information’ (1989). In the ALA’sdescription, information literacy is a means of personal empowerment thatallows individuals to verify or refute expert opinion and to becomeindependent seekers of truth. It provides individuals with the ability tobuild their own arguments and prepares them for lifelong learning. It alsodeepens individuals’ capacities to understand and position themselves withinlarger communities of time and place (ALA, 1989). On the basis of theALA’ definition, the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL)further defined that ‘Information Literacy is a set of abilities requiringindividuals to recognize when information is needed and have the ability tolocate, evaluate, and needed to find, retrieve, analyse, and use information’(2000). Information literacy is also interpreted as ‘the ability to access,evaluate, and use information from a variety of sources’. An informationliterate person has acquired the skills to retrieve information from a varietyof sources to meet his/her needs, and is able to make informed decisions andsolve problems effectively (Doyle, 1992).

4.2.1.2. Purposes/Aims The complex and evolving informationenvironment challenges educators to prepare students to cope withcomplex and unforeseeable changes. Educators recognise the needs forstudents to engage in the information environment as part of their learningprocesses and provide students with the attitudes, knowledge and skillsthey require as active members of an information society. It is through theability of information literacy that students can learn to become dynamicand independent learners and thinkers (Mokhtar, Foo, & Majid, 2007).Hence, information literacy has been seen as an indispensible asset of

54 Tzu-Bin Lin and Li-Yi Wang

students in the pursuit of lifelong learning, personal empowerment, andprofessional development. For educational systems pursuing excellentstudent outcomes, information literacy has become one of the essentialeducational goals to assess and evaluate a student’s aptitudes for criticalthinking, decision making, and problem solving in this ever-changingcompetitive world (Li & Lester, 2009).

4.2.2. Media Literacy in Global Context

The earliest notion of a preliminary concept on media literacy can be tracedback to the discrimination approach proposed by F. R. Leavis and DenysThompson in 1933 in the UK (Buckingham, 2003) because the growth ofpopular cultural forms made some people uneasy. They would like topromote high culture to fight against the increasing growth of popularculture in printing media at that time (Lin, 2010). Therefore, there is astrong cultural value flavour in its origin.

In 1950s, media literacy was introduced to the United States with theacknowledgement of the increasing impact of mass media such as radio andtelevision on people’s daily life and schooling (Schwarz, 2005). Every timethere is a new media technology that causes collective anxiety in the society,the importance of media literacy is brought back to the educational agenda(see Lin, 2010). Take East Asia as an example, the growing interests inmedia literacy in various countries such as China (including Hong Kong),Taiwan, Japan and Korea since late 1990s (Cheung, 2009) comes from thean emerging new media technologies, the internet, that causes the cyber cafephenomenon. In Taiwan, media literacy education is viewed as a practicewith the potential to liberate and empower (Ministry of Education, Taiwan,2002). As Cappello, Felini, and Hobbs (2011) point out, current medialiteracy education strikes a balance between discrimination/protection andempowerment approaches1 and the recognition of media as an aspect ofsocial environment is a pushing force for the recent development of medialiteracy in the world.

Three terms, media education, media literacy and media literacy educa-tion, are widely used. Some may consider that these terms are interchange-able but we would like to point out that a common understanding is thatmedia (literacy) education refers to the process of learning about the mediaand media literacy is the outcome (Buckingham, 2003).

1. For a detail discussion on various approaches of media literacy education, please refer to

Buckingham (2003), Leaning (2009) and Lin (2010).

A Study of Singapore 55

Media literacy is recommended as an essential part of modern citizenshipin the Grunwald Declaration on media education (UNESCO, 1982).However, besides citizenship education (Burroughs, Brocato, Hopper, &Sanders, 2009; Lavender, 2003), media literacy in different countries may beassociated with various educational practices such as civic engagement(Goodman, 2003), English/mother tongue education (Buckingham &Domaille, 2009), multicultural education (Cortes, 2000) and media/filmstudies.

4.2.2.1. Various definitions Like other concepts in social science, there arevarious definitions of media literacy. Among them, the definitions from theOffice of Communications (Ofcom) UK and the National Association forMedia Literacy Education (NAMLE) USA are popular ones. Ofcom (2004)defines media literacy as ‘the ability to access, understand and createcommunications in a variety of contexts’. The basic definition of medialiteracy by NAMLE (n.d.-b) is ‘seen to consist of a series of communicationcompetencies, including the ability to access, analyse, evaluate andcommunicate information in a variety of forms, including print and non-print messages’. Based on these two definitions, media literacy refers to a setof competencies that enable individuals to access, understand representingboth analyse and evaluate, create communications in different mediaplatforms. It is crucial to point out, as NAMLE defines, that media herecovers print and non-print forms.

The concept of media literacy is an expanded version of traditionalliteracy practice (Burn & Durran, 2007; Cappello et al., 2011). In the era ofprint media such as books, magazines and newspapers, a literate individualneeds to know how to read as well as how to write. Therefore, mutualcommunication is possible. With the advent of new media and social mediasuch as the internet, digital TV and smart phones, the media messages are nolonger in written language. However, they are in ‘a combination of variouslanguages’ such as visual images, audio and written language (Buckingham,2003). Therefore, individuals need different competences to make mutualcommunication possible. Media literacy is the collective title for thesecompetences. Media literacy has two major components: one is readingmedia messages and the other is writing or producing media content (Chen,Wu, & Wang, 2011). In the definitions above, across different medium, thereading media messages is related to access, understand/analyse andevaluate media information and the producing is about creating andcommunicating information.

4.2.2.2. Purposes/Aims NAMLE sums up the purposes of media literacyeducation in one sentence as ‘the purpose of media literacy education is tohelp individuals of all ages develop the habits of inquiry and skills of

56 Tzu-Bin Lin and Li-Yi Wang

expression that they need to be critical thinkers, effective communicatorsand active citizens in today’s world’ (NAMLE, n.d.-a). Livingstone, VanCouvering, and Thumim (2004, pp. 6–7) offers a more detail set of purposesof media literacy:

� Democracy, participation and active citizenship. In a democratic society,a media-literate individual is more able to gain an informed opinion onmatters of the day, and to be able to express their opinion individuallyand collectively in public, civic and political domains. A media-literatesociety would thus support a sophisticated, critical and inclusive publicsphere.� Knowledge economy, competitiveness and choice. In a market economyincreasingly based on information, often in a complex and mediated form,a media-literate individual is likely to have more to offer and so achieve ata higher level in the workplace, and a media-literate society would beinnovative and competitive, sustaining a rich array of choices for theconsumer.� Lifelong learning, cultural expression and personal fulfilment. Since ourheavily mediated symbolic environment informs and frames the choices,values and knowledge that give significance to everyday life, medialiteracy contributes to the critical and expressive skills that support a fulland meaningful life, and to an informed, creative and ethical society.

As we indicated above, media literacy has a close link to citizenshipeducation and is considered as a key competence of contemporary citizen fora better engagement in the democratic process (Burroughs et al., 2009;Goodman, 2003; Hobbs, 1998). Moreover, Livingstone et al. point outanother key aim of media literacy that is to be creative and innovative andlink them to the need of knowledge economy in contemporary society.Living in a knowledge-based society, lifelong learning is crucial to allmembers within the society.

4.3. Information Literacy and Media Literacy in Singapore:

An Analysis of Policy Discourse

4.3.1. Information Literacy in Singapore

The MOE, Singapore believes that by the next century, students will live in aworld characterized by change. A new set of basic learning skills will beneeded to equip students to live in this changing world. Education mustencourage creativity, independent learning and self-responsibilities forlearning. An important facet of this goal is helping pupils to learn how to

A Study of Singapore 57

find the information needed to make sound decisions and to solve problems(MOE, 1997a). This shift in paradigm has been the driving force behindSingapore’s education, aiming to nurture students into active learners withcritical thinking skills while developing a creative and critical thinkingculture (Tan & Theng, 2006). To achieve this goal, the School Libraries Unit(SLU) of the Curriculum Planning and Development Division (CPDD) ofthe MOE published the information literacy guidelines (MOE, 1997a) andthe Information Literacy Supplementary Materials (1997b) as the frame-work on teaching ‘learning how to learn and clear thinking’.

These two documents provide practical instructions and specificdirections for information literacy education in Singapore. The informationliteracy guidelines cover recommendations on how the programme could beimplemented within the school curriculum, rubrics for standards onperformance information literacy, sample lesson plans, and pupil perfor-mance standards for information literacy skills under specific themes forspecific levels of students. The Information Literacy SupplementaryMaterials contains six sample lesson plans for different subjects specificallyfor the use of secondary school students, together with some recommendedactivities of how information literacy skills can be integrated into thesubjects. Another relevant publication on information literacy by the MOEis the Extensive Reading and Information Literacy (ERIL) Programme, ofwhich the focus is on the incorporation of information literacy skills in theEnglish language curriculum in secondary school with the emphasis onreading (MOE, 1997c).

Using the guidelines, the MOE proposed the Information LiteracyProgramme. The programme interprets information literacy as a conceptioncomprising two major domains: Skills Domain and Attitudes Domain.Under each domain there are a number of competency areas. In each areathe MOE lists certain skills and knowledge to be obtained by students at theprimary, secondary and pre-university levels. The guidelines also outline 11expected learner outcomes:

� Able to recognise the need for information and define the informationneeded for problem solving and decision making;� Able to identify potential resources of conventional and electronicformats from the school library and from other sources outside thelibrary;� Apply different search strategies to retrieve information using conven-tional aids and current technologies;� Review, select, interpret and evaluate relevant information critically andmake meaning of this information;� Organize and present information effectively and creatively;� Appraise the process and product of an information research;

58 Tzu-Bin Lin and Li-Yi Wang

� Read for information and pleasure, seeing it as enriching their learningexperience;� Demonstrate initiative information problem solving and openness tolearning;� Continually improve and update their knowledge;� Collaborate with others for information problem solving and� Practise responsible and ethical behaviour.

The increasingly greater attention paid to information literacy educationspawned the development of models and standards for the integration ofinformation literacy skills into school curricula, by which these skills can beimparted to students effectively (Bruce, 2004; Mokhtar & Majid, 2006).Among the established models and standards, five have been proven to beparticularly helpful to educators across the world to develop localisedmodels and standards of information literacy:

� Big six information skills (Eisenberg & Berkowitz, 1990)� Attributes of an information literate person (Doyle, 1992)� Seven faces of information literacy (Bruce, 1997)� The information literacy standards for student learning (ALA & AECT,1998)� The ALA information literacy competency standards for higher education(ACRL, 2000)

By comparing five mainstream models and standards and the MOESingapore’s information literacy guidelines shows that the MOE Singapore’sunderstanding about and interpretation of the main areas of informationliteracy competencies are, to a certain extent, highly similar but not identicalto those described in the international models and standards (Table 1). Inthe Skills Domain, the MOE Singapore’ guidelines do not pay attention tothe process of integrating the selected new information into the establishedknowledge base before the needed information is used, organised, andsynthesised to solve a specific problem. In the Attitudes Domain, the MOESingapore’s description about students’ responsibilities as information usershighlights such as plagiarism and abuse of technologies. Instead, the ethicalissue is dealt with beyond the passive restriction to a further and presentedin the international models and standards.

4.3.2. Media Literacy in Singapore

Unlike information literacy which has been in the education policy since1997, media literacy is currently not supported by any official education

Table 4.1: The main areas of information literacy competencies in The FiveModels and Standards and Singapore’s Information Literacy Guidelines.

The five models and standards Singapore’s information literacy

guidelines

Skills-related domain 1. Identify potential

information

2. Create/Develop

information-seeking

strategies

3. Locate and access

information

4. Evaluate information

5. Integrate selected

information into existing

knowledge

6. Use/Synthesise/Organise

information to accomplish a

task or purpose

7. Reflect process and outcome

8. Extend/Exploit the newly

formed knowledge

1. Define the task (including

recognising the needed

information and planning

search strategy)

2. Locate and retrieve

information

3. Interpret and evaluate

information

4. Organise and present

information (including

developing the end

product)

5. Evaluate the information

research process and

product

Attitudes-related

domain1. Appreciate creative

expression of information

2. Strive for excellence in

information seeking and

knowledge generation

3. Understand the economic,

legal and social issues

surrounding the use of

information

1. Appreciation of the value

of reading

2. Activeness in problem

solving and openness to

learning

3. Continual improvement of

information problem-

solving skills

4. Collaboration and team

work

5. Sense of responsibilities as

information users

A Study of Singapore 59

policy in Singapore. Media literacy appears as one of the initiatives to makeSingapore ‘a global media city’ by the Media Development Authority(MDA) of Singapore (2003). MDA of Singapore (n.d.) views media literacyas ‘a life skill that is essential for work, learning and play’. Although medialiteracy is not documented in education policies, it is represented in adocument mapping out the 21st century teacher education in Singapore as acomponent of the 21st century skill sets and key development areas forstudents. Given its importance to students, it becomes a main considerationin the model of the 21st century teachers’ training proposed by the National

60 Tzu-Bin Lin and Li-Yi Wang

Institute of Education (2009). NIE is the only teaching preparation highereducation institute working closely with the MOE and schools in Singapore.Thus, its teacher training model has been a collaborative effort between theMOE Singapore, NIE and schools. Therefore, it can be argued that theimportance of media literacy is recognised by the education system inSingapore.

Media literacy is defined in Singapore by MDA (n.d.) and NIE (2009,p. 31) as follows:

MDA: Media literacy refers to the ability to critically assess informationthat is received daily via different media platforms. When a person ismedia literate, he would be able to read, analyse and interpret messages,regardless of whether he is using media to gain information, forentertainment or for educational purposes.

NIE: Teachers should be adept in using multiple media, such as text,video, audio and animation to facilitate effective teaching and learning.Advances in digital technologies have integrated multiple media usinggraphical and interactive interfaces. This necessitates new literacies todecipher, interpret and communicate using visual imagery such as icons,as well as new man–machine interactive modes such as the technologyused in touch-screen handphones and interactive whiteboards.

MDA’s definition on media literacy focusing solely on reading, analysingand interpreting media messages only represents the ‘reading’ part of medialiteracy. Following MDA’s definition, a media-literate person is anindividual who can critically read, analyse and interpret media messagefor various purposes. This definition, compared to those by NAMLE andOfcom, makes a two-way communication process with reading and writingin the field of media literacy to one-way which is on reading only. In theother definition, a key feature of media literacy is the multimodality ofcontemporary media, i.e. the various modes in modern communication.Text, video, audio and animation are mentioned although it is necessary topoint out that animation is not in the same conceptual category as the restthree. Compared to MDA’s definition, this one includes more details interms of modality. Another feature is also captured: the ‘interactiveinterfaces’. One of the characteristics of new media is interactivity (Lister,Dovey, Giddings, Grant, & Kelly, 2003). Otherwise, one of the majorfunctions of media, ‘to communicate’, is mentioned in NIE’s definition. Itcan be viewed as moving a step further than MDA’s attempt to define medialiteracy. In order to communicate, an individual needs to be able to read andproduce. After reviewing two definitions on media literacy from MDA and

A Study of Singapore 61

NIE, it can be argued that these definitions can not represent what medialiteracy is because an essential feature of media literacy is neglected. Bothdefinitions focus more on the reading part of media literacy but not onproducing side. In other words, the two-way communication is reduced toone-way receiving process. However, producing information as one of thetwo key elements in media literacy should receive, at least, the sameattention as reading media messages.

4.4. Concluding Remarks

From our discussion above, it can be seen that these two fields, that isinformation literacy and media literacy, share some commonalities betweenthem although there are still differences. In recent years, there have beenseveral publications attempting to merge these two traditions of researchtogether (Leaning, 2009; Livingstone, Couvering, & Thumin, 2008; Pope &Walton, 2009). In Singapore, there is not a clear direction and definition onthese two literacy practices. Therefore, we consider that it is a goodopportunity for Singapore to move towards a new direction: that is to mergemedia and information literacy together as it is suggested by UNESCO(Grizzle & Wilson, 2011). Singapore is in a better position to develop thisintegrated approach to media and information literacy because there has notbeen a debate or attempt to distinguish these two fields. Unlike some othercountries such as United Kingdom and United States, media literacy andinformation literacy have two groups of advocates and are viewed asdifferent practices. Meanwhile, various governmental agencies includingMOE take these two literacies as essential competences for 21st citizens.That offers a strong rationale for the future development of media andinformation literacy in Singapore.

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