Secondary School Teachers’ Attitudes to Information Literacy in Hungary, Lithuania and Poland

The paper presents the results of a questionnaire study in three countries on teachers’ awareness of and attitudes towards information literacy instruction in secondary schools. Here we summarise the results of a survey we administered to the top 250 secondary school teachers (9–12 classes) in Hungary, Lithuania, and Poland (total 801 teachers) at the start of 2019. Our approach to the state-of-the-art definition of information literacy is developed by CILIP in 2018. Our main results indicate that the topic itself is unclear or unimportant for the teachers in all three countries. Almost one fifth of all respondents dropped out of the survey soon after demographic questions and questions on relevant concepts started. Those teachers who answered all questions overestimated their knowledge on information literacy, also, teachers in all three countries admitted they were not capable of teaching media and information literacy. The majority of teachers did not see librarians as responsible for information literacy teaching. Teachers saw themselves as leaders with the support of librarians. Over one third of teachers thought information literacy skills develop effortlessly.