Abstract:

Our reflection focuses on Portuguese higher education, which since 2006 has adapted to the requirements of the Bologna Declaration, making study cycles shorter and creating curricula that, in the most diverse scientific areas, do not yet visibly reflect the concern for the development of competences to live and survive in the 21st century. There will be some exceptional cases and it is likely that there will be transversal work in the courses in this direction but quite variable according to the training and sensitivity of the different teachers. It would therefore be desirable for training in the development of these competencies to be formalized in curricula.

As for the literature review, the theoretical research is based on Standards and studies on Information Literacy produced by important Information Science organizations, such as the American Library Association (ALA). We highlight some such as Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education (ALA, 2000) or Standards for the 21st Century Learner (ALA, 2007) or Learning 4 Life: The National Plan for Implementation of Standards for the 21st Century Learner (2008). In the context of the information society and the new information and communication technologies and participatory culture, we highlight the research of Henry Jenkins and co-authors - New Media Literacy White Paper. Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: media education for the 21st century (2006). And more recently, it is worth mentioning Skills for Today Research Series (P21, 2017).

We present some data about a research carried out in a higher school of the Polytechnic of Oporto, with different courses, and it should be noted that the perception of teachers and students is that skills of Information Literacy (IL) are fairly well developed in the training process, although such a view contrasts with mostly negative results of an IL test applied to students.

As a sharing of experiences to improve the adoption of pedagogical strategies that motivate and potentiate a more effective development of these skills, some experiences of teaching and learning experienced by the teacher in the area of Information Science and Communication are reported. We believe that, in addition to an institutional involvement by the Directorates, institutions, teachers, librarians and, above all, students, in this complex collaborative task of formation, these could be ideas that will contribute to make these individuals in the process of formation more autonomous, critical, responsible, active and successful as students, workers and citizens.

Keywords:

Skills, students, training, innovation, citizenship.