Unveiling Information Literacy of Digital Natives in Secondary Schools – A Swiss Example

Information Literacy (IL), i.e. the competent dealing with information, is considered a key competence for the networked information and media society that facilitates civic engagement, a self-determined life and lifelong learning. Recent studies have shown that, contrary to the expectations, Digital Natives have low levels of IL. In order to improve IL of Digital Natives formal education and training related to IL is required. In practice, in order to support systematic education and training related to IL from an early age, the development of IL is increasingly considered as an important goal for schools. However, one major obstacle for considering IL in secondary schools is a lack of a scientifically proven model to operationalize and measure IL particularly in schools. The paper contributes to fill this gap by proposing and empirically testing the 7i framework for modelling and measuring IL in secondary schools.