A case study on Chinese latest information literacy standards in the AI era: Impact of inquiry-based projects on information application and creation

Information literacy (IL) is a fundamental skill before entering the new era of massive Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology usage. In 2023, the Chinese government highlighted its importance by releasing new IL standards with four dimensions: information metacognition, information knowledge, information application and creation, and information ethics. It took a long time to build standards based on investigation of a vast majority of education institutions and public schools. However, international schools were barely noticed, despite the place having evident advantages in implementing inquiry-based projects that can naturally cultivate students’ IL abilities. Therefore, taking a typical international high school in Beijing as the case, the aim was to identify the starting point to specifically carry out IL education by revealing the current IL status and correlations among the four IL dimensions. Employing a mixed method approach, a questionnaire was distributed in the target school, followed by interviews with high school students who had conducted their research following certain IL instructions and completed their first-lifetime academic essays. The results indicated the importance of information knowledge and can significantly have a positive impact on information application and creation; high school students also value information knowledge greatly and emphasized AI as a new form of information access tool, that needs more attention to critical thinking.