Integrating Privacy Literacy in School Librarian Pedagogy and Practice

Researcher(s)

Sponsoring Agency
College of IST

Summary

Children and adults communicate, create, learn, and socialize through networked digital technologies. These activities generate data about what people do, where they go, and with whom they interact, increasing the potential for data breaches and privacy invasions. The President’s Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity advocates that privacy and security education begin as early as preschool and continue through elementary school and beyond. Although such STEM education efforts often focus on the role of teachers and parents school librarians may be more fruitful sources of privacy and security education for children, given their existing remit to support children’s digital literacy. This two-part pilot study will examine whether and how school librarians incorporate privacy and security into their educational efforts. Phase 1 entails a systematic review of the curricula of accredited school library master’s programs to assess the extent to which they include teaching about privacy and security considerations for children. Phase 2 entails interviewing active school librarians about their digital literacy programming, with a focus on the extent to which their efforts address privacy issues and what challenges they face in addressing privacy. These findings will support a larger project to design educational programs to strengthen children’s privacy literacy.

Term
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