Low literacy remains a problem across the developed world. Health literacy has emerged as a specialist literacy, although its conceptualisation and measurement overlap with those of functional literacy. The social practice view, which conceptualises literacy as an activity rather than a skill, is useful in examining literacy-related practices and demands in healthcare contexts. Associations bet...

The world we live in today is very different than the world that most of us remember from our childhood. The twenty-first century is a media saturated, technologically dependent, and globally connected world. However, most education in the United States has not kept up with advances in technology or educational research. In our global information society, it is insufficient to teach students to...

The challenge for education in the twenty-first century is to prepare students to use information in the workplace, in their personal lives, and as responsible citizens. The report of the ALA Presidential Committee on Information Literacy recommends restructuring the learning process to involve students more actively. “Such a restructuring of the learning process will not only enhance the criti...

Postman (1990) observed that the information age began with the invention of the printing press. Since then, the relationship between information and action (e.g. learning, decision-making and problem solving) has been severed while, “we have directed all of our energies and intelligence to inventing machinery that does nothing but increase the supply of information” (pp. 4-5). Access to virtua...

Introduction. As part of a larger study in 2006 of the information­seeking behaviour of third­grade students in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, a model of their information­seeking behaviour was developed. To further improve the model, an extensive examination of the literature into information­seeking behaviour and information literacy was conducted resulting in a revised model that comprised two re...

This study uses unit-record data on over 50,000 rural children, from the sixteen major states of India, to analyse the determinants of the risks of severe stunting and of being severely underweight. The importance of this study derives from the fact that the prevalence of undernourishment in India is, even relative to other poor countries, shockingly high. The study focuses on the role of mater...

The present systematic review examined the relationship between nutrition knowledge and dietary intake in adults (mean age ≥ 18 years). Relevant databases were searched from the earliest record until November 2012. Search terms included: nutrition; diet or food knowledge and energy intake; feeding behaviour; diet; eating; nutrient or food intake or consumption. Included studies were original re...

information and services to make appropriate health decisions—is essential to promote healthy people and communities. Health care institutions and public health systems play a critical role in health literacy, because they can make it easier or more difficult for people to find and use health information and services. For the first time, there are national data that demonstrate currently availa...

Information literacy education is described by the authors of this special issue of Italics as fully embedded in the process of independent and lifelong learning practices. Full integration of information literacy is advocated at various levels of education, through the adoption of real-world assessment strategies, and through a critical pedagogy. These are necessary steps towards the developme...

Literacy is increasingly being thought of as a social practice with its use and understandings being context dependent. As an essential element within and of education, literacy offers possibilities for engaging in everyday life. Health literacy has emerged as a means to develop health-promoting practices that has meaning in social contexts. Reflecting biomedical interests, the focus of health ...