An Analysis of the Jamaican Grades 1-6 Curriculum for the Development of a Media and Information Literacy and Intercultural Dialogue Cross-Curriculum

Abstract

The main objective of any curriculum is the relevancy of the content in meeting the curricular and co- curricular short and long term needs of the students so they can function well at their level in the society. The researcher used the content analysis methodology to analyse the content of the Grades 1-6 Ministry of Education Youth and Information (Jamaica) Curricular with the aim of developing a school library cross-curricular. Based on the analyses there was evidence that more information literacy topics were implicitly embedded in the school curriculum guides than media literacy and intercultural dialogue. The AASL Standards for the 21st Century Learner competencies was either sufficiently evident, limited or absent from these school curricular. The cooperative learning teaching strategy, the multiple intelligences theory and the Big6 information problem solving skills were also absent from these curricular. The researcher used the subject areas in addition to the MILID components to develop a cross curricular school library MILID curriculum which will facilitate the collaboration of teacher librarians and teachers in the planning and delivery of the lessons.