Research on the Impact of Information Literacy on the Creativity of Foreign Language Teachers in Chinese Universities Under the Background of Big Data

Introduction

With the emergence and development of big data, technology in the information age is developing rapidly (Ying, 2019). Vast datasets are generated on the internet every day. Therefore, information literacy, or knowing how to effectively identify information needs, access required information and further assess and use that information (UNESCO, 2003), is becoming an increasingly important skill. Information literacy is not only the key to lifelong learning (Seifi et al., 2020) but also the cornerstone of the potential for economic growth in society (Raeis et al., 2013). Therefore, in the era of big data, the influence of information literacy on all walks of life has attracted increasing attention.

Previous researchers have focused on the information literacy in various specific industries. Examples include information literacy in the legal field (Naveed & Shah, 2022), information literacy in the medical field (Xu et al., 2020; Forster, 2015), the information literacy of managers (Bolek et al., 2018), the information literacy of police officers (Naveed & Kamran, 2022), and the information literacy of enterprise employees (Lai & Zhao, 2010). The emergence of big data promotes the development of education and forms a cloud system of educational resources that cover the entire network. Information literacy in the field of education has also become a focus of research. In the field of education, researchers have given more attention to the information literacy of students (Naveed & Mahmood, 2022; Charlene, 2020; Li et al., 2022; Folk, 2021). There are relatively few studies on the information literacy of college teachers.

College teachers are the navigators and organizers of college-level teaching and scientific research activities. Good information literacy is conducive to improving the creativity and competitiveness of teachers. Creativity is generally defined as the ability to generate new and useful ideas, processes, and products (Williams et al., 2017). Creativity is considered the core skill taught through the global education system in the 21st century (Marrone et al., 2022). Creativity takes different forms in different disciplines (Vlad, 2018). Fostering students' creativity is considered to be an important goal of China's system of higher education (Sun, 2020). However, the key to fostering students' creativity lies in teachers. Creativity, in turn, depends on a specific informational ability, and some studies have shown that good information literacy can improve certain types of creative performance (Chang & Hsu, 2015; Hamid, 2021). As relevant studies are still limited, the relationship between the information literacy of teachers and their levels of creativity deserves further study.