Chapter 7: Summary, conclusion, and recommendations
3.8 Studies related to the information behaviour of high school learners
3.8.1 Studies done overseas
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hindering the teaching of effective Internet research since most instructors are not able to incorporate Internet searching and literacy skills effectively in their instructions, due to Internet filters and other use policies in their schools; thereby posing a challenge to learners Internet information seeking (Purcell et al., 2012:56).
Studies have shown that majority of high school learners access Internet through their mobile phones (Atwood, 2016; Madden et al., 2013; Combes, 2009). This attests to the fact that school policies that restrict learners access to the use of mobile phones at school hinders their access to the Internet. For example, the Ghana Education service has banned the use of mobile phones by learners at high schools. Grimus and Ebner’s (2015) study in Ghana found that the restriction in learners’ access to mobile phones at school limits their access to the Internet. They further recommended the need for learners to be allowed to use mobile phones since this could complement the limited Internet facilities available at high schools.
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retrieval from the Internet. It has also been found in UK, that the information needs of high school learners encompasses both academic and personal needs (Seaman, 2012).
Lack of teachers support on learners’ online information access had also been revealed in a study by Quintana, Pujol, and Romaní (2012) among high school learners in Arteixo, Galicia in Spain.
Their study concluded that, although learners were not formally taught on how to retrieve information from the Internet, most learners had better knowledge and control of the computer as well as better Internet literacy skills. Malliari et al. (2014) also investigated the Information Literacy skills among high school learners in Greece. Learners’ inability to retrieve and evaluate information from online sources was found in the study. A study by Borca et al. (2015) among 127 high school learners in Turin (northeast of Italy) concluded that parents and educators have to be involved in teaching youth conscientious Internet use in order to maintain a respectful presence online for effective information use.
Moreover, Tzavela et al.’s (2015) study among adolescents employed some semi-structured individual interviews in seven European countries (Greece, Spain, Poland, Germany, Romania, Netherlands and Iceland) and their study revealed a considerable variability in the way adolescents satisfied their personal information needs through the use of the Internet. Shenton (2008) investigated the “information-seeking problems of English high schoolers responding to academic information need” among high school learners in UK. He opined that the blocking of some Web sites by school authorities due to Internet use policies do not only deny learners access to potentially useful information sources but also slows the speed with which learners ultimately access relevant information for their academic work.
Braasch et al. (2013) conducted a study among 130 Norwegian high school learners with the aim of promoting high school learners’ evaluation of source features of multiple documents and their findings demonstrated that learners who previously took part in the intervention activities included more scientific concepts from useful documents when producing essay responses from memory;
these learners again displayed better rankings of the usefulness of the set of multiple documents, and offered principled justifications based on evaluations of source features’ trustworthiness compared to learners who instead received typical classroom instruction on source evaluations.
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In North America, learners also exhibited lack of retrieval skills and this was confirmed by a study conducted by Leeder and Shah (2016) among high school learners in USA. Their study revealed that most learners had limited retrieval skills. A study by Julien and Barker (2009) also investigated the IL skills of high school learners in Canada and the study revealed gaps in learners’ information literacy skills. They asserted that, these gaps represented a significant indicator that schools needed to assume a larger responsibility for information literacy instruction. Similarly, Mills and Angnakoon (2015) conducted a study among high school learners in USA and their study concluded that high school learners tend to be positive in their perceptions of classroom learning and ICT-mediated information seeking and sharing.
A study conducted by Purcell et al. (2012) among high school learners in the USA investigated
“how teens do research in the digital world” and the study revealed that teachers were concerned about learners’ overdependence on search engines as well as the increasing difficulties many of these learners faced when judging the quality of Internet information sources. Moreover, a study by Grefins (2011) on the information needs of high school learners in California, USA, found that high school learners access the Internet to satisfy both their personal and academic information needs. A study conducted by Madden et al. (2013) in USA concludes that smartphone adoption among teenagers has substantially increased with mobile phone access to the Internet being pervasive. The study further revealed that majority of learners were “cell mostly” Internet users thus were mostly accessing the Internet through the use of cell or smartphones.
In Asia, Khadli and Kumar (2011) conducted a study among high school learners in India. The results of their study indicated that, learners’ information needs were one of the cognitive needs of childhood which helped learners to appreciate things such as the family, school, as well as society.
A study by Sugihartati, and Harisanty (2014) on the topic “Information Seeking Behaviour Model of Senior High School Students” among high school learners in Surabaya, East Java, Indonesia revealed that psychological, demographic, role-related, and environmental factors and the characteristics of the information sources influence high school learners’ information seeking. Lo and Ahmadian (2014) also conducted a study among high school learners in Banda Aceh city, Indonesia and their study concluded that, learners’ place for accessing the Internet for information,
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the frequency of accessing the Internet and amount of time spent on the Internet were significantly influenced by their method of learning the Internet.
Tsai et al. (2012) also investigated “high school learners’ online science information searching performance: the role of implicit and explicit strategies” among 103 Grade 10 learners in Taiwan and their study highlighted that, learners’ explicit strategies, especially the time attributes of learners that were proposed in their study, were more successful as compared to implicit strategies in predicting learners’ outcomes of searching online information. Damico and Baildon’s (2015) study among high school learners in Singapore had the results of their study depicting that, learners were aware of certain factors used to measure reliability of information sources. However, they seemed unsure about how these factors could be weighed and used to ascertain the reliability of information sources especially those obtained from the Internet.
Similarly, Kim and Yang (2016) conducted a study among 238 Korean high school learners and their study concludes that Internet literacy had two separate dimensions: Internet skill literacy and Internet information literacy. The findings of their study also highlighted that, learners who were able to critically understand and effectively evaluate information sources from the Internet were more likely to become active civic participants as compared to those that lacked such skills.