EJERCICICOS DE FORMACION BASICA DE LA NATACION

Subsequently, the interview results of the participating school librarians’ information literacy conceptions are presented in Table 8.3. The structure is similar to that of the teachers.

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Table 8.3. Information literacy conception of the school librarians.

Phase Occurrences I Planning

1. Preconditions (6 occurrences)

- To have a general understanding of information, its structure, how information is processed

- Interpreting the entirety - Use of devices

- Can read information in different devices, in the Internet, in books and magazines

- Library, where the information is

- Knows how to ask for advice and consultation

2. Text and Reading (7 occurrences)

- Recognise different text styles and their characteristics - A combination of reading, listening and feeling - Understanding text

- Text and information in different forms - Reading different kinds of texts

- Multitude of different texts and forms and using these in studies

- Everything is considered text

3. Information Need (2 occurrences)

- To understand when there is a need for information - Understand the subject at hand

II Activity

4. Seeking and Searching

(18 occurrences) - Understand where to seek for information - Understand different forms of sources and platforms - Understand different search strategies

- Understand search terms, understanding Finnish language aspects

- Understand how to start the seeking - Look for information in books

- Where to look for information (books, newspapers, Internet) - Seeking for information in the library, databases, search engines, different seeking methods, combining search words) - Information searching

- Where to look for sources of information - Expand or narrow searches

- Look for as many sources as possible - To find the right information

- Look for information in several sources - Combine different sources to make sure - Understand to discard

- How to change information seeking to fit one’s goals better - Understand when to supplement ones search

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5. Critical Thinking (19 occurrences)

- Evaluation of the found information - Evaluation

- Evaluate how relevant to information need - Choosing the most useful information - Understand ethical issues and actions

- Who has released the information, in which context, is there an agenda behind it?

- Source criticism - Reliable information

- Controlling if information is reliable - How reliable the information is - Who wrote it, why, where and how?

- Know the characteristics of a reliable (Internet) page - Be critical and question

- Being critical about the found information - Understand the complexities

- Differentiate between fact and fiction - To be able to separate relevant information - To get relevant information forward

- To differentiate disinformation and propaganda

III Reflection

6. Working with Information (1 occurrence)

- Read, write, make notes

7. Build Knowledge (3 occurrences)

- To combine the found information with one’s own knowledge structures

- What to do with the information once found - Using of the found materials and information

8. Safekeeping (2 occurrences)

- Keep information safe

- Safekeeping and easy access to reuse the information

9. Communicate (1 occurrence)

- Present findings

10. Evaluation

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Figure 8.2. Illustration of the information literacy conception of the school librarians. The illustration in Figure 8.2. offers an understanding of how the phases and issues surfaced in the interviews with the school librarians. The larger the font, the more occurrences and emphasis the expression was given in the interviews. Critical Thinking and Information Seeking clearly dominated.

Table 8.4. Division of occurrences in school librarians’ information literacy conception.

SECTIONS N = number of occurrences / number as %

Planning N15 / 25%

Activity N37 / 62%

Reflection N8 / 13%

TOTAL N60 / 100 %

With the school librarians, there are more substantial differences in personal information literacy conceptions than among the teachers. The interviewees’ personal information literacy conceptions varied significantly. One school librarian had an extensive understanding of information literacy all the way from understanding the structure of information to presenting findings. The extent of personal conceptions varied from 18 occurrences with one school librarian to four occurrences with another

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school librarian. One school librarian approached the issue of information literacy from the perspective of school levels; how information literacy issues would look different in primary school, secondary school and in upper secondary school. All of the other interviewees, school librarians and teachers alike, approached the issue from a process-like perspective.

The Planning section as a whole comprised 25% of all the occurrences in the school librarians’ interviews. The first phase of the planning is Preconditions (phase 1). All of the answers to Preconditions came from three school librarians. For the school librarians, these occurrences implied a necessity of a general understanding of information and how information works. The library was also mentioned as well as the use of devices and that pupils should understand how the library stores and organises information and know how to ask for help and consultation. Two school librarians also felt that when teachers are planning their teaching units, they should first check what books the library holds in these subjects. It can, therefore, be concluded that the ideas of preconditions are mostly related to library issues. The other phase in the Planning section was related to Text and Reading (phase 2). To school librarians, this meant understanding different types of texts. Information Needs (phase 3) was mentioned by two school librarians.

The Activity section with issues related to Information Seeking (phase 4), Critical Thinking (phase 5), which included relevance, played the most substantial role in the school librarians’ conception, with 62% of all the occurrences. The proportion is considerably higher than that of the teachers (36%). When removing the largest section, Activity with 62% (N=37) of the total occurrences, this leaves 25% (N=15) for Planning and 13% (N=8) for Reflection.

The school librarians’ conceptions placed strong emphasis on the Information Seeking phase, with a proportion of 30% (N=18) of the total occurrences (N=60). The reason for this may lie in the essence of the librarian profession. The Information Seeking phase (phase 4) combines three closely related issues: the need to understand information searching, the seeking itself, and how to refine and modify the actual search after the initial search. As was explained in Section 2.2, seeking is a broader term than searching. However, teachers used these terms interchangeably. The utterances by the school librarians at this stage were highly detailed as different search methods, strategies and source types.

Critical thinking, evaluation of sources and considering relevance were organised together (phase 5). This covers 32% of all the occurrences in the interviews with the school librarians. One school librarian mentioned considering the relevance of the found information to the assignment. However, only one school librarian mentioned this issue. One expression, ‘choosing the most useful material’, did not have a specific

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emphasis on the assignment at hand and another, ‘to handle the material so that you

can solve your problem’, which was counted for discussing relevance.

The phases related to information, information skills and resources were often seen as activities taking place in libraries and with the resources the library provides. There was no evidence that pointed to school librarians combining information literacy skills with teaching methods or activities, apart from making sure that the information seeking was relevant to the problem or assignment at hand. The school librarians’ view was broadly based on their professional background as information professionals.

The Reflection section consists of five different phases (Working with Information, Building Knowledge, Safekeeping, Communication and Evaluation) with altogether eight occurrences combined. Only two school librarians mentioned that information needs to be worked on. All of the occurrences in the Reflection section represented Working with Information and Building Knowledge answered for only 6.6% of all the occurrences in the conception. For teachers this percentage was 19.2%.

When the interviewees were asked how information management skills is present in the CC2014, only two school librarians were able to provide an answer. A reason for this was the fact that at least three of the five librarians said that they had either not read the CC2014 at all or only in such a superficial way that they preferred to skip the questions concerning the CC2014 completely. The two who did answer this question felt that the information management skills have been given greater emphasis in the CC2014 than in the previous core curriculum of 2004. Anneli mentioned, though, that the presentation of information management skills in the CC2014 is of a somewhat literary style and idealistic. Liisa was very pleased that information management skills issues are there now:

“So in my mind, the skills come out in the curriculum very clearly, so that no one can any longer say I didn’t know that these skills have to be trained. So that I feel they are very clearly presented, and in every subject.” (Liisa)

Librarians paid less attention to the relevance of the information to the assignment or task at hand. This is an indication of the way of thinking, which was expressed by one of the librarians, “What happens after the information seeking is the teachers’

work”. It can be concluded that once the librarian has found the information for the

pupil, or with the pupil, he or she may feel that his or her job has been accomplished. One of the librarians also brought up an issue that was completely lacking in the other interviews, namely how to keep information safe and organise it for easy access and reuse. Another librarian named evaluation as the last phase, as an issue one has to think about at the end of an information seeking process.

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8.3 Summary

At this point, all the research material for all the four data units and individual information literacy conceptions have been presented. Chapters 8-8.2. provide answers to second research question “What are the information literacy conceptions of

7th grade teachers of Finnish Language and Literature and school librarians?” When

examining the occurrences within this three-section structure, comparing them to the findings in CC2004, CC2014 and the interview data, the quantitative results of occurrences emerge as follows in Table 8.11. The numbers are presented in percentages to be comparable to each other.

Table 8.5. Number of occurrences in the entire material, presenting the proportional differences in emphasis. CC2004 CC2014 Teachers Librarians 1. Planning N10 / 21.7% N16 / 20.5% N31 = 43.1% N15 = 25% 2. Activity N21 / 45.7% N17 / 21.8% N26 = 36.1% N37 = 62% 3. Reflection N15 / 32.6% N45 / 57.7% N54 = 20.8% N8 = 13% TOTAL 46 = 100% 78 = 100% 72 = 100% 60 = 100%

In the Activity section, the proportion of the occurrences for the librarians’ answers was 62%, nearly double that of the teachers’ answers (36.1%). The differences lie in where these occurrences reside and in the proportions of different phases. Furthermore, the small number of interviewees created a situation where one interviewee’s strong conception dictated the perspective of the entire school library category. Nevertheless, the percentages provide an understanding of which issues were accentuated.

Teachers – conceptions

The division of all the occurrences in teachers’ conceptions shows that only the last third of the IL conceptions was given less attention. The teachers had more similarities in their personal conceptions than the school librarians have in theirs. There were indications that the school connection and environment as well as the Finnish Language and Literature subject affected the teachers’ information literacy conceptions. This can be because of their studies or the work context. They understand the concept through the perspective of the subject and pupils.

112 School librarians – conceptions

The school librarians’ personal conceptions were quite dispersed, with information seeking and searching dominating the conceptions. Most school librarians’ occurrences were situated in the Activity section (62%), indicating that the emphasis is on Seeking Information and Critical Thinking. The least occurrences were found in the Reflection section. The school librarians’ conceptions of information literacy were predominantly affected by the librarian profession. Furthermore, there were indications that the Reflection phases do not seem to be a part of school librarians’ domain, but belong almost entirely to the teacher. What became clear was that school librarians conceptualise the activity in information literacy through the domain of the library, not the school.

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