Medición de la Adherencia.

That information retrieval and use is not s erial in character is amply illustrated with respect to processing information. Processing is the last item in Avann's (1986) list but the work actually begins as soon as some relevant material is found. A small section of text may be read, comprehended and evaluated in terms of the research question, what is already known and how the search task must be modified in response to new information. This

processing may be fairly superficial but it is bound to add to concept formation. Indeed, Kulleseid (1986), writing from the library perspective, uses schema theory to describe information processing at this point. New text information is said to activate memory schemata <networks of concepts that form prior knowledge), usually through a word or

contextual association. The schema most closely allied to the new information may be expanded or modified, or the information may be rejected, perhaps because it has not been understood.

When notes are taken, the information will be subjected to further processing and may be transformed in terms of the student's own language. At the point of processing for wri ting and presenting information to others, the

information user can re-order the material, integrate that from other sources and impose a structure of their own choosing on the subject. Here the emphasis is on making a coherent whole of information fragments and one suspects that at this point that new relationships are recognized and further elaborations made.

The task of presenting a final report requires that the student applies existing knowledge and that gained during information retrieval to the solution of the information problem which initiated the activity CIrving, 1981>. This demands the activities that are central to

studying yet, as noted earlier, Venezky (1984) says that students' abilities to integrate information from multiple sources have not received research attention. It is outside the scope of this thesis to examine the cognition underlying writ ing reports but the quality of such reports must depend to some extent on the information skills used in ga the ring da ta. To fully unders tand the nature of information retrieval and use, the entire process must be explored - information itself may provide building materials for know ledge construction but it is what is done with the material that determines the st,..-ucture and flexibility of the final educational edifice.

SUWARY

Social and technological changes are under lining the need for all s tudents to acquire sophisticated information handling and higher order thinking skills. While it is

gener-all y held that library programmes can cont,..-ibute to ski ll acquisition in both of these areas, progress towards that goal is li mited b y uncertainty about the educational role of school libr-aries and their staff. Several authors (Liesener, 1985; Beswick, 1983 and Marland, 1987) have called for greater clarity of purp ose and imply that the cognit ive demands of information retrieval and use can provide a conte}:t within which attention can focus on higher orde,..­ thinking skills. However, the nature of those cognitive demands is a s yet poorly understood and Sheingold (1987) holds that while educators do a reasonable job of teaching basic skills, they do not know en ough about higher order thinking skills. In addition, teachers' information skills abilities and librarians' understanding of information use have been called into question (Liesener, 1985; Beswick, 1 983). While in both Britain and New Zealand many teachers responsible for libraries are far from being informa tion specialists, in the latter steps have been taken to mell expertise from teaching and library professions to create teachers whose subject is learning itself (Gawi th, 1986).

The number o f these teachers is currently small and they have the task of establishing a role for themselves amongst colleagues who may have little appreciation of their aims until collaborative teaching and consequent student outcomes have been experienced (Lealand, 1990). Although many teachers are aware of the need to focu s on processes of learning, the importance of information skills and t heir inherent emphasis on learning to learn may be given lower priority than acquisition of subject knowledge (Beswick, 1983). The potential of the project method t o provide a conte>:t in which these two aspects o f learning conve ... ·ge will remain unrecognized while its own demands are hidden. It can no longer be assumed that information skills will be developed to a high degree as a by-product of

project wor-·k e>:periences (Mar land, 1978; Sheingold, 1987) bu t although the cognitive demands of such assignments are becoming evident, empirical observation from the s tudents' viewpoint is necessary to uncover difficulties which cannot be predicted by adults t heorizing from their· larger

knowledge-base.

However, while such observations may e>:pose the

approaches used by students and the circumstances in w hich they meet with success, something more is needed for t h e development o f adequate information skills training. In t h e past, study a n d library skills training have paid scant attention to cognition and even less to the learner's ability to select and monitor strategy use. Metacognitive research literature focuses explicitly on these abilities and t raining attempts incorporating them have shown much promise in improving student performance, even when used in the n ormal classroom. Thus it is suggested here that

exploration of the metacognitive demands of information retrieval and use will enhance the development of future infor·mation skills tuition. The following chapter discusses the concept of metacognition and reviews literature