“Just search the Internet for facts” – a study of some English teachers’ attitudes towards information literacy

• Main Authors: Granberg, Marcus, Hultén, Anton
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Malmö högskola, Lärarutbildningen (LUT) 2010
• Subjects: information literacy; ICT; source evaluation; education; Internet; secondary school; upper secondary school; Humanities and the Arts; Humaniora och konst
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-30829

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine how some English teachers in secondary and upper secondary school approach using the Internet as a source for information in their profession. The focus of the investigation is to find out how the teachers perceive the concept of source evaluation and information literacy and what their attitudes are towards teaching it to their students. The aim was to learn about the teachers’ thoughts and views on the possibilities as well as trials and tribulations with using Internet-based information sources in the classroom. Qualitative interviews with three secondary school teachers and three upper secondary school teachers were carried out. The semi-structured interviews we conducted contained guiding questions concerning information literacy, criteria for source evaluation and attitudes. Our results show that all the informants have a positive attitude towards incorporating the use of the Internet when they design tasks. However the respondents indicate several difficulties regarding the teaching of information literacy skills.