Gymnasieelevers informationskompetens : En studie i sju klasser i gymnasiets år 3

Sammanfattning: This master's thesis examines information literacy and students in secondary education. The study is framed within a sociocultural perspective of learning and the method used is questionnaires. The major question posed is how and where students seek information. Other questions are if the students critically evaluate and analyse in­formation sources and if teachers and school librarians cooperate with each other in order to help the students with their assignments. The findings indicate that most students regard information seeking as fact-finding or finding the right an­swers to the question. Only one third of students experienced information seeking as seeking and using informa­tion for understanding a topic. The first place the students look for information is the Internet. Half of the stu­dents think they have been trained in information seeking. More boys than girls believe they have been trained. Three quarters of the students do not think they need more training in information seeking. Two thirds of the students think they have been sufficiently trained in source evaluation and more boys than girls believe they have been sufficiently trained. Just over half of the students do not think they need more training in source evaluation. A good half of the students think the school library is quite important and almost half of the girls and one third of the boys visit the library once or twice per month. The cooperation between the teachers and the librari­ans does not work as well in the schools as the teachers and librarians wish but is improving. The majority of the teachers and librarians think their cooperation needs to be improved. The majority of the teachers think there is a correlation between information seeking and learning outcomes. All the librarians think the library is a resource that ought to be integrated in the students' education. My conclusion is that the majority of the students are not information literate. To be information literate, the students need to have the ability to locate and evaluate the required information. Information seeking as scruti­nizing and analysing is a pre-requisite for lifelong learning.