Handledning i informationsfärdigheter för vårdämnen på gymnasiet

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this paper was to learn more about the strategies used by senior high school librarians and teachers in educating their students' information skills, such as criticism of the information sources. The paper was based upon qualitative interviews with one senior high school librarian and three senior high school teachers. The respondents were asked to spontaneously tell me about their counseling strategies when the students do research assignments in medicine-oriented subjects. The respondents’ narratives were analyzed with Carol Collier Kuhlthau’s theories about the information search process and its levels of mediation, as well as with literature about counseling strategies in mind. The results showed great range of variation. Two teachers didn’t give their student any counseling at all in criticism of the information sources for the assignment in medicine-oriented subjects. One of these, however, was positive to let the librarian help with giving counseling in information skills, in spite of the fact that she had no special competence in medicine. The third teacher said that medical knowledge was of great importance. The librarian herself thought that she could give counseling though her lack of medical education, since her counseling consisted of general criteria to be applied to medical information by the students themselves. When it comes to counseling strategies, respondents said that establishing a dialogue with the students was essential at the beginning of the Information Search Process in order to encourage an invitational mood and facilitate formulation. The literature proposed composing as a strategy, but none of the respondents spoke of that. The librarian expressed the feeling that students’ information skills were defective, so she spent much time on counseling general criteria. Two teachers recommended information sources, preventing the students from developing information skills, since they didn’t have to find and choose their information themselves. One teacher actively helped selecting information.