Secondary school students and the information seeking process

The purpose of this study was to discover what perceptions secondary school students held of the information seeking process and what behaviours the students used to initiate and carry out an information search. The study was conducted in a secondary school in North Central British Columbia, with students from Two Grade 8 and two Grade 10 Humanities classes. Data was collected by means of student journal writings, recorded interviews with randomly selected students and by participant observation. The study revealed that students held five principal perceptions about information seeking: that it provided active involvement for them in their own education; that it was a positive experience; that it made them aware of the importance of practising self discipline; that it taught them skills they needed to locate and select information as well as analyze, record and classify information; and that an information search involved varying degrees of student frustration. The study further revealed that student behaviours during a search for information were grouped into three areas: initiating behaviours; recording, analyzing and classifying behaviours; and organizational behaviours. Two further findings were stated: the importance of previous student practice with cooperatively planned projects; as well as the significance of locating computer facilities visibly adjacent to the School Library Resource Centre in elementary and secondary schools.Education, Faculty ofLanguage and Literacy Education (LLED), Department ofGraduat