Teacher Personal information management (PIM) practices: Finding, keeping, and Re‐Finding information

Abstract

Primary and secondary (K–12) teachers form the essential core of children's formal learning before adulthood. Even though teaching is a mainstream, information‐rich profession, teachers are understudied as information users. More specifically, not much is known about teacher personal information management (PIM). Teacher PIM is critically important, as teachers navigate a complex information space complicated by the duality of digital and physical information streams and changing demands on instruction. Our research study increases understanding of teacher PIM and informs the development of tools to support educators. Some important unknowns exist about teachers as information users: What are teachers' PIM practices? What are the perceived consequences of these practices for teaching and learning? How can PIM practices be facilitated to benefit teaching and learning? This study employed a qualitative research design, with interviews from 24 primary and secondary teachers. We observed various systems for information organization, and teachers report their systems to be effective. Important sources for teachers' information in order of importance are personal collections, close colleagues, and the Internet. Key findings reveal that inheriting and sharing information play an important part in information acquisition for teachers and that information technology supporting education creates unintentional demands on information management. The findings on the nature of teacher information, teacher information finding, keeping, and organizational practices have important implications for teachers themselves, school principals, digital library developers, school librarians, curriculum developers, educational technology developers, and educational policy makers.

Managing personal health information in the home: Strategies of diabetes patients in the US and China

“…Jones () proposed three PIM activities, namely finding and refinding, keeping, and meta‐level activities. Using Jones's framework, Diekema and Olsen () investigated the information sources and information items used by and the sorting and storage behaviors of teachers. Also, Pikas () studied how engineers organize, keep, preserve, and retrieve information.…”

Pratiques informationnelles des enseignants : le cas des ressources institutionnelles en ligne

“…Nos résultats mettent en lumière des habitudes de consultation, de sélection et de lecture largement individuelles, dans le sens où ces habitudes ne sont que très peu collectives, au sens de la collaboration ou coopération avec les pairs. D'autres auteurs signalent cette forte dimension personnelle des ressources mobilisées et des collections que les enseignants se constituent et organisent au fur et à mesure de leurs besoins (Diekema et Olsen, 2014).…”

“…Elle implique le recours à une documentation multiple et suppose des opérations de recherche, de sélection, d'exploitation, de stockage des informations collectées, aboutissant à la production de documents professionnels (fiches élèves, notes et formalisations de séances pédagogiques, documents d'évaluation, etc.). Ces pratiques informationnelles enseignantes et leurs évolutions demeurent encore en partie méconnues (Diekema et Olsen, 2014). Nous assistons en effet, depuis une dizaine d'années, à une modification notable du paysage informationnel à disposition de la population en général et donc des enseignants, tant du point des pratiques personnelles que des pratiques professionnelles.…”

Personalization of knowledge, personal knowledge ecology, and digital nomadism

“…Research on PIM has a strong focus on the strategies of using information collectionswhat Jones (2007) calls information items and information forms (e.g., Diekema & Olsen, 2014;Whittaker & Sidner, 1996). This attention to the ontological structures of information means that even though there is an area of overlap with PKM, PIM scholars focus on tangibles and tend to ignore core topics in KM and PKM such as tacit knowledge because of difficulties formalizing it as words or numbers (Nonaka, Toyama, & Konno, 2000;Razmerita, Kirchner, & Sudzina, 2009).…”