The notion of relevance in teacher information behavior

Abstract

Educators use information to support their teaching, which is largely concerned with the transfer of information. To support this information exchange, teachers manage complex information environments that are continually changing based on outside influences. Decisions on when to go out and seek additional information, what information to incorporate, and what information to dispose of are all based on notions of relevance. This exploratory study found that notions of relevance are largely driven by the educational context and are therefore unique to this particular user group. Relevance is often prescriptive for teachers, that is, information needs are driven by curriculum and school policy. Teachers also appear to stack the deck when looking for relevant resources, increasing their chances for finding a good resource fit by drawing on shared experience and information from close colleagues. Resource selection is again curriculum based, but also has the interesting feature that teachers are proxies for relevance decisions that affect their students. Anticipated relevance is present in various aspects of teachers' personal information management (PIM), such as deciding whether to keep resources for future use, organizing their physical classroom space, and resource housekeeping decisions.

Collective work with resources: an essential dimension for teacher documentation

“…At her present school Vera regretted that collective work did not focus on courses. The choice of the textbook had been collective, and this is in line with the results obtained by Diekema and Whitney Olsen (2012), who observed that advice given by colleagues was the first reason for the adoption of a new resource by teachers. Vera complained about having no opportunity to ask questions, such as: ''And you, how do you teach such and such a notion ….''…”

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

“…Initially, responses to the interview questions were analyzed for PIM‐ and information‐related features using thematic analysis (Boyatzis, ). This analysis was carried out on a subset of the data for PIM features and all the data for information features and provided input for two conference papers (Diekema & Olsen, , ). Informed by these themes and a literature review on teacher information behavior, an initial codebook was created for the in‐depth analysis of all the data.…”

“…A lot of sharing also went on informally. Materials from close colleagues were more likely to be relevant, as they deal with the same school and student population (Diekema & Olsen, 2012). It appears that sharing is more widespread among teachers than the 40 mechanical engineers in a study by Hicks, Dong, Palmer, and Mcalpine (2008), who found that a majority of their participants (60%) shared digital information with colleagues.…”

“…Teachers as information seekers are highly variable in several aspects: they have a wide range of technological experience and comfort levels (Becker, Ravitz, & Wong, ; Levin & Arafeh, ), the available workplace technology and technology support varies (Barker, ; Khoo, ), and educators tend to look for information in diverging places and use different search approaches (Carlson & Reidy, ). The pedagogical context of teachers' work plays an important role in their searching and their information relevance decisions (Bitso, ; Diekema & Olsen, ). Educators teach different grade levels, requiring different materials and, consequently, different approaches to searching.…”

Individual differences of science teachers and interactive video retrieval

“…Even with this level of understanding, teachers have been reported to have difficulty finding, accessing and managing the information needed for instructional purposes (Khoo, 2006;Mardis, 2009;Mardis et al, 2012;Recker et al, 2005) and, therefore, regularly frustrated when seeking digital resources, leading to declined confidence (Barker, 2009;Common Sense Media, 2013;Mardis et al, 2012;Perrault, 2007aPerrault, , 2007b. Considering the confidence of educators in locating and selecting digital resources directly influences future selection and use of resources for instructional purposes (Mardis et al, 2012;Sappey and Relf, 2010), teachers have subsequently reduced their opportunities to enhance information skills to locate educational resources (Barker, 2010;Common Sense Media, 2013;Diekema and Olsen, 2012;Duke and Ward, 2009;Mardis, 2009;Perrault, 2007aPerrault, , 2007b causing further feelings of being overwhelmed (Barker, 2010;Mardis et al, 2012;Maull et al, 2010;Perrault, 2007b;Pattuelli, 2008). Such findings of prior studies potentially indicate that systems are not designed from the outset around the information needs, tasks and interactive approaches for effectively finding digital information (Barker, 2010;Common Sense Media, 2013;Guzey and Roehrig, 2009;Park, 2010;Perrault, 2007a).…”