Shenton and Hay-Gibson: Modelling the Info-seeking behavior. . .

This is a pretty interesting study, and while it does not focus exclusively on elementary-aged students, three of the seven schools used in the investigation were primary schools.  The study seeks to provide a model for the information-seeking behavior of children, building on those provided in the past both within and beyond the LIS community.  I'm not sure it is a fit for where I'd like to focus (more on pedagogy), but I think future articles that cite this one would be right on target.  Of course, since this is such a recent publication (2011), perhaps those don't exist just yet.

Of particular interest to me was the idea that Kuhlthau's "personal creating of sense" does not necessarily occur when youth search for information--often the information is merely copied/pasted into the assignment, with no real learning occurring.  The implication, of course, is that teachers and teacher librarians must create opportunities for students not only to gather information, but also to process it and add it to their personal store of knowledge and understanding.

I also liked this section on cognitive dissonance, relating specifically to younger children:  

"Youngsters may also experience confusion after accessing information that is inconsistent with their existing mental constructs and this sensation may lead to the emergence of more information needs which, in turn, drive further action. Indeed, working with English primary school children, Beautyman and Shenton (2009, p. 76) have identified that such a situation formed one of seven scenarios in which their participants chose, of their own volition, to find out more about topics that had been tackled in the classroom as part of their academic studies. Drawing on a concept from psychology, the authors indicate how discrepancies between new information and the existing knowledge of an individual may lead to a “mild form of cognitive dissonance”. Although Wilson and Walsh (1996) highlight the role of cognitive dissonance in relation to information-seeking behaviour generally, given the inexperience and thus limited knowledge of young people, coupled with the fact that their thinking skills remain at the formative stage, it would appear that they may be especially susceptible to such a phenomenon, with the task of bridging the gap between the apparent contradictions too challenging for them until more information is acquired."

It's interesting to me that students seek, on their own, to fill in gaps in learning when they need more information to understand a concept or idea being taught in the classroom.  One way teacher librarians could help teachers is to provide resources that help fill in those gaps and make them available to students, or even encourage teachers to use those resources in activities designed to fill in the gaps before proceeding with a new concept or idea.  It is certainly true that not all students always have the foundational knowledge teachers expect them to have, and proposing an activity that allows both for foundational knowledge for students with gaps and deeper knowledge for those who already have the foundation would be beneficial.

To me, this behavior also points to the susceptibility of all researchers, but particularly children, to be side-tracked by items of interest to them.  Teaching students specific techniques to keep themselves focused on their task is something teacher librarians should be doing--but since I have the same problem I'm not entirely sure what that technique should be.  A reflective journal seems to help pull me back into focus and gives me a place for those "oh, this looks interesting" tidbits I would like to return to in the future.  Maybe young researchers should be taught to create a "parking lot," where resources or ideas they'd like to entertain in the future but that don't specifically pertain to their task could be stored for future use or perusal.  (I sort of use this method with my children when they want everything they see in the store--we make a note to let Santa know, which satisfies them in the moment and allows us to return to the task at hand, shopping.)

I have now meandered far from my original purpose in writing this, which was not to give my response to the article but was to say that I didn't think it related enough to pedagogy.  Now I'm not so sure my original conclusion is correct since I've taken several concepts from the article and used them to inform how I'd approach teaching a lesson with my future (one can hope) students.  I need to let this marinate for a while before determining if this article is a good candidate for one of my abstracts.

Also:  I think I may have a problem when writing abstracts with keeping my own interpretations or ideas out of the abstract and focusing just on what is actually in the article.  I need to be aware of this tendency to leap immediately to a practical application for everything I read.  While this serves me well as an educator, it doesn't really help me as a researcher in this specific phase of research.

But now I am thinking , "hey, wouldn't it be cool to design some sort of information-seeking activity based on this model and implement it in my daughter's elementary school to see how it works?"  This could be something for my research project proposal, and I could even actually carry it out in all my free time. :)

The other great thing I got from this article was the suggestion of another:

Bregje de Vries, Hans van der Meij, Ard W. Lazonder, Supporting reflective web 

searching in elementary schools, Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 24, Issue 3, 

May 2008, Pages 649-665, ISSN 0747-5632, 10.1016/j.chb.2007.01.021.
(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563207000337)

This looks like it's right on target for my focused topic.