Information seeking process of graduate school teachers in Sri Lanka

Abstract

The main objective of this study is to examine information usage of information resources and information seeking process of school teachers’ when seeking information for their professional information needs. It investigates what resources are preferred by the teachers, how they initiate their searching strategy, process followed and how they locate necessary information required for teaching purposes. The study uses a mixed method approach, comprising questionnaire survey and focus groups discussions. The data collected through the questionnaires were mainly quantitative and were analysed using the SPSS (21.0) while the qualitative data from the focus groups discussions were analysed using content analysis strategy. For the quantitative approach, 318 school teachers were sampled in questionnaires survey where the descriptive statistics were used for analysis. It was shown that the internet, professional books, library and personal knowledge were the top four most preferred information sources used by the teachers. The study found that most of the teachers started their searching process by using the syllabus when starting new topic to teach and most of them initiate their searching strategy by using teacher’s guides, personal knowledge and study the syllabus. The findings further revealed that most of the teachers used school either IT lab or school library and book shop as place for locating information that required for teaching.