The association between sourcing skills and intertextual integration in lower secondary school students

Abstract

Sourcing and intertextual integration skills are critical to the development of young students’ digital literacy skills. Sourcing skills include identifying source parameters (e.g., recognizing the author, publication date, publisher) and analyzing the author’s expertise. The objective of this study is to investigate which sourcing skills used by students in document selection are most associated with intertextual integration skills. A total of 165 students attending lower secondary school participated in the research. Students completed a sourcing inventory, an intertextual integration task (after reading multiple texts), and control variables measures (prior knowledge, prior beliefs, and text comprehension). The results of exploratory factor analysis showed three dimensions for sourcing, namely source identification, author’s competence, and judgment on website choice. Furthermore, hierarchical regressions showed that author competence was the only sourcing factor associated with intertextual integration skills, after controlling for the effect of control variables. These results suggest that even younger students pay attention to author expertise when choosing texts to use for their assignments, and doing so enhances their competence in integrating information across sources.