The end game in Kuhlthau's ISP Model: Knowledge construction for grade 8 students researching an inquiry‐based history project

Abstract

This article reports on a field study of the information behavior of Grade 8 students researching an inquiry‐based class history project. Kuhlthau's 7‐stage Information Search Process (ISP) model forms the conceptual framework for the study. The aim of the study was to define an end game for the ISP model by answering the following question: How do the student participants' feelings, thoughts, and information behavior lead to the construction of new knowledge? Study findings tentatively indicate that knowledge construction results from an iterative process between the student and information, which can be divided into 3 phases. In the first phase, the students formulate questions from their previous knowledge to start knowledge construction; in the second phase, newly found topic information causes students to ask questions; and in the third phase, the students answer the questions asked by this newly found topic information. Based on these results and Kuhlthau's own ISP stage 7 assessment definition of the ISP model end game, we propose a model of knowledge construction inserted as an extra row in the ISP model framework.