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Abstract
The purposes of this study were to examine the effectiveness of instruction for acquiring necessary information skills at the elementary school level and to examine teachers' attitudes toward information skills instruction. For these purposes, this study involved two inquiries.
The first inquiry investigated the significant differences in the performances of information skills in fourth, fifth and sixth-grade students comparing several instructional conditions: resource-based versus no-information skills; non-integrated versus no-information skills; information skills (including both resource-based and non-integrated together) versus no-information skills, and resource-based versus non-integrated instruction. The second inquiry examined the characteristics of the teachers' attitudes toward information skills instruction for the teachers in resource-based, non-integrated, no-information skills approaches, and all teachers regardless of teaching method.
Samples were chosen from six elementary schools located in the Metropolitan Toronto area consisting of 300 students and 45 teachers, including teacher-librarians. The data were collected during the fall term in 1994 using the instruments of the School Library Media Skills Test and the Teachers' Attitudes Questionnaire. The data were analyzed using ANOVA for the first inquiry, and Dual 3MC for the second inquiry.
The first investigation demonstrated that resource-based instruction was the most effective model for acquiring information skills not only compared with no-information skills instruction, but also compared with non-integrated instruction. Although it was impossible to define the learning growth due to the cross-sectional design of the present study, it demonstrated that the highest learning growth during the three years from fourth to sixth grades was in resource-based instruction and the lowest was in no-information skills instruction. In the fourth and fifth grades, however, no significant differences were found.
The second investigation demonstrated that teachers have entirely positive attitudes toward information skills instruction. Although there has been previous research showing that lack of support by the school or the principal negatively affects teachers' attitudes, this study showed that all the teachers regardless of teaching method have positive attitudes toward information skills instruction.
