DEMOGRAPHIC FACTORS INFLUENCING THE INFORMATION SEEKING BEHAVIOUR OF TEACHERS IN UNIVERSITY (EDUCATION PROJECT TOPICS AND MATERIALS)
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the Study
Information is a stimulus that reduces uncertainty. It plays a significant role in our professional and personal lives (Ikoja-odongo & Mostert, 2006).The need to become informed and knowledgeable individuals leads to the process of identifying information needs. Information needs signifies a consciously identified gap in the knowledge available to an actor. Information need may lead to information-seeking and formulation of request for information (Ingwersen &Jarvelin, 2005). One of the concerns for information science is the information behaviour of different target groups as users of information (Wilson, 2000) because an effective information service depends largely on understanding user’s information behaviour (Hepworth, 2007). According to Ingwersen and Jarvelin (2005) information behaviour is the human behaviour dealing with the generation, communication and use of information and other activities concerned with information, such as information-seeking behaviour interactive information retrieval. Information-seeking behaviour therefore is the purposive seeking for information by individuals as a consequence of a need to satisfy goals. It is a broad term encompassing the ways individuals articulate their information needs, seek, evaluate, select and use information (Mustaffa, Ahmad & Baqi, 2012). Information-seeking is part of information behaviour as well as the totality of other unintentional or passive behaviours towards information (Case, 2007).Information-seeking may occur with a specific purpose in mind in order to address the information need. According to Johnson (2003) Information-seeking is described as the purposive acquisition of information from selected information carriers; these include information sources and channels for communication information. Al-suqri (n.d.) opined that majority of studies of information-seeking have only investigated different disciplines but only few has been given to the relationship between information-seeking and a diverse range of demographic and professional variables.
Bitso (2012) revealed that demographic factors such as age, gender, profession, specialization, career stage and geographical location can influence teachers’ information-seeking behaviour. He further stated that it is important to establish the age of these teachers’, their teaching experience and the geographical location of their school. This is because older teachers rely on younger teachers to help them seek information from the internet; the inexperienced teachers rely on the experienced teacher to show them how and where they can easily gather information, since they have long enough in their area of specialisation; the teachers’ in urban schools have different information needs from teachers’ in rural school and this will affect their information-seeking behaviour. The demographic factors of this study comprise of the selected characteristics of the teachers in Delta and Rivers States such as gender, age, work experience and state.
The need for information cuts across all spheres of life but the relevance of information in the education of young minds and their teachers cannot be overemphasised. Consequently, information-seeking is a primary activity of life and people seek information to deepen and broaden their understanding of the world around them (Karunarathna, 2008) .Teachers are constantly in dire need of information to build up or develop relevant knowledge. Haki Elimu (2008) stated that teaching is a special career as it gives rise to other profession. All other profession originate from the teaching profession as one cannot acquire knowledge and specific field skills without a teacher. He further explained that a “teacher” is an expert, who is capable of imparting knowledge that will help learners to build, identify and to acquire skills that will be used to face the challenges of life.
