Abstract:
Information literacy (IL) is a fundamental skill that needs for lifelong learning, and particularly the
teachers who are imparting knowledge to students are required that skill to influence their students in
their endeavours to become lifelong learners. The cognizance of information literacy would be an
advantage for the understanding of information-seeking behaviour (ISB) as IL and ISB are two sides
of the same coin. There is a need for studying information resource usage of school teachers by
linking information literacy to understand the factors influencing the information seeking process. It
was identified from the literature that no studies have yet been carried out to explore the information
resource usage and information literacy skills of school teachers in Sri Lanka. These types of studies
would help policymakers and information professionals to design and develop smarter tools that can
incorporate and make use of the knowledge of ISB to behave more intelligently and provide more
effective support for the teachers. Therefore, the study was designed to examine information resource
usage and information literacy skills of school teachers in Sri Lanka. The population of the study was
in-service graduate school teachers who work in government schools in Sri Lanka, and a multistage
cluster sampling method was used to select the sample. The study adopted a quantitative research
methodology, and a self-administered questionnaire was distributed among 3200 teachers, and
collected data were analyzed by using SPSS (21.0). The results affirmed that professional books, the
internet followed by magazines, libraries, and workshops, respectively, were the most preferred with
having more than 34 of average Standardized Total Information Scores that used to calculate the
preference of information sources used by the teachers. The results revealed that most of the teachers
were uncertain about most of the statements of perceived skills of information literacy. But the results
further revealed that most teachers perceived that they could identify their information needs,
followed by the ability to access information from various sources, the ability to utilize information
and awareness of various sources of information with having more than 3.6 of mean scores for each
statement. Although these results gave an insight that they have certain skills which are imperative
for effective information-seeking behaviour but it should be recommended to conduct more training
programs on information literacy for the teachers, particularly the skills relating to information-
seeking behaviour.
Keywords: Information Literacy; Information Resources; Information Seeking Behavior; School
Teachers; Sri Lanka.
