Foundational skills and dispositions for learning: an experience with Information Problem Solving on the Web

Abstract

Active participation in the information society requires the ability to find some order in the chaotic nature of the Web and not to get lost within the endemic presence of inaccurate, misleading, biased and false information. This article presents an approach to Information Problem Solving (IPS) – that is, finding, understanding and assessing information on the Web – and discusses a study carried out in an Italian secondary school, using an experimental and a control group. The study aimed at exploring how to best foster IPS skills, and observing whether and how IPS activities could promote the development of more general learning dispositions and competences. After a period of training with IPS activities, the experimental group showed different dispositions towards learning from a text and engaging with open-ended questions. Despite serious limitations in the depth of analysis, most students were able to reach acceptable solutions; at the same time, they felt empowered and developed an embryonic critical attitude on which it might be possible to build further.

Keywords:

• Information Problem Solving
• digital literacy
• critical literacy
• secondary school

Acknowledgments

The study described in this article was sponsored by the Italian National Research Council, Institute for Educational Technology, Genoa, and directed by Maria Ferraris. Our warmest thanks to Maria for inspiration and support throughout the project. We are also grateful to Giorgia Campodonico, the class teacher; Benedetto Montanari, the school principal at the higher secondary school ‘Ettore Majorana’, Genoa; and Alexia Delfino for supporting us with statistical analysis. Finally, a special thanks to the editor and two anonymous reviewers for their critical and constructive comments.