INFORMATION LITERACY IN PORTUGAL: SOME RESULTS OF A RESEARCH PROJECT

A paper present some data about a project which, although focused on the specific case of Portugal, intents to make a scientific approach of the challenges of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) and its impact in the field of the information literacy, considering the actual context of the Information Society. The main questions that it intents to answer are: understand how the university students face the new competences required by the creation of the EHEA; know how these students are prepared in terms of information competences, in three different moments, i.e., prior to the university, during the university frequency period and at the end of the university degree. The inter and transdiscisplinary approach between the Education, Cognitive Sciences and Information Science are clearly stated in the epistemological and theoretical model that supports it, profiting of the interaction between information needs produced in the educational context and the student’s informational universe and its dynamics, without forgetting to consider the connections of student’s informational behavior with their personal and social context and demands. The study will be performed on a national scale, in order to allow comparisons between regions with different development levels. The sample will include students from both study cycles. The methodology used in this study will be divided in two areas, qualitative and quantitative research. The qualitative research will permit to obtain precious indicators about the students’ information behavior, expectations, needs and use of information. The indicators obtained in qualitative research will be used to design questionnaires, which will to be performed in 17 high schools and 17 universities, with an estimated sample of approximately 2000 students. The final result of this research will be the design of an informational behavior map, at the university level, and the development of a model concerning the promotion of information competences in Portuguese university students.


INTRODUCTION
To develop an information literacy project in Portugal we had to consider the national and international context. In the first case, we analyzed and studied the IL Portuguese bibliography production to know the level of implementation of it. In this process we could check two aspects, one was that the theme was still in an incipient state, and two was that there weren't any Portuguese projects similar or with the same aims and approach. In relation with international area we detected a very high bibliographic production, especially between middle of 90´s and first years of this century. But we did not found initiatives where a research group tries to make an IL diagnosis of a country. Some research investigated about a group of library users or a group of students but there wasn't an integrated and global perspective.
The major purpose of this research is to investigate the information competences levels in Portuguese universities students. But to get these results we need to hold other objectives. We have considered education as a system. For this, we decided to analyze precedent educational level, the high school. We understand that information competences acquired in this level are going to determine the information behaviour in university students. A secondary objective in our project is to investigate how students arrived to university level. For this, we investigated not only information skills in university students also high school student's population.
We can divide our project in two important phases: diagnosis and design of strategies. Final aim is to define an information skill strategic plan in order to adapt the Portuguese universities to EHEA and Information Era. Although, our purpose will not be complete if we don't consider a last objective which is to sensitize academical and political authorities on information literacy problematic.
In connection with our aims we part from several ideas in order to develop eLit project. They are: a) It is necessary to carry out a specific study in Portugal with the purpose of determine information literacy level; b) In order to determine the aptitude and attitude of the university students the higher education information literacy level must be assessed; c) The informational background is potentially different in distinct geographic areas of Portugal; d) The information behavior is connected to expectative, needs and lifestyle; e) The creation of information literacy strategic program would be a warrant to an optimal way to adapt Portugal to the EHEA and to the Information Era.
Not dissociated and functioning as a structural reference of this project is the definition of a theoretical-practical model that must be reached in order to show the importance of the connection between information literacy and information behavior, as we have described before.

THEORICAL POINT OF VIEW
According to these conceptual premises there are some inevitable inferences implied in the theoretical corpus on which this project is based and from which the results of the research will de interpreted: a) Information and explicit knowledge are synonyms, both differing from cognition (in which the concept of implicit or tacit knowledge becomes dilute); b) Information and communication are not symmetric concepts but rather complementary and indissociable; c) Information (or explicit knowledge) comes from a binomial, which we can characterize referring to Reuven Feuerstein, a Piagetian psychologist (VARELA, 2006), to whom biological ontogeny (which considers the human being as a set of cells, connected with the environment) continuously interacts with the socio-cultural ontogeny (responsible for the social, moral and communicational structure of the human being); These assumptions allow us to explore how the approach to information literacy is built in two complementary moments or periods: (1) a period that is internal or inherent to Information Science; and (2) and a period that is external to Information Science or interactive with other approaches. In the first period it is important to understand that which can be specific to Information Science. To this end, it is urgent to highlight the following statement from a recently published note on information literacy: based on this wider spectrum, in Information Science it is convenient to work with the concept of information literacy to refer to the competences and selective and synthetic ability to search for and use information. Determine the type of learned competences, as well as the spontaneous or induced needs, during the learning process, in what concerns the search, reproduction/reference (citation), interiorization and communication of information (SILVA, 2006, p.153-154). It is also important to remember, as a key mission of Information Science, the study and determination of individuals in their various contexts, of their need for information, of their performance in terms of use and communication of information with a specific purpose, generating new information and creating new information needs; of their efficiency in considering the implications of their actions and the knowledge generated, concerning ethical, political, social and economical aspects, performing intelligent interventions (DUDZIAK, 2001); and, last, of their ability to independently learn during life, assuring a continuum of competences which interact with the social, professional and personal demands.
The scientific investigation of the above-mentioned aspects leads, inevitably, to degrees of demand and depth that imply a dialogue between Information Science and other scientific disciplines. Among these scientific disciplines, Psychology and Pedagogy have a more relevant role, but we must also consider the Sociology of Education and Culture.
Thus, we have designed a new model that sustains and explains our research. Two key aspects have been integrated in the model: information literacy and information behavior. In all the literature dedicated to information literacy we did not find a model that explains this concept as a process. On the other hand, in the area of information behavior, the contribution of Tom Wilson (1999Wilson ( , 2000 is very important but requires a new approach where access to, the evaluation and communication of information should be integrated, an approach which projects its transversal dimension on to every aspect and situation of social life and not only on those where the subject/person interaction occurs, or in conventional services and/or technological information systems. In Attachment 1, we present our methodological proposal. This model assumes that information skills are co-determined, at first, by environmental conditions and by human action, contextually and situational focused. This environment includes political, economic, legal, social and cultural factors. This situation cannot be changed by students but does influence them. For example, the creation of the EHEA has brought about changes in the university students' life but they cannot avoid this process. On the contrary, they must adapt to it. If an environment cannot be changed by students, the context becomes all the more pressing for them. Thus, we distinguish these two concepts. Environment refers to a generic framework where, within the reality of a country, broader international community or even a diffuse geographical-civilizacional sphere (such as the Western World), human and social life is contextually and structurally being developed, including the even more intense and extensive activity developed in cyberspace. The context is a more personal situation, not only in terms of family, but also in academic, psychological, educational terms and, in general, all matters directly related with students. Environment determines the context, and context is the way to understand the extension and characteristics of the environment, as well as of its particularities.
We believe that motivation defines information needs. Motivation will be determined by the way of life, aspirations, familial influence and other aspects that shape a student's context. In other words, a student's context influences information needs. This reference is particularly important in our study. An IL program will never change the information behavior of students if they do not have an internal mechanism that facilitates a change in conduct. Thus, information needs determine the way in which student's access information. If a student has low aspirations the information resources used to satisfy his/her information needs will also be low. We also consider that in the Information Era students can satisfy information needs in different ways. Not only in a formal way (library, educational resources), but also in an informal way, using different media, undoubtedly the Internet, but also the radio, television, videogames and people (teachers, friends, family), among others.
When students access information a process of evaluation and selection is automatically activated. Obviously this process is influenced by situation, context and environment. If a student uses a restricted number of poor quality information resources, his/her perception about the need to evaluate information will be low. We can postulate that if the risk of the use of information is high, the need to evaluate information and the variety and quantity of indicators is also high. The result of this process is the satisfaction or non satisfaction of the student. If he/she is satisfied, the information will be used and communicated in any format and for any purpose.
Consequently, a certain use of information leads to a new reality and, thus, to new expectations and new questions, and finally new information needs appear. In this process, the usual situation is that the student uses a formal channel to interpret and access information. This formal channel is represented by the education system, that is, teachers and an academic or school library. But, what happens when the student is not satisfied with the information results?
First, the information is not used; second, the information cycle is subverted because a frustrated process leads to a weak formulation of an information need. In this case, students reject formal channels and start to use informal methods, such as Google.

PRACTICAL APPROACH
With this theoretical basis we have planning and carry out our research. First, we identified our population and research's sample. For this we applied following criteria: It is necessary to investigate the same geographical area (mostly city) for high school and university; The Portuguese selected cities are: Porto, Vila Real, Bragança, Covilhã, Castelo-Branco, Coimbra, Lisboa, Évora, and Faro(see attach 2) The selected regions reflect different socioeconomic situations; We try to be present north, centre and south of the country and we also combined littoral and countryside area; The sample includes students from the last year of high school education (12 th grade) as well as university students (of the 2 nd year). The idea is, at this moment, to compare the skills in two different moments: prior to the university and during the university period; We have selected 18 high schools according a national ranking (published in the "Student Guide" of the national newspaper Expresso, 3rd of November 2007). We chosen two schools by city, the best and worse one (when possible); We applied the survey to all the 12th grade students in order to cover all the existing areas and have the participation of a reasonable number of students; In higher education, we differentiated between polytechnic and universities students because we considered that there is going to be different levels of information literacy; In all segments we apply the survey to all the students in order to consider, in almost cases, a minimal number of 50 students.
The research method that has been applied is divided in two approaches: Basic group: Included familiar and scholar context. We define context as a space where the students develop his/her information behavior structure.
Where they configure a way to face to the information literacy. When we analyzed surveys first results we can detect that information literacy level in high school and university's students is almost the same but certainly in some indicators universities students have best results. In our research we can confirm some ideas or hypotheses. Some of them are: a) Young generation have a very high access to information technology infrastructure. 64% of high school and 72,6% of universities students have 1 or 2 computers at home. In both, the 90% have internet connection at home. Almost 100% of both segment manifested to get net access at school/university.