Personal Information Management Practices of Teachers
Anne R. Diekema
Instructional Technology & Learning Sciences
Utah State University
2830 Old Main Hill, Logan, UT, 84322, USA
anne.diekema@usu.edu
ABSTRACT
Teaching is an information-rich profession with increasing
demands on accountability and performance. Ideally, a
well-managed information space provides teachers with
relevant information when they need it, thus increasing
their efficiency and efficacy and conceivably improving
teaching quality. Little is known about teacher personal
information management (PIM). This exploratory study
employed interviews to establish a context to study teacher
PIM. The study found that teachers draw information from
a variety of physical and digital sources, and while they
were aware of sources that had valuable information,
especially digital libraries and their school library media
centers, they rarely used them. Teachers used distinctive
personal organization schemes to manage their information,
sorting information alphabetically, topically, and by
educational standards. This study introduced the observed
phenomenon of "information heritage," where teachers
were handed down information from their predecessors and
then had to choose what to do with it and how to
incorporate it into their PIM practices. Teachers store their
information physically in cabinets, closets, and shelves, and
digitally on their computer hard drives, school group drives,
and using bookmarks. Ephemeral information created by
teachers often has time management purposes.
Keywords
Personal Information Management, information behavior
information organization, teachers, educators
INTRODUCTION
This paper summarizes a qualitative study of the personal
information management (PIM) of secondary school
teachers. The study sought to describe how teachers
manage their personal information spaces and did so by
means of the following objectives (adapted from Kwasňik,
1991): 1) Observe and describe teachers' information
contexts; 2) Identify important information objects in
teachers’ information spaces; 3) Examine and synthesize
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M. Whitney Olsen
Instructional Technology & Learning Sciences
Utah State University
2830 Old Main Hill, Logan, UT, 84322, USA
whitney.olsen@usu.edu
how documents are differentiated, classified, and used; 4)
Identify themes among teachers' personal information
management systems.
Teaching is an information-rich profession with increasing
demands on accountability and performance (Dinan, 2009).
Ideally, a well-managed personal information space
provides teachers with relevant information when they need
it, thus increasing teacher efficiency and efficacy and
conceivably improving the quality of teaching.
Unfortunately, not much is known about teachers’ PIM
specifically. This paper provides an exploratory foundation
for future work on teachers' PIM. The study builds on prior
work on information behavior, namely that of Kwasňik
(1989, 1991), Barreau (2008; 1995) and Jones (2007).
GUIDING RESEARCH QUESTIONS
The research questions guiding this study are: 1) What are
teachers’ PIM practices? 2) What are the perceived
consequences of these practices for teaching and learning?
3) How can PIM practices be facilitated to benefit teaching
and learning?
BACKGROUND
Little is known about the PIM practices of teachers. Thus,
this study makes a new offering by laying exploratory
context for how teachers manage their information in their
personal information spaces. It is hoped that this knowledge
will inform future research on teachers' PIM and help build
a better understanding of how teachers navigate their
information-saturated worlds. Professional development
models and PIM software developers will benefit from an
understanding of how teachers manage their information. In
this section, research related to teachers and their
information needs, seeking, and use is discussed to describe
the current understanding of teachers and their relationship
with information.
Personal Information Management
Personal Information Management (PIM) concerns the
activities related to managing our personal information
space. As such, PIM revolves around the three intricately
related activities of finding and re-finding, keeping
(storing), and organizing and interpreting information
(Barreau, 1995; Boardman, 2004; Jones, 2007; Lansdale,
1988)
Jones (2008) describes these three activities in terms of
need and information. People set out to find or re-find
information when we experience a gap in their information,
often called an information need. In a school setting, for
example, a teacher might realize he needs an activity to
teach a unit on gravity. Information needs generally initiate
an information seeking process (Kuhlthau, 1991). The
teacher in our example might zip across the hall to ask a
colleague for suggestions, rummage through his filing
cabinet to find something suitable, or strike out online and
browse the National Science Digital Library.
After finding information individuals might decide to keep
the information in anticipation of a future information need.
Keeping activities include deciding how and where to store
information to ensure future findability. The science teacher
might find a great video on plate tectonics while looking for
his gravity activity and decide to bookmark the page.
Organizing and interpreting information is intended to
facilitate a mapping between an information need and the
information stored. The teachers in our study all had filing
cabinets with lesson materials organized in such a way that
they could easily find what they needed.
Problems with PIM become evident when we cannot find
information we need, fail to remember we have information
(Lansdale, 1992), or are unable to access information due to
a variety of reasons, such as proximity.
PIM has been studied with a variety of user groups.
Workplace PIM practices have been of particular interest to
researchers (Luff, Hindmarsh, & Heath, 2000; Bellotti et
al., 1999; O'Connail & Frohlich, 1999). Barreau (1995)
studied managers' PIM. University faculty have also been
the subject of PIM studies (e.g. Kwasňik, 1991).
Researchers have also studied the role of certain
information tools in PIM practices. Whittaker, Bellotti, and
Gwizdka (1996) examined PIM practices in the context of
e-mail programs. Investigating PIM more generally, Jones
and Thomas (1997) studied whether computer-based or
computer-enhanced information management
were
comprising a large part of people's PIM practices. To this
point, PIM studies have investigated a variety of
phenomena and user groups, however, teachers have not
been the sole focus.
Teacher online information seeking behavior
While teachers have not been the object of PIM studies
specifically, there has been research on their online
information seeking behavior. In 1983, teachers’ ISB was
just beginning to include the use of computers and
technologies comparable to those in use today (Summers,
Matheson, & Conry, 1983). Just a quarter-century later, the
information behavior of primary and secondary teachers is
vastly different due to teachers’ increasing online
connectedness, in both classroom and personal use. In the
early years, information seeking using computers
comprised a very small part of the total information
behavior of teachers—just one of dozens of different, nondigital routes for finding information (Summers, Matheson,
& Conry, 1983; Davis, 1987). As technologies advanced
and increased in availability, researchers studied computers
and the Internet as a major factor in teacher ISB (Honey &
Henriquez, 1993). More recently, research studies
examining teacher ISB online have proliferated.
Contemporary teachers have a wide variety of electronic
venues where they can search for information. Educational
digital libraries, search engines, listservs, databases, and
discussion forums are just some of the digital places
teachers can go to find information to use in their teaching.
Judging from the literature, teachers as information seekers
are highly variable in several aspects: teachers have a wide
range of technological experience and comfort levels
(Becker, Ravitz, & Wong, 1999; Levin & Arafeh, 2002),
the available workplace technology and technology support
varies (Barker, 2009; Khoo, 2006), and educators tend to
look for this information in diverging places and use
different search approaches (Carlson & Reidy, 2004).
Furthermore, teachers don’t agree on whether finding and
using online resources saves time or takes additional time
(Karchmer, 2001; Recker, Dorward, & Nelson, 2004).
However, certain commonalities emerge in the literature.
Almost all teachers are now at least somewhat familiar with
information technology, have information technology
available either at work or at home, and search the Internet
to find resources to aid in their teaching. The Internet and
its available educational resources are playing an important
role in teacher ISB. Another commonality found among
teachers is that they value having free, relevant, and wellorganized teaching resources available to them, but
generally dislike restrictions and hindrances such as
mandatory registrations and logins. Teachers also
reportedly like the social aspects of the Internet and the
ability to share resources and advice on how best to use
them in the classroom. Teachers use online resources to
supplement textbooks, demonstrate digital libraries to
students, increase student engagement with the material,
and increase the richness of their instruction (Carlson &
Reidy, 2004; Tanni, Sormunen, & Syvänen, 2008).
Key features of teacher online information seeking behavior
Most teachers value and use the Internet to find relevant
materials for their teaching and professional development
(Becker, 1999). An increasing number of teachers learn
about information technology and searching for information
during their formal schooling; others rely on professional
training to get up to speed (Carlson & Reidy, 2004; Gray,
Thomas, & Lewis, 2009; Recker et al., 2005). Many
teachers, however, learn search techniques informally and
remain largely self-taught (Davis, 1987; Wallace, 2004). It
is unclear whether the lack of formal training prevents these
teachers from finding the materials they need.
Teachers use digital libraries to plan lessons. They seek out
student activities, images and visual aids, and handouts.
Teachers value digital libraries because of their
accessibility, diversity, currency, quality, trustworthiness,
and ease of use. Teachers are often unaware of digital
libraries or resources in their area, so offering professional
development may be necessary for educational libraries to
ensure teachers know about their existence (Recker,
Dorward, & Nelson, 2004; Recker et al., 2005; Recker et
al., 2007).
As for searching styles, teachers are known to be strategic
searchers that have a clear goal in mind when they set out
on their searches (e.g. Carlson & Reidy, 2004), as well as
browsers, looking around berrypicking style (Hart, 2008)
for interesting materials (Small et al., 1998; Recker et al.,
2005). Teachers tend to search relatively often, ranging
from weekly to several times a day (Becker, Ravitz, &
Wong, 1999). Whatever their search style, teachers are
generally overwhelmed with the large amounts of
information returned to them (Pattuelli, 2008; Perrault,
2007). System builders need to be aware of this and provide
ways to narrow search results using faceted searching or
browsing. Advanced search options that allow users to limit
their searches (for example, by material type, date,
standard, or grade level) also need to be provided.
teachers' permission, the researchers also observed and took
notes on teachers' personal information spaces,
photographing particular examples of personal information
management or information artifacts.
Over-the-shoulder video was recorded to capture and
collect data on teachers' computer screens and digital
information management. Interview questions (based on
Barreau, 2008 and Kwasňik, 1991) asked of each teacher
were:
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
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


The pedagogical context of teachers’ work plays an
important role in their searching. Educators teach to
different grade levels and have varying areas of focus,
requiring different materials and, consequently, different
approaches to searching. Some literature suggests that
teachers of more linear subjects, such as science and math,
use a more linear approach to searching (e.g. Hart, 2008).

Teachers use various ways to keep track of their online
resources, ranging from printing them out, using bookmarks
and other online tools, or storing links on school,
department, or class websites.

METHODS
The study employed a qualitative research design.
Naturalistic inquiry was best suited to the exploratory
nature of this study, especially the need to capture as much
of the context of teachers' information management in their
personal-professional spaces as possible. While teachers'
PIM behaviors happen inside and outside the classroom,
our review of the literature led us to an understanding that
teachers' professional PIM occurs primarily in their
classrooms, thus, data were collected through interviews
with five secondary educators in their classrooms, during
preparatory periods or after school. The principal
investigator conducted the interviews, while the research
assistant operated equipment and asked follow-up
questions. Interviews were audio-recorded to capture the
full discussion and lasted approximately thirty minutes
each, with the exception of one interview, which lasted
approximately forty-five minutes. At the time this paper
was written, the data had not yet been fully transcribed,
however, they were reviewed in full and coded thematically
by both researchers. During and after interviews, with

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What information do you have and use in your personal
workspace?
What is the source of this information (where do
documents originate)?
How did the documents end up in your personal
workspace?
How do you organize information in your personal
workspace?
How often, and under what circumstances, do you
delete information in your workspace?
How often is the information in your electronic
workspace backed up? Who performs the backups?
How do you typically go about finding information
within your workspace when you need it?
What features do you wish were available for
organizing and retrieving information from your
workspace that you do not already have?
Can you briefly describe what your work as a teacher
involves?
Can you describe your work again, but now focus on
the role of information needed for your teaching?
How do you typically go about finding information for
your teaching when you need it?
What kinds of digital documents do you look for and
use for teaching?
When you are searching for information online, what
makes you decide to save a resource for later?
What makes you leave a resource without saving it?
Responses to the interview questions, observation notes,
video, and photographs were analyzed for PIM-related
features using thematic analysis (Boyatzis, 1998). The
researchers reviewed all data and developed a coding
scheme based on emergent commonalities and differences
among data sources. Future work with this data will focus
on the full transcription and further coding of the interview
data.
Data were collected over a one-week period in the second
half of the school year at a secondary school in Utah. The
school enrolls more than 1,300 students. Five teachers were
recruited by e-mail and word of mouth to participate in the
study. No incentives were offered. All teachers were white;
three were female and two were male, and their cumulative
years of teaching experience ranged from two years to
sixteen years. Their roles at the school ranged from junior
teacher to department head. Two teachers taught
exclusively
English/Language
Arts,
one
taught
History/Physical Education, one taught English and Social
Studies, and one taught Science.
FINDINGS
Teachers' personal information spaces were similar in their
physical structure and content but differed in the way
information was organized within it. All teachers found
information using a combination of physical and digital
approaches, however, they did not use resources designated
expressly for their use--digital libraries and their school
library media centers. Organizational approaches varied
between teachers and included alphabetical, topical, and
state standard schemes. Teachers in the sample used
numbers assigned to physical spaces to keep track of
students' work. An "information heritage" of hand-medown resources and materials appears to strongly influence
teachers PIM practices. The keeping of digital information
seems to be a largely personal judgment of quality and
relevance; the storage of these resources includes saving to
computer hard drives, printing, bookmarking, and linking
on teacher websites. Teachers took distinctive approaches
to managing the information linked to and designed for
their students, employing digital grade books and class
websites to manage classroom information. Last, teachers
knew the value of backing up their information and placed
confidence in the school district's servers to keep their
information backed up in the event of data loss.
Teachers’ Personal Information Space
Teachers' information spaces in this sample varied widely,
but certain commonalities did exist. All teachers studied
had desks in their rooms with a computer and a large desk
calendar. Teacher #2 had two computers in his personal
information space, and he switched between them for
different tasks (e.g. grading, storing of information).
Teachers' desks were positioned in various places
throughout their rooms. Teachers #1, #2, #3, and #4 had
their desks positioned at the back of their classrooms, while
teacher #5, who taught science, had hers at the front next to
her demonstration table.
Despite the fact that it was very near the end of the school
year, most of the teachers [#1, #2, #3, and #5] had
extremely neat and well-organized workspaces. Teacher #4
was in the process of completely reorganizing her room and
had piles of information (student papers, groups of
assignments) heaped on her desk. Her laptop was placed
atop two smaller piles. In all cases, teachers had a number
of cupboards, bookshelves, and closets available for
information and supply storage. The majority of these
spaces were occupied with information (books, curriculum
materials, activity kits), though some spaces were used for
supplies. Teacher #2 had one closet filled with activity
objects for students to imitate historical events and
practices; teacher #5 used most of the shelving in her room
to store lab supplies.
Physical information primarily entered teachers' personal
information spaces in the form of students' homework,
books, activity kits, and hard copies of assignments handed
down to them from previous teachers or purchased
themselves; curriculum manuals from the school district;
and instructional wall hangings from previous teachers or
requested from their school copy center. Digital information
entered teachers' personal information spaces primarily
through e-mail, school group drives, YouTube, educational
websites, and resources found through web browsing.
Bernstein, Kleek, Karger, and Schraefel (2008) fashioned
the phrase “information scraps” to describe all those bits of
personal information that people jot down on Post-it notes,
scraps of paper, or email to themselves. Information scraps
contain ephemeral information - information that is only of
fleeting importance (Barreau & Nardi, 1995). We
encountered these information scraps in the process of
conducting interviews. For example, teacher #3 had a
system of Post-it notes on his lectern. One note listed the
start and end times of class periods with a special note for
Wednesday which had a different schedule. He also kept
short notes about what he was teaching that day. . Another
teacher used her desk calendar to scribble notes and
comments for each day. Scraps of paper were also used to
jot down ideas gleaned from other teachers’ websites. The
majority of teachers wrote down the agenda for that day or
week on the white board for students to see.
Finding information
Finding, as it is described in the PIM literature, is the move
from information need to actual information (Jones, 2007).
Information needs can be broad and overarching, or they
may be small and specific (Jones, 2007). This study found
that teachers seek information in the same ways the
research literature has described (see Background).
Teachers in the study described finding information using a
combination of social, print, and digital sources.
Teachers' PIM includes finding information from social
sources (Honey & McMillan, 1993; Iseke-Barnes, 1996).
All teachers in our study described group drives available
through their school's networks as a way they found
information. They also shared information in person,
whether in informal conversations, or more formally in
faculty meetings.
Printed information sources primarily included course
textbooks, pedagogy books, conference materials, state
curriculum guides, and hard copies of lesson plans and
assignments, both printed and handwritten. Course
textbooks sometimes came with the classroom, and were
sometimes new enough that they were obtained during the
teacher's tenure in that classroom. Teachers sometimes
obtained information for their teaching from textbooks for
which there were no student copies. In these cases, they
made copies for students or used document cameras [#1,
#3] to share the information with students. Teachers
referred to information from conferences whether they
attended the conference or not. In come cases, teachers'
colleagues brought back information from a conference to
share [#3, #4].
Researchers have established teachers' online information
finding behavior as including search engines (Carlson &
Reidy, 2004; Ferry & Brunton, 2003) and education
websites (Gray, Thomas, & Lewis, 2009; Recker, Dorward,
& Nelson, 2004). Online information sources for the
teachers in this sample confirm these findings. Teachers'
finding habits tended toward search engines--where they
would browse for relevant information--or very specific
educational
websites,
such
as
http://www.readwritethink.org [#4].
Digital libraries have emerged as an information source for
teachers (Recker et al., 2007). However, all teachers in this
study stated that they were aware of digital libraries for
their respective fields, but that they used them rarely, if at
all. Interestingly, teachers were apologetic about their
sporadic use of digital libraries, responding to the question
with language like "should" and "ought to" in describing
usage. This finding suggests that teachers are aware that
digital libraries contain valuable information, but that they
do not seek it out. While digital libraries do contain
valuable resources, teachers possess neither the time nor the
desire to sift through large quantities irrelevant material.
The common way to find information online is by using
Google. Several teachers described typing in the topic
followed by the word “lesson plan” or “activity” to find
what they needed.
Teachers might also be expected to find information in their
school library media center (SLMC). However, only one
teacher [#2] described exploiting the many resources
available through his SLMC. He used the SLMC primarily
to request the purchase of books for himself and his
students. The remaining teachers reported only using the
SLMC for single, specific resources (teacher #4 used a cart
full of Civil War teaching materials; teacher #5 only used it
to check out Bill Nye the Science Guy videos) or using it
infrequently. This finding is striking, given that the SLMC
is supposed to provide teachers as well as students with
information.
Teachers also reported that finding information was
constrained by money and time. Budget cuts were an issue
that came up during all teacher interviews. Furlough days,
faculty downsizing, and limited contract hours all restricted
the amount of time teachers had to dedicate to information
seeking.
Organization of information
All teachers interviewed devised some sort of organization
scheme to store their information. Depending on the type of
information and its expected use, the organization scheme
might differ. Context and expected use seemed to play an
important role in how information gets filed (Kwasňik,
1991; Barreau, 1995). For example, folders with student
work was sorted alphabetically by last name, but class sets
of stories were filed alphabetically by title. Lesson plans
and activities were commonly organized alphabetically by
topic. Two teachers [#2, #5] used the educational standards
to organize their lesson materials. In one case the textbook
was organized by standard, so organizing the content that
way was considered a good fit. In another case. the teacher
said it took her about two years to settle on her standardsbased organization scheme: “It would be so much easier if I
did something so I could easily see where each of my units
were.” [#5]. Her science curriculum has four standards and
each standard has one or more objectives. The files are
grouped under standard and organized by objective though
the use of color coding on the paper files and folder names
for the digital files. The drawback of a standards-based
organization is that it will have to change when standards
get replaced. The implementation of new standards was
seen as a benefit by teacher #2 because this would force
him to go through all of his materials and regroup once in a
while.
A large share of the information in the personal information
space of teachers is physical. Most often, the teachers’
digital information organization method mimicked the
scheme used for their physical counterparts (typically
stored in filing cabinets). Special organization schemes
were also devised to manage the incoming stream of paperbased assignments. Two teachers [#2, #4] used a numberbased scheme where the numbers carried across subjects to
computer lab assignment and textbook use. To manage his
students' papers, one teacher [#2] used a handmade wooden
organizer he inherited from his uncle, also a teacher. About
four feet long, one foot wide, and one foot deep, the box
had numbered slots into which student assignments could
be placed.
Organization schemes require persistence with regards to
filing but this did not seem to be a problem for most of the
teachers. Only one of the teachers lamented that she starts
out organized at the beginning of the school year, only to
slide out of control over time. This teacher [#4] had several
large piles of folders on her desk that required a cursory
weekly processing to stay on top of tasks. This same
teacher had trouble refilling materials that were used in
class. “There is a place for everything. It is just a matter of
putting things back after I've used it.” [#4] Switching from
binders to folders helped some but did not solve the
problem entirely.
Information heritage
Teachers' PIM is characterized by the phenomenon of
"information heritage," coined to describe how teachers
continually inherit information from other teachers. When a
teacher occupies a classroom, then moves to another
classroom, information appears to be left behind
intentionally. Retiring teachers leave information behind for
their successors. Even teachers' family members who are
teachers themselves pass on information and information
management artifacts. All teachers in the sample described
inheriting and storing information from their predecessors.
A teacher entering her second year as an educator described
how her predecessor left behind a large quantity of
information, which she described as having "inherited,"
including pedagogical texts and textbooks. Although she
has kept them for future reference, she reported having
perused them minimally if at all. In describing her
reasoning, the teacher responded, "Honestly, I've never read
through most of the books on the shelf because this is just
my second year here, and all that stuff I inherited" [Teacher
#1]. From her interview, it appears that if "hand-me-down"
information is not immediately necessary to fulfill
curriculum standards, teachers will store the information in
case they ever need it, but they generally don’t refer to it,.
Another teacher in the sample inherited information from
the previous occupant of her classroom. She also received
all the information her mother had collected in her career as
a history teacher. From both sources, she inherited a much
larger volume of information than the other teacher;
information inherited from her mother completely filled a
large, walk-in closet in her classroom. The teacher sorted
the information from her predecessor, in her own words, by
"cleaning it out, thinning it out," [Teacher #4] keeping only
a few lesson plans and activity ideas because "she had been
teaching for a long, long time, and so it was a different type
of teaching than how I had been trained....there wasn't a lot
that was usable" [Teacher #4]. Her criterion for keeping
inherited information was alignment with contemporary
teaching practices. She kept only the inherited information
which could conceivably be used in tandem with
contemporary pedagogy and discarded the rest. She
intended to sort through her mother's information but had
not done so at the time of the study.
The remaining two educators had inherited information and
information artifacts from their predecessors, but had since
sorted through it and kept what they needed and discarded
the rest. An English teacher in his sixteenth year of teaching
attributed a "large portion" [Teacher #3] of the information
used at the beginning of his teaching career as coming from
his immediate predecessor. "I kind of went through there
[the information] and picked and chose...what I thought
would be useful, what kind of fit what I was interested in,
and...recycled [discarded] the rest" [Teacher #3]. The
science teacher, Teacher #5, described how her room was
overflowing with information when it was assigned to her-on the walls and in boxes, filing cabinets, and drawers.
While she, like the other teachers, kept some of the
information, she discarded most of it since she regarded it
as excessive information for teaching the subject: "My first
year here...I took everything down....totally cleaned house.
It was just, like, there was too much junk. Every one of
these drawers was full, every single cabinet under the sink
was full, and throughout the last four years....a lot of stuff
has been gone through" [Teacher #5].
The observed phenomenon, described here as information
heritage, suggests that a stream of information and
information management artifacts is passed down from
more experienced teachers to less experienced teachers.
This phenomenon appeared to be the result of more
experienced teachers wishing to share with new teachers..
Consequently, a major element of teacher PIM is
negotiating the physical and spatial constraints of inherited
information when teachers begin their careers or move into
new teaching spaces. While teachers have the ability to
discard the inherited information wholesale, they appear to
have some interest in keeping the information, so they
manage it by sorting through it, keeping what they consider
important (current, relevant, or interesting) and discarding
what they do not (outdated, unrelated, or dull).
Keeping information
Decisions to keep digital information appeared to be driven
by a teacher’s context, including student grade level,
curriculum, and existing materials for a topic. The different
aspects of teachers’ contexts drove the relevance
assessments (Reitsma, Dalton, and Cyr, 2008) and resulted
in the decision whether to print, download, or bookmark the
information. For some, hardly any resource ever gets left
behind completely unless there is a time crunch [#4].
Teachers follow a “save-just-to-be-safe approach.” If a
resource is reliable, valid, an exact fit, or possibly usable in
the future, teachers keep that resource rather than relying on
the ability to find it online again.
Most teachers in the study used Internet browser bookmarks
to remember more general information they wanted to
return to at a future date. such as websites containing
multiple lesson plans or consistently useful teaching ideas
[#2,#5]. Single resources were more often downloaded and
saved [#1,#4]. Only one teacher [#5] said that she rarely
downloads information. She prefers using a piece of paper
to jot down ideas based on what she finds online. Using
these notes, she creates a lesson plan or unit of her own and
then stores it in her elaborate filing system.
Teachers don’t just keep materials for immediate use but
also save materials they might be able to use sometime in
the future. “If it looks valid and reliable and I can trust it
and it is in anyway related to what I might want to do
someday, I save it.” [#1] A reliable organization system is
required to make such long-term keeping decisions, and all
of the teachers seems to have such a system. Decisions to
keep materials were revisited when teachers prepared a unit
and examined all the information they had stored pertaining
to that new unit.
Re-finding information
The teachers all devised personal organizational schemes
(see Organization of Information) to make sure they could
find and use their resources again. To prepare for classes,
the teachers in this study all referred back to the materials
they used before to teach the same units. Although teachers
used additional materials, such as books and reference
sources, the main source of information came from their
own files. These files are stored in their filing cabinets and
the computer. Notes and ideas are added to these files
during the school year, so all materials are in one place
when a unit or lesson needs to be taught again.
Teachers generally expressed confidence in their
organization schemes and said they never had trouble
finding information again. Even teachers with more loosely
defined organization schemes were positive about refinding. “I usually know where everything is that I need. It
might take me a minute to find it, but I know the general
area.” [#4]
Classroom information management
As part of their professional environment, teachers manage
information beyond what they use in their teaching. Student
grades are maintained online using commercial software.
Several teachers posted grades in the classroom for students
to look at [e.g. #3] which requires printing out the grades
and hanging them on the wall. Teachers also accessed
student records online to find contact information when
they needed to get in touch with parents [#4].
All the teachers in this study have teacher websites that can
be accessed by students and parents. Some teachers had
quite elaborate setups where the website information is
linked to the calendar so students and their parents can click
on a date and see what that teacher did in class [#5]. Not all
of these websites are maintained in equal fashion. Some
teachers [#1] update the website daily, others far less
frequently [#4].
Teacher #3 described how he only stayed at school only for
his contract hours: "I have this thing about being... being
here after contract time. I-- It's-- It just stings to be here
late, grading papers...." He discussed at length how he
worked to fit his classroom information management into
his allotted preparation times and contract hours, but that
"at home, with a baseball game on in the background, and
grading a few papers, doesn't hurt, that's fine."
Backups and Maintenance
All teachers in the study had great awareness about the
importance of creating backups of their resources. They all
saved their digital materials onto a virtual drive that gets
backed up by the systems administrator at regular intervals.
The confidence in this backup was unanimous and all
teachers relied on it. Some teachers had seen the backup in
action after computer failure or when moving to a new
computer.
Most teachers never deleted anything on their computers, so
storage space was clearly not an issue. Similarly, physical
files were rarely thrown out or recycled unless these files
were duplicates. Resources passed down from retired
teachers were faithfully stored on classroom bookshelves
and filing cabinets [#1] even though most of these materials
were hardly ever used. At some point teachers found the
time to go through these materials and recycle the resources
they cannot use [#3, #4].
DISCUSSION
The qualitative design of this study offered exploratory
findings which have significant implications for future
research projects, both qualitative and quantitative.
However, given the small sample size, it is not possible to
generalize these findings to a larger population. Our
findings align with the current literature on PIM and
suggest interesting trends that will inform future interviews
and a large-scale teacher survey we plan to carry out this
fall. Teacher interviews proved to be the richest source of
data for the study. Video recordings offered some insight
into teachers' varying levels of digital information
organization, but screenshots would also have been
effective.
Personalized recommendations
Immediate colleagues (those teachers who teach the same
subject and even the same grade levels) are an important
source of information for teachers in this study. Teachers
share educational resources and ask for recommendations.
Educational digital libraries on the other hand are severely
underutilized by these teachers. Could it be that having the
highly personalized recommendation gives more sway to an
“anonymous” resource online? If so, the implications for
digital library design are interesting. Providing resource
recommendations in digital libraries is not a new idea
(Smeaton & Callan, 2005) but perhaps manual
recommendations where human recommenders are matched
to their human users is. A recommendation coming from
somebody who is similar might carry more weight.
Self-reported organizational effectiveness
Teachers all reported that their filing systems worked well.
Given that the systems varied substantially in their level of
detail it is unlikely they all work well or as well. A future
study is needed to verify the successfulness of various
schemes. How easy is it to file incoming information and
how easy is it to find information to prepare for a new unit?
Underutilization of the school library
The main constraint to finding information in this study
appears to be the lack of time. Teachers have fewer days
dedicated to class preparation and research because of
budget cuts. Teachers also have to deal with larger class
sizes resulting in an increased workload and less time to
update and renew teaching units. The teachers in this study
are extremely busy from beginning to end of the school
day, not leaving time to visit the library. Assuming that
teachers will benefit from collaborating with the school
librarian, how can teacher interactions with the library be
encouraged and improved?
Information indecision
Some of the information teachers have in their personal
information space is acquired through passive means. We
refer to this phenomenon information heritage. This
information, passed on from retiring teachers to their
successors, brings its own PIM challenges. The
organization schemes of the inherited information might not
necessarily match those of the new teacher. This makes
finding information in an inherited information store next to
impossible without doing a time consuming sequential
search. Teachers either go through this information and
integrate the useful materials into their own filing systems
or keep storing the inherited materials indefinitely. Future
research is needed to determine why teachers feel
compelled to keep this inherited information.
PIM tools for teachers
Given the combination of paper and digital information in a
teacher’s information space, PIM software tools might not
be very effective (Boardman, 2004; Soloway, 1996). Tools
designed to help teachers manage their personal
information need to incorporate the paper-based
assignments and worksheets. Until all students have access
to a computer both during and after school, this information
will remain paper-based. The lack of student computer
access during class is also one of the reasons that teachers
still keep paper files. Putting in a copy request for
classroom materials still requires a hard-copy original. The
paperless classroom is as much an enigma as the paperless
office (Brown & Duguid, 2000).
Standards-based organization
PIM practices require teachers to make sense of the
curriculum and its related information needs (Dervin &
Nilan, 1986; Klein, Moon, & Hoffman, 2006). To be
effective educators, teachers not only have to understand
what information they already have and what information
they still need, but also how to apply the information in the
educational process. Interestingly, the Backward Design
model (McTighe & Wiggins, 2004) guides teachers in this
process and is used by at least three of the teachers we
interviewed [#1,#2,#3]. The model requires the educational
objectives (commonly found in standards) to drive the
selection of information and lesson plan design rather than
the other way around (Tyler, 1949). While this process
seems obvious, teachers do not always work back from the
desired end result. The teachers in this study who organized
their information based on educational standards might be
better-positioned for using classroom activities that support
specific learning outcomes. These organization schemes
might also enable teachers to be more effective in the
current standards and assessment-based teaching
environment.
CONCLUSION
The researchers interviewed five secondary school teachers
to examine their PIM practices. Given the small sample size
it is not possible to generalize these findings to a larger
population. Future studies will need to be carried out to
verify the results resulting from this exploratory study,
refine the research questions and methods, and provide
additional areas of interest.
Study data were collected in teachers' classrooms, and
teachers appeared to refer most easily to information that
was in the immediate physical vicinity. When prompted
about PIM outside their classrooms (e.g. school library
media centers, their homes), teachers discussed their PIM
behaviors less fluidly. It is possible conducting the
interviews in teachers' classrooms made it difficult for
teachers to connect their information behaviors to other
locales, but it could also be that the primary location of
teachers' PIM is the classroom. Because this phenomenon
was outside the scope of this study, additional research is
needed to understand teachers' PIM outside the classroom.
What appears to be missing in the PIM practices of teachers
is a deeper connection between the curriculum, innovative
teaching methods, and available educational digital
resources. Further investigation of teachers PIM, teacher
information use in teaching is needed in future studies.
This paper concludes with answering the three general
research questions guiding this research.
What are teachers’ PIM practices?
The PIM practices of the teachers in this study are driven
by the context of their workplace. Teachers find and re-find
information to support their teaching. They keep content
and information that fits this context (grade level,
classroom size, curriculum, etc.) and organize that
information in files in cabinets and on the computer. The
organization schemes employed ranges in levels of
complexity.
Although teachers self-report the effectiveness of their
filing systems, future research is necessary to determine
how well these systems really work.
Classroom information, such as student records and grades,
is managed using commercial software as well as through
the use of teacher websites. As with the organization
schemes, teacher website vary in their level of detail but
also in their currency (up-to-dateness).
What are the perceived consequences
practices for teaching and learning?
of
these
The teachers in this study maintain their personal
information spaces by organizing the physical and digital
information using various organization schemes. The
information they use and re-use in their classrooms is
retrieved and evaluated each time a unit gets taught.
Information is sought to update or change units when
needed. However, additional high quality educational
resources in digital libraries and information in library
databases systematically get ignored which could
conceivable have a negative effect on teaching and
learning.
Teacher websites listing classroom agendas and learning
objectives linked to resources and assignments are a PIM
practice that have great potential for learning. These
resources are accessible to parents as well as students and
are useful for doing homework and keeping absent students
on track.
How can PIM practices be facilitated to benefit teaching
and learning?
Connecting the organization (and delivery) of teaching
resources to educational standards and Backward Design
principles could increase teachers’ awareness of the
curriculum and what is available to teach the material for
better student understanding.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We would very much like to thank the teachers who
participated in this study and used their valuable time to
share their PIM practices.
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