Searching as Strategic Exploration

Topic: Effects of Divorce on Children

This lesson plan is designed for first year university students. The Topic or theme they will be working with is: The impact that divorce has on children. 

At the end of the session, students should be able to:

• Identify people or organisations that may produce information about a topic and where information can be found
• Make use of divergent (brainstorm) and convergent (select best source) thinking when searching for information based on their information needs
• Use a variety of search language to yield appropriate results

Activities:

Students will be required to:

1.  Consider at least five people and/or organisations that may be interested in information on what impact divorce has on children and also who might produce information on this topic.
2. Identify possible sources to locate a book, journal article and website that may produce relevant information on the given topic and consider which research tools, databases or search engines they will have to consult or make use of to obtain this information. They will then need to justify why they have selected the tools/platforms they have selected. 
3. Brainstorm various subject headings and keywords that they can use to retrieve relevant information for their topic using the various databases and then write a short essay where they compare and contrast the information retrieved from both searches, also stating which they prefer and why.

Dispositions:

Activity one and two enables students to develop mental flexibility whereby they have to think for themselves before consulting any sources. Activity one further enables students to seek guidance from professionals or experts in the field by considering who might be interested and who might produce the information they seek, whereas activity two enhances students thinking by allowing students to think about which avenues to explore when searching for specific information that may be available in different formats. Activity three helps students realise that searching is not always a straightforward task and it may not always be successful the first time, thus it is important to be able to use different search language when searching for results and to know when and how to refine search terms so that the results are more accurate.

Class Activity

Searching as Exploration

Question 1
Who would be interested in information about the effects of parental incarceration on young children? (5)

• Psychologists - as it would help them understand the children better and also better the services they offer. 
• Parents - if one or both parents have been imprisoned, it will help them identify or understand certain behaviours their child/ren may display
• Educators - it would assist educators better understand and manage children who may have been negatively affected by the imprisonment of their parent/s.
• Social workers - because they deal with children and families, this information will be helpful for them when making decisions about custody and permanent or temporal care.  
• Librarians - if borrowers were to enquire about this, it would help the librarian to have a better understanding of what information and information sources might be helpful for the borrower to use.
• Students/researchers - Students may have been given an assignment or researchers may be researching this area. 
• Journalists - this could be a good story to run for a magazine or newspaper.

Question2

How  and where would the groups that you identified disseminate the information that they produced on the topic? (5) eg. websites, government publications 

Information may be distributed or circulated in a number of different ways depending on who is circulating the information and for what purpose. Thus, information can be disseminated via websites, newsletters, pamphlets, government publications, newspapers and magazines. 

Psychologist might have a website where they can highlight some important factors, especially those that strengthens justification for why children need need professional help.

Social workers may distribute this information in the form of a government/newsletter or organisational/pamphlet that they can hand out when doing outreach or home visits, also availing them at their offices by reception or having them lie in the waiting room while partents/caregivers are waiting to be seen.

Journalists may release information pertaining to the effects of parental incarceration in the form of newspaper or magazine articles whether doing a story on someone who was affected, or reporting on general facts.