The digital information practices of lower secondary school pupils

Young people grow up in a high-speed world that demands the abilities to critically access, evaluate, and utilize digital information, for example on social media, in order to participate in societal practice on an informed basis. In this presentation, I will introduce preliminary findings from my PhD project, consisting of a qualitative study of lower secondary school pupils' information practices during project work in groups, i.e., how they collaboratively search, evaluate, share, and create digital information. Through participant observations, audio recordings, interviews, and document analyses, the project examines - from the perspectives of pupils - how and why pupils interact with digital information as they do in practice. Based on empirical examples, I will reflect on and discuss how schools as contextual settings constitute certain conditions for pupils' information practices in a society where the majority of encountered information is digitally mediated.