THE IMPACT OF LIBRARY EDUCATION ON READING HABIT AMONG SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS IN LAGOS STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

Library education, which refers to the intentional teaching of students to acquire the necessary skills and attitudes to search for, analyze and utilize information and reading resources, is generally considered to be the basis of a lifelong reading culture. However, school libraries in many secondary schools in Nigeria have been found to be poorly equipped, poorly staffed and have little or no involvement in the curriculum in the regular classroom, despite the concern of a perceived decrease in students' voluntary reading. The paper provides conceptual and theoretical discussion of library education and reading habit of the senior secondary school students of Lagos State, Nigeria. The paper adopts a constructivist learning theory, self-efficacy theory, cognitive load theory and uses and gratifications perspective, and contends that using structured library instruction to foster reading habit works through three overlapping mechanisms: skill development (information literacy), motivational scaffolding (self-efficacy and autonomy), and environmental design (access to, exposure to, and modelling of). The literature reviewed in the empirical section from Nigeria, Africa, and international sources, all link active school-library user behaviour and information-literacy learning with increased reading behaviour and academic performance, and the competitiveness of digital media, coupled with the infrastructure challenges of public secondary school libraries in Nigeria. The paper suggests that library education is not an adjunct to instruction, but rather a major part of the instructional process, and offers a conceptual framework and set of recommendations for policymakers, school administrators, teacher-librarians, and for future empirical research. Since this is a theoretical paper, no primary survey or experimental data were obtained, only an illustrative and clearly hypothetical framework is suggested as a guide to future empirical studies rather than as a reported result.