Digital diversity among upper secondary students: A multilevel analysis of the relationship between cultural capital, self-efficacy, strategic use of information and digital competence
Introduction
During the last decade, information and communication technology (ICT) has played an important role at work and in leisure activities (CERI & OECD, 2010). Currently, there are many initiatives, e.g. in Australia, Estonia, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Norway, and the US, to define and understand how ICT can be implemented and used in learning and for educational purposes (Balanskat and Gertsch, 2010, Cha et al., 2011, Ferrari, 2012, Law, 2008, Zhong, 2011).
The Internet has always existed for the upper secondary school students', and the term digital native is sometimes used to understand the generation growing up with technology and Internet (Boyd, 2014, Prensky, 2001). However, the term digital native does not indicate that students are automatically digitally knowledgeable, because there is a huge variation in what students are able to do with technology and what they know about technology (Hargittai, 2010). Students have to put in effort and time in order to develop their digital competence and become digitally literate (Boyd, 2014). It is therefore interesting to examine further what explains the variation in digital competence among students.
This paper addresses diversity in digital competence among upper secondary school students, and the ambition is to examine the relationship between student's digital competence, their cultural capital, strategic use of information, self-efficacy and achievements at school (see Fig. 1).
Section snippets
Context
Since 2006, the ability to use ICT is one of five key competencies in the Norwegian curriculum. The ability to use ICT is defined as transversal and embedded in the subject aims throughout the whole curriculum (Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training, 2012). This situation has justified investments in digital infrastructure, software and resources. Today, there is almost one computer per student in Norwegian upper secondary school (European Commission, 2013b), and many students have
Procedure and sample
This is a cross sectional study with a two-step sample design. First 100 upper secondary schools were randomly selected from a total of approximately 480 Norwegian upper secondary schools. Additionally, replacement schools were selected. The schools were contacted and informed about the study with a letter, through emails and by phone. Then the school leaders selected one class from level 2 in each school.
The final sample consisted of 593 students, age 17–18, at level 2 attending 42 different
Results
The data were analysed by using the IBM SPSS Statistics for Mac, Version 21.0 (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY).
Discussion
This paper addresses the factors predicting student's digital competence. The findings from the analysis reveal variation in digital competence and a digital diversity among the students (Boyd, 2014, Erstad, 2010, Selwyn, 2008, Warschauer, 2002). Five hypotheses were developed to analyse factors predicting competence. All the five hypotheses are supported.
The two first hypotheses were directed at the student's family background, i.e. cultural capital and language integration. Both hypotheses
Concluding remarks and further research
This section addresses the limitations of the study, the conclusions and suggestions for further research.
Acknowledgement
We would like to take this opportunity to express our thanks to our colleagues Ola Berge, Gunstein Egeberg, Geir Ottestad, Karoline Tømte and Marit Loftsgarden for their support and encouragement.
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