The influence of digital exposure at home and school on students’ perceived learning difficulties
Author(s): Qi Wang, Xiaochen Zhou, Jia Li
Wednesday 14 | 13:40-14:00
Room: TP51
Session: Causes and consequences of digital differences on social inequalities at school
Incorporating digital learning approaches is attractive to pupils, yet not a guarantee of positive learning outcomes. Instead of investigating short-term educational outcomes such as academic scores and ranks, this study is interested in how digital use would influence the learning process of students. We applied a national dataset to investigate how students' internet use at home and teachers’ usage of digital approaches influence Chinese secondary school students’ learning difficulties in different subjects.
The sample is drawn from nearly nationally representative data from the China Education Panel Survey (CEPS). The CEPS has collected and released two waves of data for the academic year of 2013-2014 and 2014-2015. The survey collected data from students, parents, teachers and headteachers. We extracted data from students and teachers from the second wave (N=7,161; boys: 52%; Mage=13.95).
Perceived learning difficulty (PLD): Questions were asked regarding three subjects—mathematics, Chinese and English, “At present, are the following courses difficult for you?”. It was a categorical variable (1=not difficult at all, to 4=very difficult). Digital exposure at home was measured by 1) whether the household has a computer and/or Internet; 2) the time spent on the Internet during weekdays; and 3) the time spent on the Internet over weekends. Digital exposure at school was measured by the three subject teachers’ frequency of using 1) multi-media projectors, 2) the Internet, and 3) personal teaching websites, blogs or microblogs. A series of variables that may influence the PLD were controlled, including age, gender, Hukou, the academic performance of the last academic year, family economic background, and the education level of mothers and fathers. Multilevel ordinal logistic regression was performed due to the nature of the outcome variable. We performed the models by subject to investigate whether the role of digital exposure varies across different subjects.
First, universal patterns were found across three subjects all family socioeconomic indicators were found to be significantly associated with decreased levels of PLD. Second, significant subject differences were found when discussing the role of digital exposure on PLD. For all three subjects, having both a computer and access to the Internet significantly decreased the level of PLD in English and math. However, solely having a computer without the Internet was associated with a lower level of PLD for Chinese, but not for English and math. Third, English teachers’ higher frequency of using multi-media approaches was significantly associated with decreased levels of PLD. A marginal significance was revealed for math teachers’ use of online learning material from websites or blogs. Fourth, the time spent on the Internet should be monitored within a reasonable range (e.g., less than 2 hours), beyond this, parents and teachers should be alerted of the possibility of Internet addiction, which may have negative impacts on students’ learning.
While highlighting the role of digital exposure in influencing PLD, this study uncovered the importance of subject differences in the teaching practice. More remarks shall also be made to distinguish the subject difference for teaching practice.