Digital Reading in PISA 2012 in Portugal: How do VET and General Education Students Perform?
Submitted by:
Luis Araujo
Abstract:
The use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) tools in teaching and learning and the development of digital literacy can enhance students’ learning (European Commission, 2012; Wosseman, 2014). The Organization for Economic Co-operation (OECD) reports that 15-year-old students who browse the internet for school work score above those that never engage in this activity on the PISA digital reading scale (OECD, 2015). The use of technology and its role in enhancing L1 curriculum delivery has been discussed in terms of its theoretical and practical implications. One problem is that often ICT in education is not well integrated in teaching or used to develop students' L1 skills (Elf, HsnghOj, Skaar & Erixon (2015). We explore the variation in ICT use between students in general programmes and students attending vocational education (VET). Using PISA 2012 data for Portugal it addresses how ICT use by these two groups of students is related to their achievement in digital reading. First, we tabulated frequency statistics about students’ ICT uses in general and VET programmes. Second, we ran a multilevel model (2 levels: students and schools) to measure the proportion of variance in students' digital reading performance between schools and to identify the relationship between students’ ICT use and their digital reading scores by programme of study. Results indicate that in Portugal VET students engage more frequently in browsing of the internet at school and in task-oriented browsing than students in general programmes. The same is true for ICT for entertainment. These ICT activities are positively related to the digital reading achievement of both general and VET students, but ICT use for entertainment is only associated with higher achievement for VET students. The association between students’ navigation behaviour in digital reading skills is higher for VET than for students in general programmes, which reveals the great importance of this behaviour for vocational students in Portugal. Our findings indicate that 49% of variance is due to school characteristics and suggest that using digital supports at school will help VET students develop the reading skills necessary for their successful integration in society.
Keywords: Digital Skills, Reading Literacy, Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)
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