Online Reading Activities and ICT Use as Mediating Variables in Explaining the Gender Difference in Digital Reading Lite
- PDF / 280,813 Bytes
- 12 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 70 Downloads / 173 Views
REGULAR ARTICLE
Online Reading Activities and ICT Use as Mediating Variables in Explaining the Gender Difference in Digital Reading Literacy: Comparing Hong Kong and Korea Kwok-cheung Cheung • Soi-kei Mak Pou-seong Sit
•
Ó De La Salle University 2013
Abstract Using data drawn from the OECD’s Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) conducted in 2009, the present study sought to examine the mediating effects of three kinds of variables in order to account for the relationships between gender and the digital reading performance of students. The three kinds of variables are (1) online reading activities, (2) information and communication technology (ICT) use at school, and (3) ICT use at home, for schoolwork and for leisure. Economic, social, and cultural status and the student’s print reading literacy performance served as control variables in the mediation analyses. Because Korea and Hong Kong were both highperforming economies in PISA 2009, the underlying ICTrelated mechanisms unveiled in the mediation analyses can show educational practitioners why, from a comparative education perspective, the digital reading gender gap that favors females is substantially smaller than that seen in print reading. The two key findings are as follows. First, the observed gender difference in digital reading performance favoring females in Hong Kong can be attributed to gender differences in the students’ engagement in online reading activities and their ICT use at home for leisure. Second, the observed gender difference in digital reading literacy performance favoring females in Korea can be attributed to gender difference in the ICT use of students at home for leisure, but not students’ engagement in online reading activities. The present study highlights the importance of guidance and counseling regarding the ICT use of students at home for leisure.
K. Cheung (&) S. Mak P. Sit Faculty of Education, University of Macau, Macao, China e-mail: [email protected]
Keywords Digital reading literacy Gender difference Mediating effects PISA
Introduction Nineteen economies participated in the OECD’s Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2009 Digital Reading Literacy Study. The international report, entitled ‘‘PISA 2009 results: Students on line: Digital technologies and performance,’’ provides a detailed account on student performance in digital reading among the participating economies (OECD 2011). One notable finding of this international study is that in all participating economies, females outperform males in digital reading literacy, with the gender gap narrower in digital reading than in print reading (OECD 2011). One possible explanation for this finding is that there may be mechanisms pertaining to the differential engagement between the two sexes in online reading activities and information and communication technology (ICT) use at home or at school (Liu and Huang 2008; Volman et al. 2005). Furthermore, the OECD (2011) reported that in most economies that participated in PISA 2009, ICT use a
Data Loading...
