How well does the digital home learning environment predict ICT literacy and ICT self-efficacy? Comparing the predictive power of adolescent and parent reports

Abstract

Although the home environment is considered as a key factor in the acquisition of children's ICT literacy, only few studies have examined the relationship between ICT-related parental beliefs and practices and children's ICT literacy. Moreover, most of these studies, predominantly based on the construct of parental mediation, use self-assessments which are not considered valid indicators of actual ICT literacy. By investigating different aspects of a digital home learning environment, we extended prior research by (a) using an objective test of ICT literacy to examine this question. In addition, (b) we included children's ICT self-efficacy as a second outcome variable, which is an important motivational variable for self-directed and lifelong learning, and (c) to gain a comprehensive understanding of ICT-related parental beliefs and practices, both adolescent and parent perspectives were considered and examined for their predictive power. Using data from 422 children (aged between 11 and 14 years) and their parents, adolescent and parent reports showed medium correlations. The results show that parental ICT values (beliefs about the importance of being able to work with ICT) positively predict ICT literacy while monitoring/supervision (e.g., controlling children's online activities) negatively predicts ICT literacy. According to predictive power, after controlling for gender and students’ educational level, adolescent reports predicted ICT self-efficacy (27%) better than parent reports (9%), while the opposite was found for ICT literacy (adolescents: 8%; parents: 18%).