Search Engine Use in Australian Home-Schools: An Exploration Framed by the Generational Digital Divide Construct

Abstract

Home-school students are Australia’s fastest growing educational demographic. Nearly one in every 200 students is now registered for education provided at home (Chapman, 2017). This growth is due to a range of factors including the increased availability of educational resources made possible outside of school classrooms by Internet technologies like search engines. Search engine use is associated with educational benefits including: higher reading and mathematics scores; providing cognitive scaffolding; and displacing other inefficient forms of information seeking. It is the most prolific online activity conducted by home-schoolers, yet little is known about search engine use in this setting beyond such reliance. Because home-schooling is constructed around the parent-as-teacher and the child-as-student, there is typically a clear generational divide featured in the learning relationship. Hence, this study employs the construct of a generational digital divide, pursuant to Prensky’s (2001) digital native (child student) and digital immigrant (parent-educator), to explore home-school search engine use. Prensky’s (2001) model presumes that digital native students are naturally more equipped than educators from prior generations (digital immigrants) in using digital technologies. Despite frequent challenges to the model, parents and educators report confidence in young people’s search capacities and talk in ways that affirm belief in this generational digital divide. Such discourse can have educational implications, given the relationship between a teacher’s digital self-efficacy and enacted pedagogy. This research explores the value of the generational digital divide construct in understanding online search and the associated discursive practices in Australian home-schools. Three research questions further guide the study: how are search engines used in Australian home-schools by early primary students and their parent-educators; what discursive practices are evident during search engine use and during discussions of search engine use in Australian home-schools; and to what extent is the generational digital divide construct valuable in understanding this use and these discursive practices? The study employed a mixed methods design incorporating an online survey (N = 60) and five case studies. The design incorporated quantitative data from the online survey and quantitative and qualitative data from the case studies. The study was conducted in two phases: descriptive analysis of the survey, observation and test data were first conducted; and the findings guided the subsequent, primary qualitative analysis in Phase 2. Critical Discourse Analysis, comprising new and established applications of Fairclough’s (2015) model, was applied to explore the value of the generational digital divide construct in understanding online search and the associated discursive practices in these home-schools. Through a critical lens, the study explored search proficiency as a type of power, where a person with greater proficiency -- or the presumption of same -- is assigned greater status, often through discourse. Findings revealed that the home-schoolers’ online search was inconsistent with the generational digital divide construct. The parent-educators outperformed the students in all search practices. Both generations of searchers, moreover, used search engines in ways unlikely to provide new educational benefits. The home-schoolers’ digital technology use was not intrinsically beneficial, nor did the students have skills which made these benefits disproportionately available to them. Where the generational digital divide construct did hold was with three assumptions of search and searchers revealed in the home-schoolers’ discursive practice: that searching is quick and easy, that “Google is all”, and that one should trust in Prensky’s digital native construct. These assumptions assign power to search engines and to those presumed to be able to use them -- the digital natives. In this way, the value of the generational digital divide construct was affirmed. Parent-educators were also found to use their superior search skills infrequently as a pedagogical tool for instructing their digital native students. Ultimately, the value of the generational digital divide construct in these home-schools was found to lie not in its accuracy, but in its hegemonic acceptance. This study contributes new knowledge by providing insights into home-school search engine use, the associated discursive practices, and the value of the generational digital divide construct in understanding them. The findings can assist the growing number of Australian home-schoolers to use search engines more effectively as a learning tool, free from assumptions. Insights regarding the link between discursive practice and search practice may help ensure that discourse is better used to maximise the benefits of search engine use in future. The study also highlights the potential disadvantages of Prensky’s (2001) technologically deterministic generational labels in a previously un-investigated educational context.