Students’ Interest and Enjoyment in, and Patterns of Use of ICT

Abstract

Two of the groups of potential influences on the development of computer and information literacy (CIL) concern students’ affective responses (how they feel and behave in response to those feelings) when interacting with information and computer technologies (ICT) and their opportunities to learn CIL. IEA’s International Computer and Information Literacy Study (ICILS) 2013 revealed that female students achieved better CIL test scores than male students in most of the participating countries. The question then arises as to whether gender differences in the CIL performance of students are associated with differences in their affective responses to ICT and/or differences in their levels of ICT usage. These questions were investigated by analyzing data from the ICILS 2013 student assessments and student questionnaires. Male students notably reported significantly higher levels of interest in, and enjoyment of, ICT than their female peers in 13 of 14 ICILS countries, and interest-enjoyment also appeared to have a stronger relationship with achievement in CIL among male students than among female students. While there may be some gendered patterns of use of ICT that reflect different interests, these differences do not uniformly result in advantages or disadvantages for male or female students in terms of CIL achievement.