The Moderation Examination of ICT Use on the Association Between Chinese Mainland Students’ Socioeconomic Status and Reading Achievement

Ya Xiao,Jie Hu

doi:10.3991/ijet.v14i15.10494

Abstract

This study explores the moderation effect of the information and communication technology (ICT) on the association between students’ socioeconomic status and their reading achievement. In total, 9,596 samples of 15 years old from 268 schools in mainland China are drawn from the latest wave of the public database -- Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2015. This study applies the moderation model in multiple regression analysis to respectively analyze the moderation effect of 2 composite variables of students’ ICT use, i.e., ICT use for schoolwork and ICT use for leisure. Two significant results are reported: (1) stu-dents’ ICT use for schoolwork or for leisure can moderate the relationship be-tween their socioeconomic status and their reading achievement; (2) the high-level ICT use for schoolwork or for leisure may narrow the gap in students’ reading achievement caused by different socioeconomic status deduced from the buffer-ing moderation effect of the moderating variables. These findings might provide insights to future studies in educational equality promotion, infrastructure con-struction and pedagogy improvement in reading education.

Highlights

Educational equality is at a high priority in the informational-based society because it signifies a transformation in the effective educational system [1]
Based on the moderation analysis using PROCESS developed by Andrew Hayes and his colleague Kristopher Preacher, it was found that students’ information and communication technology (ICT) use for schoolwork or for leisure does moderate the relationship between students’ socioeconomic status and their reading achievement
Deduced from the results of the moderation models, high-level of ICT use for schoolwork or for leisure would narrow the gap in students’ reading achievement caused by different socioeconomic status

Summary

Introduction

Educational equality is at a high priority in the informational-based society because it signifies a transformation in the effective educational system [1]. A large number of efforts have been made by researchers, educators and policymakers; the reading achievement gap remains an alarming problem globally, which may be caused by factors at the student, family, school, and country levels [3]. By examining 30 international large-scale assessments over 51 years, Chmielewski (2017) finds that socioeconomic achievement gap has increased globally [4]. Many countries or economies have integrated information and communication technology (ICT) into teaching and learning since ICT makes it possible to share educational resources and provide equal educational iJET ‒ Vol 14, No 15, 2019

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