van de Werfhorst Herman G, Kessenich Emma, Geven Sara
Department of Sociology, University of Amsterdam, P.O. Box 16608, Amsterdam 1001 NA, the Netherlands.
Comput Educ Open. 2022 Dec;3:100100. doi: 10.1016/j.caeo.2022.100100. Epub 2022 Jul 21.
The COVID-19 pandemic has disordered the educational process across the globe, as schools suddenly had to provide their teaching in an online environment. One question that raised immediate concern is the potential impact of this forced and rapid digitalization on inequalities in the learning process by social class, migration background and gender. Elaborating on the literature on the digital divide, we study inequalities in multi-level digital readiness of students and schools before the pandemic took place. Using data from the International Computer and Information Literacy Study (ICILS) on seven countries, and the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) on 45 countries, both from 2018, we demonstrate that schools and students vary in their readiness for digital education. However, school variation in digital readiness is not systematically related to student composition by SES and migration background. We thus find little evidence for a hypothesized 'multi-level' digital divide, which would result from systematic gradients in the readiness of school environments for digital education by student composition. More important drivers for a digital divide during the COVID-19 pandemic are the ICT skills students have, which are strongly related to students' socioeconomic background. For digital education to be effective for every student, it is important that schools focus on improving students' digital skills.
新冠疫情扰乱了全球的教育进程，因为学校突然不得不在线上环境中开展教学。一个立即引发关注的问题是，这种被迫且迅速的数字化对学习过程中因社会阶层、移民背景和性别而产生的不平等会有怎样的潜在影响。基于有关数字鸿沟的文献，我们研究了疫情发生前学生和学校在多层次数字准备方面的不平等情况。利用来自2018年国际计算机与信息素养研究（ICILS）对七个国家的数据，以及教学与学习国际调查（TALIS）对45个国家的数据，我们证明学校和学生在数字教育准备方面存在差异。然而，学校在数字准备方面的差异与按社会经济地位（SES）和移民背景划分的学生构成没有系统关联。因此，我们几乎没有找到证据支持假设的“多层次”数字鸿沟，即学校环境对数字教育的准备程度因学生构成而产生系统梯度差异。在新冠疫情期间，造成数字鸿沟的更重要因素是学生拥有的信息通信技术（ICT）技能，而这与学生的社会经济背景密切相关。要使数字教育对每个学生都有效，学校着重提高学生的数字技能很重要。
