The Influence Of ICT-related Internal And External Factors On Secondary Students’ Digital Reading Performance

Digital reading literacy has gradually aroused global concern with the proliferation of information and communication technology(ICT).To address this concern,digital reading literacy is the essential domain of investigation in the authoritative international large-scale assessment——the Program for International Student Assessment(PISA).In the latest released assessment freely open to the globe,PISA 2018 not only integrates the concept of digital reading literacy in its assessment framework,but also supplements information about students’ICT-related internal psychological factors as well as schools’ICT-related external contextual factors in its questionnaires.Therefore,by harvesting the big data of digital reading literacy provided by PISA 2018,this study aims to depict a multidimensional construct of secondary students’ digital reading by investigating the relationship between ICT-related internal and external factors and digital reading performance as well as the intricate interrelationships of these factors.The Self-determination Theory(SDT),a classical theory that has been widely used in traditional reading motivation research,but which has not yet been developed to target digital reading,was innovatively applied in the current study to construct the development model of digital reading.To improve the generalizability of this theory,the samples of this study were 222,293 secondary students from 10,103 schools located in 47 regions selected from PISA 2018 educational database.This study mainly centers on two research questions.At first,the correlation of four student-level ICT-related internal psychological factors corresponding to the SDT’s basic psychological needs(that is,perceived interest,autonomy,competence,and social interaction in ICT use)with digital reading performance was explored.Then,the moderation effect of the school-and country-level ICT-related external contextual factors on the relationships between the student-level internal psychological factors and digital reading performance was examined.Considering the nested nature of the free public data of PISA at the student-,school-and country-level,a complicated three-level hierarchical linear model was particularly adopted to ensure the accuracy of estimation.The research findings are:1)Secondary students’perceived interest,autonomy and competence in using ICT positively predicted their digital reading performance,while perceived social interaction related to ICT use was a negative predictor;2)Schools’ support in ICT devices significantly strengthened the positive correlation of students’ perceived autonomy in using ICT with their digital reading,while amplified the negative relationship between students’ perceived social interaction in using ICT and digital reading performance;3)Schools’ support in teacher training in ICT integration into education significantly enhanced the positive correlation between students’ perceived competence in using ICT and their digital reading performance,and significantly buffered the negative relationship of students’ perceived social interaction in using ICT with digital reading performance;and 4)In countries with a higher ICT development level,the positive correlation between students’ perceived autonomy in using ICT and their digital reading performance became more strongly positive,while the negative relationship between ICT-related social interaction and digital reading performance became more strongly negative.This study enriched the theoretical framework of the SDT by adapting it to target digital reading,but also provided the theoretical basis and practical guidance for effective ICT integration into secondary digital reading education.