THE USE OF ICT BY NATIVES AND IMMIGRANT CHILDREN IN EUROPE: IS THERE A DIFFERENCE?

The education of immigrant students and the use of modern technology in schools have both been major topics of educational research in the last two decades. There has been discussion about overcoming cultural differences among students in schools. ICT can be looked at in terms of its capacity to offset cultural differences. However, there is still only limited knowledge about how immigrant students actually use ICT. The aim of this paper is to examine this area using a secondary quantitative analysis of data from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2015. The main focus will be on examining whether there are differences in the use of ICT between native and immigrant 15-year-old students. In order to perform this examination, multilevel modelling was used. During the analysis, we worked with data from 10 European countries that used the ICT Familiarity Questionnaire and had at least a 10% immigrant student population (first and second generation) in their samples. The applied variables were the distinction between student use of ICT in school and outside of school and between the use of ICT outside of school for schoolwork and for leisure activities. The preliminary results suggest that there are some differences in the use of ICT between native and immigrant students; an important factor is the context in which ICT is used. While immigrant students use ICT at home for school purposes significantly more than their native peers in the investigated countries, there do not seem to be consistent differences in the use of ICT outside of school for leisure activities.