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The differential relationships between PISA 2015 science performance and, ICT availability, ICT use and attitudes toward ICT across regions: evidence from 35 countries

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Abstract

The aim of this study was to explore the differential relationships between students’ science performance and their ICT availability, ICT use, and attitudes toward ICT based on the data from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2015 across the countries and regions including South/ Latin America, Europe, and Asia and Pacific. Before 2015, the PISA tests were paper-based, but in 2015, for the first time, a computer-based test was used. The mean score in science performance decreased dramatically in PISA 2015. In order to propose a plausible reason for this decrease, the relationships between students’ science performance and students’ ICT availability, ICT use, and attitudes toward ICT were examined. The ICT Development Indexes (IDI) of 35 countries were used to investigate whether the relationships vary across countries. Two-level regression was employed for the analysis, taking into account plausible values and sample weights. The results indicated that there was a differential relationship among countries and regions for how much of the total variance was explained through ICT related factors. Controlling major student- and school-level variables, as IDI scores of countries increase, explained variances of science scores by ICT use, availability and attitude increase in South/ Latin America, whereas, for countries in Europe, the explained variances decrease. In Asia and Pacific, explained variances across countries were similar. Further implications are discussed emphasizing the importance of regions-based perspectives.

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Data availability

All data were taken from OECD official website. Link for the website: https://www.oecd.org/pisa/data/2015database/

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Funding

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. International Educational Development M.A., International & Transcultural Studies Department, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Sümeyye Arpacı

  2. Department of Mathematics and Science Education, Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey

    Fatih Çağlayan Mercan & Serkan Arıkan

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  1. Sümeyye Arpacı
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  2. Fatih Çağlayan Mercan
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  3. Serkan Arıkan
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Sümeyye Arpacı, Fatih Çağlayan Mercan, and Serkan Arıkan. This draft of the manuscript was written by Sümeyye Arpacı, Fatih Çağlayan Mercan, and Serkan Arıkan. And all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Sümeyye Arpacı.

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Sümeyye Arpacı is the corresponding author.

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The authors have no conflict of interest to report.

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Mplus 7.3 (Muthén & Muthén, 2014) was used to conduct the analysis.

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This manuscript expands on the Master of Science thesis conducted and published by Sümeyye Arpacı in which Fatih Çağlayan Mercan was the thesis advisor and Serkan Arıkan was co-advisor of the master thesis in 2020 at Bogazici University.

Appendix

Appendix

Table 3 Detailed information of participated students and coverage index for the national desired target population
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Table 4 Beta values and significances of ICT related variables of countries
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Arpacı, S., Mercan, F.Ç. & Arıkan, S. The differential relationships between PISA 2015 science performance and, ICT availability, ICT use and attitudes toward ICT across regions: evidence from 35 countries. Educ Inf Technol 26, 6299–6318 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-021-10576-2

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