Abstract:

The aims of this paper are firstly to identify digital competence among pupils finishing Year 4 in primary school, and secondly, to examine factors having an impact on pupil’s digital competence.

Since 2006, the ability to use Information and communication technology (ICT) has been one of the five key competencies in the Norwegian elementary school. The starting point of this paper is the digital competence aims after Year 4 in the national curriculum.

There are different perspectives on digital competence. However, in this paper digital competence is related to the descriptions in the competence aims from the national curriculum. Digital competence is defined as students’ acquired knowledge, skills, attitudes and values when using ICT to perform a task adequately in a specific context. The aims of this paper are firstly to identify digital competence among pupils finishing Year 4 in primary school, and secondly, to examine factors having an impact on pupil’s digital competence.

Digital competence is broadly grouped into basic functional user skills (e.g. know how to use ICT), responsible user skills (e.g. how to use ICT safely and in an ethical way), information knowledge (e.g. finding, evaluating and selecting information) and digital production (e.g. using ICT creating assignments, projects, presentations and calculations).

Further studies have indicated that motivation is a relevant theme when analyzing digital competence. Goal orientation is one important research area within motivation. Pintrich & Schunk (2002) present two main types of goal orientation that shed lights on why students try to reach their goals. Firstly, mastery orientation, focusing on learning according to one’s own standards, and secondly, performance orientation focusing on demonstrating one’s own literacy related to social, often normative, standards.

Student’s family background and their cultural capital are also relevant when analyzing student’s achievements in school. Parent’s level of education and the number of books at home are relevant indicators of pupil’s cultural capital.

Method
The sample of students consists of more than 1500 students completing an assessment and a self-report questionnaire. The assessment consists of 60 tasks (e.g. hot spot questions, multiple choice and text recognition) in order to measure functional knowledge, information knowledge and digital production (twenty tasks per theme). Additionally, the pupils were asked to complete a self-report questionnaire with questions about gender, how frequent they use computers, mastery orientation and cultural capital.

Preliminary findings
The findings from the survey reveal that pupils’ social background is positively significantly correlated with the scores on the three themes (functional knowledge, information knowledge and digital production).
Further the findings also show that pupils’ with high levels of mastery orientation is achieving higher scores on the three themes (functional knowledge, information knowledge and digital production) comparing with pupils with lower levels of mastery orientation.
Females are also performing slightly higher than males on digital competence, and this finding challenge the assumption that a more males than females are “digital native”. However the amount of time pupils spend by the computer at home or at school is not correlated with digital competence.

Keywords:

Digital competence, mastery orientation, cultural capital, ICT, primary school.