The Mediating Effect of ICT Usage on the Relationship Between Students’ Socioeconomic Status and Achievement

To find out if information and communication technology (ICT) could narrow the achievement gaps among students caused by variations in their socioeconomic status, this study examines the mediating mechanism of ICT use between students’ socioeconomic status (SES) and achievement. Data from the 2012 East Asia Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) were used for the structural equation modeling estimations, drawing on the work of 31,161 students. The results showed that using ICT for information retrieval and social interaction could widen the achievement gaps caused by variations in SES. This study also found that gender could significantly moderate the positive relationship between students’ SES and ICT usage for learning, as well as for social interaction.