Investigation on the Relationship between Information Communication Technology and Reading Literacy for Northeast Asian Students

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship of internet communication technologies (ICT) usage and reading literacy of Northeast Asian Students in PISA 2009. ICT was crucial for all governments in the world towards promoting equity. ICT had been considered a low cost opportunity towards equalizing educational systems. A multilevel modeling (MLM) was applied to identify at which school-level the largest variations in the three indicators exist in this study. With MLM, it could be examine simultaneously the effects of different hierarchical school-level variables; to take account of possible correlations of students’ reading literacy in this study within higher levels (Urbanization, Total number of students Computers for education) which may otherwise lead to incorrect standard errors and inefficient estimates; to treat higher levels as related; and to examine inter-area variations at each level. The empirical results include the different between group components was significant. Self-confidence in ICT high level tasks was positive with students’ reading literacy, and self-confidence in ICT high level tasks was negative with students’ reading literacy. The urbanization of schools’ area and total number of students of schools were positive with students’ reading literacy. The urbanization of schools’ area was negative with the relationship of ICT for school related tasks and students’ reading literacy. Total number of students was negative with the relationship of ICT for school related tasks and students’ reading literacy, and ICT availability in school and students’ reading literacy. Keywords-Information and communication technology, Reading literacy, Multilevel linear modeling