Latent profiles of technology use and their relationship with performance in pisa Spain

Abstract

In an era of increasing technological advances, in which Information and Communication Technologies have become an integral part of everyday life, educational institutions have generated various strategies to incorporate these technologies into the classroom environment and improve teaching and learning processes. It is reasonable to hypothesise that there is a direct correlation between the frequency of use and the students’ performance. The objectives of this work are twofold: firstly, to identify and characterise latent profiles based on the frequency of use of educational technology among Spanish students; and secondly, to analyse their relationship with performance in mathematics, science, and reading. For this study, the open database PISA 2022 was utilised. Firstly, a latent class analysis was performed on the Spanish sample (n=27548) to identify and characterize patterns of ICT use frequencies. Subsequently, MANOVA analysis and post hoc tests were applied to examine differences in academic performance between classes. The primary results indicated the presence of three latent classes in Spain, characterised by low, medium, and high frequency of use. The distribution of females, males, relative ages, and socioeconomic status is similar in all classes. Furthermore, students who have previously attended the institution are likelier to exhibit a higher frequency of low and medium use. The multivariate analysis observed a «U» shape in the Science and Reading achievement scores, whereby students with a medium frequency of use obtained lower scores than those with low and high frequency of use. The findings of this study indicate that the correlation between ICT utilisation and academic performance is not linear. It is important to note that the nature of the data (self-perception) may generate biases in the results; therefore, it would be important to conduct research that considers the students’ self-perception and triangulates with the teachers’ perceptions or direct observations in the classroom.