Cultural background in digital literacy of elementary and middle school students: Self-appraisal versus actual performance

Background: Integration of digital technologies in schools raises the need for studentsto master technological, cognitive, and social digital literacy (DL) competencies.Objectives: Based on Hofstede's dimensional paradigm for defining culture, weaddress the cultural context and examine perceived and actual DL of Arabic-speakingminority students in Israel.Methods: First, 402 Arabic-speaking minority students from elementary Arabic-speaking schools and 232 students from middle schools reported their DL based onthe DL framework. Among them, 347 elementary and 205 middle school studentsperformed a battery of DL tasks.Findings and Conclusions: The findings revealed a very low level of DL performanceby minority students in both elementary and middle schools. The highest performance score was in information literacy: M = 1.49 and M = 1.55 out of 5.00 for elementary and middle school students respectively. Despite the ubiquitous use of socialnetworks, the lowest score was obtained in social–emotional literacy—0.23 for bothelementary and middle school students. In contrast to performance, both elementaryand middle school minority students estimated their digital literacy competencies ashigh or very high. Among the elementary students, a weak correlation was foundbetween their DL perceptions and performance of the photo-visual, branching, andsocial–emotional literacies. Among the middle school students, the only significantcorrelation was found between perceptions and performance of reproduction literacy. The findings raise the need to improve the DL competencies of minority studentsand develop their metacognitive abilities. This helps to assess their DL more accurately, in order to ensure their successful functioning in digital environments. Theoretical and educational implications of the findings are discussed.KEYWORDSactual competencies, digital literacy, cultural differences, digital literacy, educational stagedifferences, minority school students, perceived digital literacy skills