In 2000, the OECD initiated the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Within the programme, data on school-related knowledge and skills of 15 year old students were collected on a very large scale. Since then, PISA studies have been performed every three years and the number of countries participating has steadily increased. At the same time, the use of ICT in and out of schools has come to receive increasing attention (OECD, 2010, 2011). The young people who are being assessed by PISA are in transition from childhood to adulthood. Erikson, who suggested a model for psychosocial development that covers the whole life-span in eight stages, called this stage “identity versus role confusion” (Erikson, 1950, 1968). It is a time when young people prepare themselves for adulthood, a time when the question “who am I?” is of uttermost importance. As Erikson noted, this may lead to an identity crisis. Keupp has taken up the idea of identity development and argued that in our post-modern societies which are characterised by dramatic changes, it may difficult to achieve the kind of identity that Erikson seems to have had in mind. Life in our post-modern societies is much less prescripted than it used to be, which gives individuals more freedom in designing their life paths, but which renders them also less secure. In spite of developing a unified identity, people tend to develop a patchwork identity that reflects the fragmented society they live in. We believe that identity development – and as a correlate, the development of a self-concept - is strongly influenced by the family in which children grow up and that a young person’s characteristics and behaviours – such as ICT use and academic achievement - are related to family characteristics like cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1986) and parent’s support for their children. Given that the PISA 2015 data provide us with information on these aspects, we would like to explore patterns of family background, students’ self-concept and their ICT use at home. In particular we will focus on data from Germany, the Netherlands and Finland to allow for international and intranational comparisons.

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