Traditionally, the role of school has been very important in supporting students’ learning of traditional literacy and text comprehension skills. Literacy, especially, text comprehension skills are considered as key skills that are taught and supported in primary schools. Students are trained for years to reach text comprehension skills at school. Whereas current research indicate that Internet literacy seems not to be systematically taught or supported in schools (Sormunen & Alamettälä, 2014). Consequently, the Internet as learning environment and so Internet literacy has become an important part of the curricula already in primary education for the 21. Century knowledge society (Finnish curriculum, 2016). Although, Internet literacy is mentioned in the current European curricula, the practices seem still to be emerging in schools. So, based on international studies like Programme for International Student Assessment PISA (OECD 2019) and International Computer and Information Literacy Study ICILS 2018 (European Union, 2019) Internet literacy is a challenge in current schools. According to ICLS 2018 every third Finnish student has not reached the expected proficiency level for dealing with the Internet as a learning environment.

Hence, the purpose of the study is to investigate Internet learning culture among six-graders in school context. By learning culture we refer to the physical learning environment and social practises through which people learn (James & Biesta, 2007). The learning culture in school is changing in the era of Internet. Internet learning culture can be seen consisting of two dimensions, of students’ everyday Internet practices, how, where and what kind of applications they use, and additionally, how competent students perceive themselves in Internet literacy. In addition to this, in this study, students’ perception of safety and risks in the Internet, and the support needed from school in learning these skills, are considered as part of the Internet learning culture. Hence, students’ online self-efficacy refers to their competence in finding relevant sources, processing and using them for learning purposes. Online self-efficacy (Cheng & Tsai, 2011) has been adapted to the internet context from Banduras’ concept of self-efficacy beliefs (1977).

So, there is an urgent need to investigate current internet learning culture among primary school children. Children are nowadays often required to comprehend complex texts, and additionally use various applications, to search for information, to evaluate the reliability of the sources, and even to write synthesis based on multiple texts in school context. But processing multiple sources, and thus doing online inquiry, is not just a simple task but a complex cognitive and emotional process (Stadtler & Bromme, 2013; Britt & Rouet, 2012; Brand-Gruwel et al., 2005; Leu et al., 2013). So, this study tries to illuminate the current Internet learning culture in primary level and compare, how traditional literary skills are related to students’ perceived Internet learning culture.

Hence, this exploratory study deals with the following two research questions:  

- How does the Internet learning culture look like among six-graders?

- Is there a difference of the Internet learning culture between high and low text performing students? 

The participants were 56 six-graders, 34 girls and 22 boys aged from 12 to 13 years (M=12.11, SD =.31), from a primary school in an urban area of Finland. The measurements used were a questionnaire (Likert scale 1-5) and standardised text comprehension tests. The questionnaire consisted of items concerning usage of the Internet, devices to access the Internet, where they use Internet (home, school, on the way to school or with friends), purpose for use, applications used in daily life, how they learnt to use Internet, and finally, expected support from school. Then, there were further items on online self-efficacy, for example, how confident students consider themselves to search effectively for information, to evaluate various sources to select the relevant once and write a synthesis from multiple sources. Last items were, how they perceive Internet risks, like hacker and Internet fraud, and information risks, like information overload and fake-news. Text comprehension was measured by standardized test.

The results indicate that almost all children (92%) use a smartphone as main device for accessing the Internet, half of them additionally a PC. Being online is daily practice mainly at home (98%) and rarely at school (14%). They are using a wide variety of applications. Most frequently children use the Internet for the purpose of communicating (M=2.2, SD=.83), fairly often for searching for information (M=2.5, SD=.92) and for gaming (M=2.6, SD=1.2). When considering, how children learnt to use the Internet, it was found, that children learnt mainly on their own (M=1.66, SD=.82), rarely with a family member, friends (M=3.2, SD=1.4) or at school (M=3.5, SD=1.5). Children’s expectations of the school to support them in Internet learning were modest (M=4.1, SD=.9). Furthermore, their perceived online self-efficacy is high (M=1.8, SD=.50); they are confident to search, evaluate and write a synthesis . They feel secure with both with Internet risks (M=3.6, SD=1.1) and information risks (M=3.7, SD=.9). The next research question focuses on the differences in Internet culture between high-and low text comprehension performers. K-Means-cluster analysis based on standardized text comprehension tests identified a low performing group (n=26) and a high performing group (n=28). For comparison T-tests were conducted. Statistically significant differences were found in online self-efficacy, T(51)=-2.29, p=.027. The low performing group considered their online self-efficacy (M=1.97, SD=.53) lower than high performing group (M=1.66, SD=.46). Furthermore, the low performing group perceived the information risks in the Internet as more dangerous (M=3.47, SD=1.0) than the high performing group (M=4.0, SD=.76), T(50)=2.06, p=.011. Furthermore, students with higher text comprehension have the perception, that they have better Internet literacy although school do not play an important role. Further attention should be given to their performance in Internet literacy.

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