Digital literacy of socially excluded adolescents

With the advent of digital technology into our lives, the fact that the socially weakest stratum of society is lagging behind in digital literacy is becoming increasingly apparent. This problem is referred to as the second form of the digital divide. Since it has not yet been sufficiently examined, we carried out qualitative research using the grounded theory method, aimed at identifying the causes leading to this second form of the digital divide and defining the development model for this inequality. The collection of data was conducted by means of students solving tasks focused on digital literacy. In the course of this process, the computer screen was recorded and the entire investigator-student communication was captured on an audio track. Subsequently, semi-structured interviews were conducted with the students and their teachers. On the basis of analysis of the data, we created a theory of learning to handle an unknown software program. The process of learning exposes the student to various problems. The strategy used by each student to address these is chosen by the person depending on their previous knowledge of and experience with similar situations, particularly with similar software. The effectiveness of the applied strategy is overseen by the student's metacognitive control mechanisms. On the basis of the results obtained, the student's learning may (or may not) occur that improves the person's knowledge and skills, thus influencing how he/she addresses similar problems in the future. We see the benefits of our theory in describing a process of independent learning in the specific world of digital technologies. This can make the theory highly beneficial for teaching informatics. On the basis of this theory we described differences between socially excluded students and the majority in learning how to handle unknown programs. On the basis of our research, we believe in the long term that the difference in speed of lifelong learning in the field of handling digital technologies is the root cause of the emergence of the digital divide. During data analysis we identified a total of eight factors influencing the speed of lifelong learning in this sector; half of these also directly affect the level of digital literacy through the ability to solve problems. The resulting theory describes the lifelong process of the emergence of the digital divide. We see the main gain of our work in the identification of the process of emergence of the digital divide