ICT and educational (dis)advantage: families, computers and contemporary social and educational inequalities

Abstract

Because access to new technologies is unequally distributed, there has been considerable debate about the growing gap between the so‐called information‐rich and information‐poor. Such concerns have led to high‐profile information technology policy initiatives in many countries. In Australia, in an attempt to ‘redress the balance between the information rich and poor’ by providing ‘equal access to the World Wide Web’ (Virtual Communities, 2002), the Australian Council of Trade Unions, Virtual Communities (a computer/software distributor) and Primus (an Internet provider) in late 1999 formed an alliance to offer relatively inexpensive computer and Internet access to union members in order to make ‘technology affordable for all Australians’ (Virtual Communities, 2002). In this paper, we examine four families, one of which had long‐term Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) access, and three of which took advantage of the Virtual Communities offer to get home computer and Internet access for the first time. We examine their engagement with ICT and suggest that previously disadvantaged family members are not particularly advantaged by their access to ICT.

Notes

School of Education, University of Ballarat, Ballarat 3353, Australia. Email: [email protected]

This is a revised and extended version of a paper first presented at the Oxford Ethnography Conference at the Department of Education Studies, University of Oxford, September 2002.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lawrence Angus *

School of Education, University of Ballarat, Ballarat 3353, Australia. Email: [email protected]