School level characteristics and students' CIL in Europe - A latent class analysis approach

The research presented in this article aims to identify school clusters based on relevant school level characteristics for the use of ICT in schools that have been identified in previous research, namely school visions and goals, teachers' professional development and ICT infrastructure. In doing so, it focuses on secondary schools in Europe and uses a latent class analysis approach. This article uses representative data from 1727 secondary schools in the 12 European countries that participated in the International Computer and Information Literacy Study to examine (1) whether it is possible to identify distinct school clusters and, if so, (2) whether there is a relation between the different clusters and the students' CIL. The results show that it is indeed empirically possible to identify school clusters across Europe. Furthermore, they show relations between school clusters and the students' CIL in some countries. They do also, however, differ considerably across countries.