Research On The Influence Of Educational Informatization On The Cognitive Ability Gap Between Urban And Rural Students

Educational informatization is of great significance to promote the equality of urban and rural education.which is highly expected by academic circles and policy makers.However,as a kind of educational resource input,if there is no scientific and reasonable construction plan,it may become a new unbalanced factor between urban and rural education.In view of the lack of empirical research on this issue in previous studies,the author used national sample data for analysis.The main research questions include:(1)Are there differences in the development level of educational informatization and students’ cognitive ability between urban and rural areas?(2)Does educational informatization affect students’ cognitive ability?To what extent?And the heterogeneity of its influence?(3)How much of the cognitive ability gap between urban and rural students can be attributed to the different development levels of educational informatization in urban and rural areas?In terms of analysis techniques,this study used OLS model and HLM model to estimate the impact of educational informatization on students’ cognitive ability,and explored the heterogeneity of this effect in different grades and regions through sub-samples.Meanwhile,by referring to the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition method of wage income gap in labor economics,the source of the cognitive ability gap between urban and rural students is decomposed,and the urban-rural education informatization gap is decomposed into endowment gap and rate of return gap.Through quantitative analysis,the following empirical conclusions are obtained:First,there is a significant gap between the development level of urban and rural education informatization and the cognitive ability of urban and rural students.Second,on the whole,educational informatization has a significant positive impact on students’cognitive ability.For every standard deviation increase of comprehensive score of educational informatization,students’ cognitive ability increased by 0.043 standard deviations.At the same time,the sub-sample regression analysis shows that the influence of educational informatization on students’ cognitive ability is heterogeneous.Thirdly,educational informatization is an important cause of the gap between urban and rural students’ cognitive ability,which can explain about 30%of the gap between urban and rural students’ cognitive ability in central and western China.Among them,the central region mainly plays a role through the different "rate of return" of educational informatization,while the western region,the gap in "endowment" of educational informatization is the main reason for the gap in cognitive ability between urban and rural students.On this basis,the research suggests that we should further increase the input of rural educational informatization resources and promote the balanced allocation of educational informatization resources;Accelerate the construction and sharing of high-quality education resources platform,and promote the supply-side reform of informationized resources;Strengthen the evaluation of policy and resource use effect,and improve the use efficiency of informationized resources;Strengthen the training of rural teachers in the application of information technology and improve the application effect of information technology in teaching.