Digital Inclusion and Learning at Home: Challenges for Low-Income Australian Families

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Osman, Kim
Marshall, Amber
Dezuanni, Michael
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Yates, Simeon

Carmi, Elinor

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2024
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The sudden switch to learning exclusively at home during the COVID-19 pandemic revealed the extent of low levels of digital inclusion for many low-income and socially disadvantaged families and children in Australia. Many students and families struggled with access to, and the affordability of, devices and data, along with having the required digital skills and mentoring to learn at home. The Australian Government recognises that “socially vulnerable children are over-represented among the group of students who are educationally vulnerable” and the Australian Digital Inclusion Index shows there is a “substantial digital divide between richer and poorer Australians” (Thomas J, Barraket J, Wilson C, Cook K, Louie Y, Holcombe-James I, Ewing S, MacDonald T, Measuring Australia’s digital divide: the Australian digital inclusion index 2018. RMIT University, for Telstra, Melbourne, 2018). This combination of digital and social disadvantage has far-reaching consequences for the educational outcomes of children from low-income families in Australia. Additionally, as social, government, education and commercial services move rapidly towards ‘digital by default,’ digital inclusion and in particular, digital ability, are critical for social and economic participation in society (Dezuanni M, Allan C, Pittsworth stories: Developing a social living lab for digital participation in a rural Australian community. In: Dezuanni M, Foth M, Mallan K, Hughes H (eds) Digital participation through social living labs –valuing local knowledge, enhancing engagement. Chandos Publishing, Cambridge, pp 141–171, 2018; Al-Muwil A, Weerakkody V, El-haddadeh R, Dwivedi Y, Inform Syst Front 21(3): 635–659, 2019). This chapter outlines policy, government, industry and community responses to enabling children from low-income families in Australia to learn at home during the COVID-19 pandemic. It discusses how such responses can be part of sustainable solutions to the digital inclusion challenges of families that enables all family members to fully participate in society now, and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Digital Inclusion: International Policy and Research

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1st

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© The Author(s) 2024. This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

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Osman, K; Marshall, A; Dezuanni, M, Digital Inclusion and Learning at Home: Challenges for Low-Income Australian Families., Digital Inclusion: International Policy and Research, 2024, 1st, pp. 87-109

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