Widening the Digital Divide: The mediating role of Intelligent Tutoring Systems in the relationship between rurality, socioeducational advantage, and mathematics learning outcomes

This study examines how the effects of school socioeducational advantage and rurality upon mathematics learning outcomes, are impacted by students’ usage of the ITS platform AdaptiveMath. Activity log data from the AdaptiveMath platform was merged with school sociodemographic data from the public MySchool database. The final analytic sample comprised of 66,451 Australian high school students across 304 schools in Years 7–10, who used the AdaptiveMath ITS platform in 2023. Structural Equation Modelling was employed to examine both the direct and indirect effects of school socioeducational advantage and rurality on student usage of the AdaptiveMath platform, and the resulting student learning outcomes.

This study finds marginal, but statistically significant relationships between ITS usage and learning outcomes, and the socioeducational advantage and rurality of a student's school. Students who are from more affluent and urban schools use the ITS platform earlier in their school career, for more years, and have higher learning outcomes than their rural, less affluent peers. Further, ITS usage was found to mediate the relationship between socioeducational advantage and rurality, such that it amplified the positive effects of socioeducational advantage, and the negative effects of rurality, upon learning outcomes.

The results suggest that introducing ITS platforms into Australian mathematics teaching will not reduce achievement gaps between affluent and disadvantaged schools. Rather, a Matthew Effect may be observed, whereby students attending privileged schools use ITS platforms more effectively, thereby contributing to an even greater disparities in learning outcome.