Affective and Social Competencies of Elementary School Students in the Use of Digital Textbooks: A Longitudinal Study

This study investigates the impact of digital textbooks, which play an important role in post-COVID-19 digitalized education, on the development of elementary school students' affective and social competencies. The study quantitatively analyzed three years of student panel data collected from 1,418 students in the third and fourth grades of a digital textbook pilot elementary school in South Korea. This study examined differences in the development of affective and social competencies between the treatment group (n = 708), who used digital textbooks for three years, and the control group (n = 710), who used digital textbooks for two years and returned to paper textbooks. Results showed that the affective competencies of self-efficacy, learning motivation, and learning attitudes were higher in the treatment group than in the control group, and the social competencies of communication, collaboration, and sociability were also higher. Implications for digital education research and related policies are provided, and limitations and suggestions for future research are discussed.