This sixth volume of the Programme for International Student Assessment 2009 (pisa 2009) results explores students' use of information technologies to learn. For pisa 2009, the framework for reading literacy has been developed to encompass reading electronic texts. This has led to an expansion of the description of text types to take account of the electronic environment, as well as a redefinition of the aspects of reading, to embrace, for example, the requirement for integration of information from multiple unrelated texts, as well as other features. The pisa 2009 reading framework and the assessment instrument together provide an operational definition and description of the distinctive structures and types of both text and task that constitute electronic reading, allowing an exploration of factors that contribute to difficulty. Pisa 2009 therefore provides an opportunity to investigate electronic reading on a large scale. This publication presents some initial findings. (Contains 12 boxes, 108 figures and 192 tables.) [For related reports, see Executive Summary (ed518016); Volume I (ed518013); Volume ii (ed518015); Volume iii (ed518014); Volume iv (ed518019); and Volume v (ed518018).]
