Building blocks for STEM education: investigating students’ and parents’ attitudes toward tablet-based literacy and numeracy learning initiative

In the contemporary digital era, digital learning technologies have become increasingly integral to education systems worldwide. Tablet-based learning tools have gained attention for their portability, interactivity, and potential to support foundational literacy and numeracy skills, regarded as precursors to later STEM learning. This study investigated students’ and parents’ attitudes toward the government-implemented Literacy and Numeracy Drive (LND), a tablet-based initiative for teaching and assessing foundational literacy and numeracy skills in public primary schools in Punjab, Pakistan. Data were collected from 216 fifth-grade students and 151 parents using a self-developed Tablet Attitude Questionnaire measuring overall attitudes, educational benefits, technical awareness, negative potential, and prior experience. Descriptive statistics, independent-samples t-tests, and multiple regression analyses were conducted using IBM SPSS Statistics. Results showed that students demonstrated highly positive attitudes toward LND, whereas parents expressed moderately positive but more cautious attitudes. Significant differences emerged between students’ and parents’ attitudes across all measured constructs. Educational benefits were positively associated with favourable attitudes among both groups, while technical awareness showed significant indirect associations through perceived educational benefits. The findings provide context-specific evidence of stakeholder acceptance of tablet-based foundational learning, supporting readiness for later STEM education rather than demonstrating improvements in STEM achievement.