Worried About the Wrong Things

by Jacqueline Ryan Vickery

  In this chapter, I consider how adults and students value technology and media in different and sometimes competing ways. Beyond struggles over access and rules, there are deeper and significant concerns about students’ rights and expectations. Rules matter, of course; however, at the heart of students’ frustrations is a struggle for validation and respect. This chapter compares and contrasts the attitudes and expectations of adults in the school with those of the students in order to demonstrate a discursive tension over expectations and values. As I will demonstrate, the discursive tension between adults’ struggle for control and students’ struggle for rights can help us better understand the role of technology at school.

  Adults’ Expectations: A Discourse of Control

  Policies regulating the use of mobile media are often constructed as a way to protect schools from legal liability associated with predators, sexting, bullying, and pornography (Cramer and Hayes 2010). As early as the 1980s, schools in the US began banning pagers because they feared they would be used to traffic drugs—fears that were fallaciously fueled by media panics (Sims 1988; Trump 1995, 2009). Similarly, in accordance with the official policy, students at Freeway High were told to leave all personal technology devices in their lockers, pockets, or purses during school. Rightly concerned that devices left in their lockers would be stolen, most students carried small devices with them. Because laptops were difficult to carry all day, and because lockers were not secure, many participants chose not to bring laptops to school. If a student was seen using a mobile device, or if one made a noise during class, it was up to the teacher’s discretion to administer a warning or to confiscate the device; in the latter case, a parent would sometimes be asked to come to the school and retrieve the device.1

  In addition to liability, schools are also concerned about other risks. Two reasons frequently cited as justifications for banning mobile devices at school include reducing the risk of distraction and reducing risk of increased stress that can be a result of constant mobile phone usage (the latter is often lumped together within a rhetoric of media addiction, but as will be explained, I purposefully avoid the term). Certainly distraction and increased stress are legitimate concerns related to the use of mobile media at school. I want to review some of the research that supports banning mobile media on both of these two premises, and also consider alternate explanations and approaches that demonstrate that these concerns do not wholly justify banning the use of mobile media in schools. I will also incorporate the perspectives of participants at Freeway High in order to contextualize and examine the array of opinions and approaches.

  Controlling Mobile Media

  When asked why her school enforced a restrictive policy regarding mobile media, Anna speculated the rules were there to “keep people on task”:

  Try and keep them working on school work so everyone can pass, the district looks good, they get paychecks, everyone gets paid. Because if you’re sitting there on YouTube all day you might not be learning anything at all. … Then at the same time it sounds like they’re going too far with [the rules] in general. I don’t know. It’s one of those situations where you’re not really sure why the rule’s there, but at the same time if it wasn’t there it might be worse. At least it stops some people who don’t know what the proxy is or something from getting on [to blocked sites]. Then again, who’s to stop them from just sitting there not doing anything in general? It’s not like they need their phone to not pay attention.

  Anna’s statement echoes other participants who also expressed ambiguity toward the technology rules. Most students understood, to a certain extent, that the rules were designed to keep students “on task”; however, virtually all participants felt the rules went too far. Some felt they limited creativity; others adamantly believed they were more productive when they could listen to music, look up tutorials and information online, or read and take notes on their mobile devices. For example, Cassandra (18 years old, biracial2) got frustrated that teachers did not allow her to use her phone in class: “I like using the notepad on my phone [to take notes], but I can’t because of my teachers. And sometimes we have to turn in our notes or we’re allowed to use our notes on tests, but I can’t have my phone out during a test looking at my notes.” Other participants also commented that they preferred to take notes on a mobile device because it was faster and more convenient, and because they always had the device with them. These practices were discouraged or banned because of the threat of distraction.

  Such policies are not new. By the late 1990s, most schools banned or strictly regulated mobile devices in order to minimize classroom disruptions, as was advised by the consulting firm National School Safety and Security Services (Cell phones and text messaging in schools, n.d.).3 Likewise, teachers at Freeway cited concern about the possibility of distraction that personal technology posed. Mobile phones undoubtedly have the potential to disrupt formal learning environments by distracting teachers and students. Indeed, I witnessed plenty of instances in which students at Freeway were distracted by their mobile devices during class. However, I also witnessed plenty of instances in which a student was distracted by other students, by a stuck zipper on a jacket, by an air vent blowing cold air on his or her papers, and by emotional distractions related to such matters as the instability of the student’s home life, a lack of lunch money, or the struggle of the student’s mother to find a job. In other words, with or without a mobile device, students get distracted at school.

  While I will argue that banning mobile media misses valuable opportunities for developing literacies, there are those on the other side of the debate who argue that mobile devices have no place in formal education at any level, including college (Felipe 2015). There are some compelling arguments for completely banning mobile devices, and they are worth consideration.

  For example, a recent study in the UK found that test scores improved by 6.4 percent after a school banned mobile phones, and that low-performing students were the ones most likely to see improvements in their test scores (Beland and Murphy 2015). The underlying assumption of that study is that mobile phones pose a distraction that inhibits learning. The logic supposes that when the phones are removed, distractions are minimized and attention increases, leading to improved test scores. This argument and data led Beland and Murphy to conclude that “schools could significantly reduce the education achievement gap by prohibiting mobile phone use in schools” (ibid., p. 3). From a particular angle, this makes a lot of sense, which is likely to be the reason why, in the first six months after the study was published, it gained a lot of national and international attention in news and education circles.4 But it should be noted that, though the sample was large, the results must be interpreted within a particular context: 16-year-old students, at 91 schools in four cities in England, who were taking rigorous qualification exams in 2013. We must exercise caution before assuming the findings are representative of other populations or that the results can be directly applied to a US context.

  The data of Beland and Murphy are persuasive, and perhaps their study makes a case for banning mobile phones in particular contexts—for example, during preparation for high-stake exams, such as the state-mandated standardized tests that students in the US must pass. However, the Beland and Murphy study does not assess the relationship between mobile phones and overall academic success or career preparation. I am cautious of conclusions that claim test scores alone will “close education gaps.” Equating gaps in test scores to overall educational achievement gaps presents a narrow focus of academic success and heavy-handedly blames technology as a root cause of educational inequality. Yet in the United States, and more specifically in Texas, standardized test scores have been heavily criticized for not accurately reflecting and predicting trends in academic success (Sacks 1999; Weiss 2012). In his 1999 book Standardized Minds, the educator Peter Sacks writes:

  Evidence strongly suggests that standardized testing flies in the face of recent advances in our understanding of
how people learn to think and reason. Repeatedly in the research over the past few years, especially in the grade school arena (K–12), one finds evidence that traditional tests reinforce passive, rote learning of facts and formulas, quite contrary to the active, critical thinking skills many educators now believe schools should be encouraging. … At the K–12 level, teachers often don’t believe that tests accurately measure their students’ abilities, and do believe that widespread practice of ‘teaching to the test’ renders tests scores virtually meaningless. (p. 9, emphasis added)

  Rather than educating students as critical thinkers and productive citizens, the primary purpose of standardized achievement tests is to allow school boards and funding agencies to rate the effectiveness of teachers, schools, and school districts (Popham 1999; Weiss 2012). A ban on mobile phones might close the gap in test scores, but that does not mean that a ban better prepares students for academic success after graduation, nor does it indicate better preparation for the workforce. On the contrary, as I explore in the following sections, learning how to manage the use of mobile devices is a necessary and valuable digital literacy that schools ought to help students develop. The emphasis on test scores alone overlooks other educational, creative, and empowering benefits of responsibly incorporating mobile media into the classroom—benefits such as facilitating collaborative distance learning (Ally 2009), enhancing engagement via interactivity (Huizenga et al. 2009), and bridging gaps between formal education and out-of-school learning (Ito et al. 2010).

  Another recent study, conducted in 2016 at the US Military Academy at West Point, made similar claims that support banning mobile devices at school. The faculty members who conducted the study found that removing tablets and laptops from an introductory economics course led to an improvement in students’ grades, especially among males and students with high grade-point averages (Carter, Greenberg, and Walker 2016). The researchers compared the final exam grades of students who were allowed to use laptops and tablets against those of students who were not allowed to use them and found that those who did not use such devices in class scored higher than those who did. These results seem compelling. The experiment clearly demonstrates a negative correlation between in-class technology use and exam scores. But Carter et al. (ibid., p. 28) are hesitant to offer conclusive explanations for the results: “We … cannot test whether the laptop or tablet leads to worse note taking, whether the increased availability of distractions for computer users (email, Facebook, Twitter, news, other classes, etc.) leads to lower grades or whether professors teach differently when students are on their computers.” Inserting technology into a classroom is likely to disrupt traditional modes of learning and engagement, and I would never suggest it does not present a distraction. However, in order to take advantage of the availability of technology in the classroom, education must change its approach to learning and evaluation. In other words, the dyadic one-way transmission of information from professor to student may not be best suited to teaching with and through technology. A collaborative, peer-driven, problem-solving approach to learning may be better for integrating technology in the classroom. In this model the teacher is not the expert at the front of the room merely imparting information for students to jot down; instead, the teacher charges students with the task of creatively solving problems and seeking out answers collaboratively. Similarly, exams that ask students to regurgitate information they have heard and transcribed in class may be best accomplished in the absence of technology.

  My point is that we cannot insert technology into a classroom, continue to teach as we always have, rely on traditional assessment tools, and then draw the conclusion that technology is detrimental to learning. By analogy, if we wanted to measure whether or not technology made people more social, we should not measure only the amount of face-to-face communication. If we did that, we might erroneously come to the conclusion that technology leads to less sociality. Yet if we expanded our definition of sociality to also measure and account for mediated conversations via phone calls, text messaging, emails, social media, etc., we would find that technology affords greater communicative contact and can enhance personal communication and sociality (Baym 2010). Or, if we wanted to measure how yoga affects health and we measured only weight loss, we might wrongly conclude that yoga does not significantly lead to improved health. But if we were to also measure increased strength, flexibility, balance, and stress levels, we would draw very different conclusions about the relationship between yoga and health (Heid 2014). The studies cited above rely on limited variables and measurements that support their findings but overlook other tools of assessment and effects. Technology affords different modes of engagement, collaboration, and learning and necessitates a transformation in how we teach and how we evaluate learning outcomes. Studies of the standardized tests used in the UK and of the classroom trials at West Point merely demonstrate that technology does not enhance traditional models of learning and knowledge dissemination when we measure outcomes as we measured them in the past; they fallaciously rely on traditional assessments to evaluate new engagements. They fail to consider how technology can be positively incorporated into new approaches to pedagogy and new teaching styles, as well as the need to develop new tools for assessment.

  I do not discount the findings of the aforementioned studies, which provide evidence that technology can be detrimental to traditional educational settings. But I believe that we should expand our approach to understanding and evaluating the affordances and limitations of technology as a tool for enhanced learning. Decisions about technology need not be all-or-nothing decisions. In particular learning contexts—such as lectures and one-way transfers of information—perhaps it is best to prohibit technology. But in other contexts, such as group work, project-based learning, and problem solving, technology may enhance rather than detract from students’ engagement and learning. Technology affords different modes of classroom engagement, teaching, and learning that resonate with how today’s students learn informally outside the classroom. Unfortunately, the results of studies such as those mentioned above often are egregiously over-generalized and incorrectly used to justify bans on technology in the classroom.

  Controlling Distractions

  Technology, as a tool for enhancing learning, challenges the normative assumption that distractions are inherently risky or harmful. If we take a step back we can see that to justify completely banning mobile devices on the premise that it reduces distractions is overly simplistic and problematic. First, it presumes that an ideal “distraction-free learning environment” is possible, beneficial, and necessary. Students have always found ways to deliberately and intentionally distract themselves during class, for example, by doodling, writing and passing notes to friends, reading a magazine tucked away in their school book, making to-do lists, daydreaming, staring out the window, or working on assignments or personal interests that are not related to course material. In other words, we know the mobile technology did not create the temptation of distractions in the classroom; however, it can of course exacerbate temptations and distractions. Obviously teachers ought to strive to reduce distractions, however, to ban mobile media simply because it poses a distraction is fallacious. By that logic, teachers also ought to ban pens and paper, which have the potential to distract students as well. Students can and do use pens to draw, write notes to their friends, work on other homework assignments, and so forth and so forth. Of course, the idea of banning pens seems ludicrous and would never hold up—nor should it—for the simple fact that students need pens and paper to aid in learning. In the same way that the pen and paper has the potential to be a distraction, we also recognize its inherent value as an appropriate tool in the classroom. Why then should mobile devices be banned simply because they pose a potential threat or distraction in the classroom? We must expand the conversation beyond harm-driven expectations of mobile media to also consider their potential as tools and resources in the classroom.

  Another problem with
the assumption that banning mobile media is productive—or rather that distractions are harmful—is that it overlooks the reality that outside of school young people must constantly negotiate norms and rules for when and where they should use mobile devices. Managing distractions is not unique to the school environment. In the workplace, adults must learn how to simultaneously use technology as a tool for productivity, while also minimizing the temptation to use technology as a distraction. In preparation for adulthood and the workplace, schools ought to help students create boundaries, develop and enforce norms, and manage the distractions that mobile devices present. Within this vein of thinking, it is important to point out that not all teachers agree with the restrictive policies. Mr. Warren was increasingly frustrated with the ban on personal devices: “Now, when we have our students go on field trips to the real world and go to see companies, they see the people with the cell phones out on the tables. Do they see them being used irresponsibly? No. Not really. They aren’t tempted. They know how to use technology responsibly.” His comment highlights the ways in which the distractibility argument has constructed technology as a distraction for young people when actually it has the potential to be a distraction for anyone, including adults. Like adults, students must learn how to manage distractions. Mr. Warren may have overstated the claim that adults are not tempted by distractions, but his observation is accurate insofar as adults in the workplace learn how to manage distractions. In the same way, schools can and should teach students how to manage and resist distractions. Learning responsible and acceptable use of technology, and learning to resist temptations, is a valuable skill for young people while they are in school; it also prepares them for their roles and responsibilities as adults in the workforce.