Last term, the secretary of state for education announced plans for non-statutory guidance to support headteachers to ban the use of mobile phones throughout the school day.
As reported by SecEd, this guidance is seen mostly as unnecessary and headline-chasing rather than meaningfully useful given that many schools already ban mobile phones.
However, there have been a number of counterarguments and some pushback by educators and families who have interpreted the advice as “anti-technology”.
Much of my work is immersed in academic research concerned with the uses of digital technology in schools and most of my days are spent in schools working alongside children, teachers, and leaders.
Drawing on my experience, there are three clear reasons why I think that in the current educational and national landscape mobile phones have no place in the classroom.
Understand smartphones vs laptops/tablets
The distinction between mobile phones and laptops or tablets is important because it demarcates a type of use for technology.
Research and presentations about technology-use in schools often overlook this and this leads to generalisations which are inaccurate and unhelpful.
Even research by large international bodies is not immune to this methodological issue. For example, UNESCO (2023) recently published a global monitoring report about technology in education and concluded: “Student use of devices beyond a moderate threshold may have a negative impact on academic performance. A meta-analysis of research on the relationship between student mobile phone use and educational outcomes covering students from pre-primary to higher education in 14 countries found a small negative effect.
“The decline is mostly linked to increased distraction and time spent on non-academic activities during learning hours. Incoming notifications or the mere proximity of a mobile device can be a distraction, resulting in students losing their attention from the task at hand.”
The argument about appropriate volume of use and avoiding the distraction of inappropriate use is a persuasive and justified conclusion, which is certainly backed by both theoretical and empirical evidence.
However, the quote cites “devices”. And yet the evidence cited to support the argument is based upon specific kinds of device (smartphones) and specific kinds of use (e.g. notifications and proximity of a mobile device).
The impact of this lack of precision is manifesting itself in media headlines and portrayals which then influence or at the very least put pressure on policy-makers.
For example, the Guardian (Butler & Farah, 2023) summarised that same UNESCO report thus: “Digital technology as a whole, including artificial intelligence, should always be subservient to a ‘human-centred vision’ of education, and never supplant face-to-face interaction with teachers … excessive or inappropriate student use of technology in the classroom and at home, whether smartphones, tablets or laptops, could be distracting, disruptive and result in a detrimental impact on learning.”
