Document Type
Journal Article
Publication Title
Digital Education Review
Publisher
Universitat de Barcelona
School
School of Education / Edith Cowan Institute for Education Research
RAS ID
31903
Funders
Australian Research Council
Grant Number
ARC number : DP140101258
Abstract
This paper explores the ways in which students perceive digital technology as being helpful and/or useful to their schooling. Drawing upon survey data from students (n=1174) across three Australian high schools, the paper highlights seventeen distinct digital ‘benefits’ in domains such as information seeking, writing and composition, accessing prescribed work, scheduling and managing study tasks. While these data confirm the centrality of such technologies to students’ experiences of school, they also suggest that digital technology is not substantially changing or ‘transforming’ the nature of schools and schooling per se. Instead, students were most likely to associate digital technologies with managing the logistics of individual study and engaging with school work in distinctly teacher-led linear and passive ways. As such, it is concluded that educationalists need to temper enthusiasms for what might be achieved through digital technologies, and instead develop better understandings of the realities of students’ instrumentally-driven uses of digital technology.
DOI
10.1344/der.2020.37.1-14
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Comments
Selwyn, N., Nemorin, S., Bulfin, S., & Johnson, N. F. (2020). The'obvious' stuff: exploring the mundane realities of students' digital technology use in school. Digital Education Review, (37), 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1344/der.2020.37.1-14