Janet Lord Education
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Blog about Education

Mobile phones and teaching and learning

6/20/2018

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I use phones and ILT in my teaching a lot - but this article from Sky News talks about banning mobile phones in school all together.  And interestingly, in a poll on the Sky News website this morning, 80% of respondents have suggested that mobile phones should be banned from schools all together.   The culture secretary misrepresents the findings of a 2015 study when he says that results are impacted by students even just having phones in bags *how cold that be - it is nonsense!)  

The 2015 study (available here...cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp1350.pdf) suggests...
By exploiting differences in implementation dates, our results indicate that there is an improvement in student performance of 6.41% of a standard deviation in schools that have introduced a mobile phone ban.

The existing literature on the impact of technology in the classroom implies that the unstructured presence of technology has ambiguous impacts on student achievement. We add to this by illustrating that a highly multipurpose technology, such as mobile phones, can have a negative impact on productivity through distraction. Schools that restrict access to mobile phones subsequently experience an improvement in test scores. However, these findings do not discount the possibility that mobile phones could be a useful learning tool if their use is properly structured. Our findings suggest that the presence of mobile phones in schools should not be ignored.
Finally, we find that mobile phone bans have very different effects on different types of students. Banning mobile phones improves outcomes for the low-achieving students (14.23% of a standard deviation) the most and has no significant impact on high achievers. The results suggest that low-achieving students are more likely to be distracted by the presence of mobile phones, while high achievers can focus in the classroom regardless of whether phones are present. Given heterogeneous results, banning mobile phones could be a low-cost way for schools to reduce educational inequality.

So what is interesting here is two things;  firstly, the structured and considered use of mobile phones in scjools can be useful - and with the increase in interactive technologies, that's no surprise.   And secondly, and worryingly  - there is a difference in  the effects that phones have on different kinds of pupils. Banning mobiles has most efect on low achieving students, and less of an effect on higher achieving students.  I think this needs more investigation - this is a research project that I am really interested in.   

The Sky news  article is below....

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Culture secretary Matt Hancock says schools should ban mobile phonesNot content with barring them from the classroom, Matt Hancock suggests they be confiscated from children at the start of the day.

Children should be banned from using their mobile phones at school, the culture secretary has said.

Not content with merely barring them from being used in the classroom, Matt Hancock has suggested that they be confiscated from children who carry them at the start of each school day.
Writing in The Daily Telegraph, he warned that mobiles could have a "real impact" on students' achievements and leave them exposed to increased amounts of bullying. He also questioned why youngsters needed to bring their phones to school in the first place.

"There are a number of schools across the country that simply don't allow them," he said.
"While it is up to individual schools to decide rather than government, I admire head teachers who do not allow mobiles to be used during the school day. I encourage more schools to follow their lead."
Mr Hancock said that "setting boundaries" in relation to how much children were exposed to technology - and notably social media - was vital in protecting them from harm and encouraging them to use the internet safely.
"Studies have shown that mobile phones can have a real impact on working memory and fluid intelligence, even if the phone is on a table or in a bag," he added.

His column was supported by a letter from seven fellow Tory MPs, also published in the newspaper.
Citing a 2015 study by the London School of Economics, they write: "Where schools banned smartphones from the premises, or required them to be handed in at the start of the day, pupils' chances of getting five good GCSEs increased by an average of 2%.
"The improvement was even more marked for lower-achieving pupils. Results among pupils in the bottom quarter of achievement improved twice as much as the average."


https://news.sky.com/story/culture-secretary-matt-hancock-says-schools-should-ban-mobile-phones-11410459
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Grammar schools again....

5/11/2018

 
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https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/may/11/grammar-schools-in-england-to-get-50m-expansion-fund
An article in the Guardian today (see link, left) says:Grammar schools in England will be given tens of millions of pounds to expand, after the education secretary, Damian Hinds, unveiled a fund for selective schools that agree to improve applications from disadvantaged children.

The £50m fund will potentially allow the creation of new “satellite” campuses of grammar schools away from their existing sites, although the Department for Education said there would be a “very high bar” for such expansions.
“By creating new schools where they are needed most and helping all great schools to grow, we can give parents greater choice in looking at schools that are right for their family and give children of all backgrounds access to a world-class education,” Hinds said.


One of the things I teach about is social justice.  and what concerns me here is access to education.  We know that marginalised groups do not have access to the same educational opportunities as do other groups, for all kinds of intersecting reasons. 
Some great tweets this morning say it all:

Angela Rayner‏: All schools need more funding, Tory answer? Pour more money into a few grammar schools. Buildings crumbling&class sizes increasing, Tory answer? Build more free schools(a programme that is failing). Tories continue to ignore parents, school leaders,teachers&evidence based policy.

and Professor Tim Bale, who teaches politics at Queen Mary:
Tim Bale‏: The main argument against grammar schools is not that they are 'elitist' & 'divisive' (even if they are), it's that all the research shows that they just don't do the job they are supposed to do, namely to promote social/educational mobility. And yes I did go to one: so shoot me.

Teachers I work with are in schools that quite literally are falling down round their ears; children are going hungry; teachers are spending money on school supplies  73 % – of teachers surveyed said that they regularly purchased stationery items, such as pens, pencils and board markers. Fifty-eight per cent had paid for books. And 43 per cent had paid for art materials. This is from a TES survey of more than 1,800 teachers, conducted jointly with the NEU teaching union and reported in Setember 2017; it reveals that 94 per cent of teachers are having to pay for school essentials such as books, stationery and storage equipment.
https://www.tes.com/news/exclusive-teachers-are-spending-hundreds-pounds-year-classroom-supplies


Teaching is and always has been the most important  job in the world, for all kinds of reasons, one of the most salient of which is fighting inequality. Michael Apple, in his 2013 book 'Can education change society?', finished with the words (p174).  'There is educational work to be done'.   Let's get to it!


 


 


At risk of coasting?

1/8/2018

 
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Tonight a primary school colleagues told me that their school had been served with a notice from the LEA saying that they were 'at risk of coasting'. 

What was happening?  Had the school and the staff been galvanised into action?  Far from it...the staff  were depressed and demoralised.  They felt at risk, and that the academy broker vultures were circling.   I asked what the figures were looking like, and my colleague said

'I have no idea, to be honest I have seen so many meaningless figures today that I have no idea why it's been decided we are not good enough.' 

And then, and tellingly...

Kids are going home to no food/heat/clean clothes and are experiencing and seeing all manner of abuse and yet they don't give a s**t about that. Just data.

And my colleague has ben thinking about leaving the profession.  No wonder.  

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    About me...

    I was a psychology and social sciences teacher for many years and now I am in the throes of a teaching and research career in HE. I care passionately about education. This blog will show you why and how.

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  • Home
  • Blog
  • Research
    • Research Matters Seminar November 2012
    • Paper on the development of professional identities in early career teachers: a conceptual synthesis of the literature
    • Emerging teachers’ perceptions of the factors that affect their espoused professional identity. A partial case study using narrative methodology.
    • Work on the professional identity of doctoral students
    • What does it mean to be a teacher?
  • Publications
  • Contact