Talking about technology in schools seems to come with a built-in temptation toward arguing about big threats and promises. Digital devices will connect our students to the world, transform learning, break down the walls of the school, and unleash student creativity! Digital devices will isolate our students, make them shallow, weaken their thinking skills, and overwhelm them with distractions! How many of us have read or participated in such debates and gone on to make specific changes in our own technology behaviors as a result? The risk of paying attention only to the big picture is that it lets the day-to-day slide by unnoticed.
I propose we start by listening carefully to some students.
In our research on digital technology use in Christian schools, we did not set out to decide the “hurrah technology!”/ “down with technology!” debate one way or the other, nor did we end up doing so. We simply set out to understand more clearly what is happening and how teachers are responding to it. In this article, I will zoom in on one very concrete and specific detail to see where it leads us as we think about how technology affects teaching and learning. I propose we start by listening carefully to some students.
Student Voices
As we discussed technology, time management, and distraction with high school students in one Christian school, a student made the following observation:
We’ll ask [our teachers], “Can we just skim through for the answers,” and they’ll say, “No, I actually want you to read it.” And . . . one of my teachers did that, and I diligently read it and took notes . . . because I just do that. And I know a lot of people did because he actually emphasized that it’s important to read it, whereas most teachers I get, I kind of skim it and look for the answers.
Another student added, “In other [classes] they just say, ‘Here’s your reading assignment and then fill out the worksheet,’ and it is easy to just do Apple-F and find where the answers are to each of the questions.” The first student reflected, “I think using technology like Command-F can make us more lazy.”
Let’s slow right down and take a closer look at what seems to be going on in this confession.
Virtues Claimed and Neglected
First, let’s notice that the students tell two different stories that don’t quite mesh. One story fits into the genre of noble teachers and good students versus bad students. We are told that “they” (teachers in general) emphasize careful reading—they are teachers, after all, and want their students to be attentive to the text. The first student, we are led to believe, responds dutifully, engaging in careful reading of the assignment “because I just do that.” It’s a tempting story: teachers are helping me to learn, and because I am one of the good students (not one of those distracted ones), I work hard to do what they ask.
Yet the first student immediately contradicts this with a second story. Apparently the student only specifically recalls “one” of their teachers giving explicit attention in their instructions to how the homework was to be read, and most of the time their choices are less virtuous: “Most teachers I get, I kind of skim it and look for the answers.” The second student fills out this tale. What seems more common in their experience is hearing teachers ask them to complete tasks. Instructions amount to “here’s your reading assignment and then fill out the worksheet.” This kind of pattern does not seem to trigger virtue.
If the message received is that what the teacher cares about is primarily that students complete the task, then the focus understandably shifts to efficient ways of finishing the task.
If the message received is that what the teacher cares about is primarily that students complete the task, then the focus understandably shifts to efficient ways of finishing the task. Suddenly neither the student nor the teacher looks quite so automatically virtuous; they seem to be colluding together in shifting the focus from deep learning to productivity. The amount of detail given makes this story seem a little more plausible than the first—at the very least, it means the first story is only true for part of the time.
Technologies and Tendencies
Second, let’s notice that the students allude to a specific way in which technological changes enter into the story. One of the ways technologies affect us is by making certain moves easier (more convenient, more effortless, more powerful) than they once were, and others harder. Once we have cars, we travel more than we used to, not just because the car is better at getting us to Uncle Bert’s house but because it makes it less of a big deal to go somewhere, period. On a smaller scale, some research has suggested that the ability to copy and paste can increase our tendency to break rules (e.g., by plagiarizing) simply by making it easier to do so (Roberts and Wasieleski).
The students quoted above point to another specific technological function that seems to be helping to tip the balance when it comes to reading assignments. When “Apple-F” (or Ctrl-F, or a quick click on the search icon) can take us straight to the sentence that contains the answer, reading the whole article to understand its argument well enough to have an answer to the question suddenly seems like a much higher cost, more laborious option than just searching for a key phrase. Students in our study were well aware of this dynamic.
They were quick to tell us in focus groups that technological efficiencies heightened temptations toward distraction, laziness, or academic dishonesty.
They were quick to tell us in focus groups that technological efficiencies heightened temptations toward distraction, laziness, or academic dishonesty. In our survey data, 71 percent of students felt that digital technology had helped them understand difficult ideas in class, and 83 percent felt that it had helped them develop ideas that went beyond classroom instruction. At the same time, 59 percent reported that technology had helped them find answers without understanding them, and 74 percent said that it had helped them look for quick and easy answers to problems. Even as digital devices open up powerful new opportunities for learning, finding quick ways of completing assignments while avoiding actual learning seems to be getting easier. Add this to the tendency for our technologies to offer us increasingly powerful ways of tracking how we got more things done while not asking us to think too hard about why we did them, and there is a risk of creating a learning environment where just finishing tasks feels like success.
Virtues Again
Third, let’s notice that the students themselves are aware that this is about more than academic success.
Certainly, one serious reason for being concerned about skimming and searching as default strategies for learning is that they are not likely to be conducive to careful thinking, deep understanding, or critical engagement. We are in school not to get students to complete tasks but to help them learn. The behaviors reported by students in our study seemed in danger of helping them to get more done while undermining their learning.
Yet the students quoted hinted at another reason for concern. “I think using technology like Command-F can make us more lazy.” This is the language of moral formation, not just academic success, and it suggests that at least some students are wondering about how their technology use might be shaping them over time. Christians who have reflected across history on how Christian commitment shapes the act of reading have pointed to the need to grow in virtues of patience, humility, and charity as we patiently engage with the texts that are to form us and help us grow morally and spiritually. Reading the Bible well calls on these virtues and on the associated abilities to avoid rushing to hasty conclusions, pulling details out of context, or giving up on a text too quickly. So does reading other important, truth-bearing literature.
Christian educators, of all people, should be concerned about any practices that seem to encourage superficial and scattered engagement with texts.
Christian educators, of all people, should be concerned about any practices that seem to encourage superficial and scattered engagement with texts.
What Teachers Can Do
So does this mean that the devices are evil? It’s not that simple. The temptation to consume information superficially may be strengthened by the capabilities of the device, but what the students describe above is not devices taking over. It is an interaction between the nudges built into the design of the device and how teachers interact with them and explain assignments. Research evidence across four decades (reaching back well before the arrival of smartphones) suggests that many common grading practices lead students to preferentially choose the easiest possible task (Kohn). In our study we saw various kinds of evidence that many students, particularly at the high school level, had internalized the assumption that what teachers really wanted, deep down, was for tasks to be completed on time.
Many students, particularly at the high school level, had internalized the assumption that what teachers really wanted, deep down, was for tasks to be completed on time.
We saw this at work, for instance, in how students quite openly justified finishing an assignment swiftly so they could use the class time to text friends, shop online, or watch live sports, or even choosing to do those things first in class on the logic that the task could still be completed at night and turned in on time.
There are many factors affecting this dynamic. The one that stood out for the students whose reflections we have been considering was how their teachers gave assignments. If the instruction is usually “get to page twenty-seven by tomorrow” or “make sure you complete the first ten questions,” then the conclusion that the assignment is more about task completion than learning seems an understandable one. Yet when teachers paused to talk to students not just about what had to get done but about why and how it should be done, along with how the student was supposed to grow through doing it, we saw signs that many students tried to respond.
We saw teachers engaging in a variety of strategies to try to maximize the learning potential of devices, minimize the negative effects, and create practices that further the school’s mission and deeper hopes for students. Day-to-day choices built toward the big picture. Some rearranged their furniture to make student screens visible; some banned certain devices, required particular tasks to be handwritten, used silent reading in class, or made work collaborative and assigned multiple students to a device. We discuss these, along with a host of other specific issues raised by changes in learning technologies, in the book resulting from our research, , which is forthcoming in 2020. The students quoted here suggest one specific avenue to consider. How often are we clear with students not just about what to read but about how to read it and why? Not just about which questions to answer but about what change in their thinking is supposed to result? Not just about when the task is due but about how we are supposed to grow as whole people through doing it? This assumes, of course, that we ourselves have thought about answers to those questions. What different patterns might emerge if we not only did that thinking but invited students to do it along with us?
Works Cited
Kohn, Alfie. “The Case against Grades.” 69, no. 3 (2011): 28–33.
Roberts, Jeffrey A., and David M. Wasieleski. “Moral Reasoning in Computer-Based Task Environments: Exploring the Interplay between Cognitive and Technological Factors on Individuals’ Propensity to Break Rules.” 110, no. 3 (2012): 355–76.
David I. Smith is professor of education and director of the Kuyers Institute for Christian Teaching and Learning at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He also serves as coordinator of the Institute for Global Faculty Development and editor of the International Journal of Christianity and Education. His writing and talks can be accessed at www.onchristianteaching.com, and he can be followed at https://www.facebook.com/onchristianteaching.
