Screens and Learning: Cutting Through the Noise
(A warning before you start: this one is a longer read than usual, but I think it's worth it!)
There is a great deal of noise at the moment about screens in schools. Barely a week passes without a headline about a country banning phones, a state limiting devices or a study warning about what technology is doing to young minds. It can be genuinely hard to know what to make of it all, so this week I want to offer our community a clear view of the research, the movements around the world and how we think about it at All Saints. I shared some of this recently with our Parents and Friends committee, and the conversation that followed convinced me it deserved a wider audience.
I remember where the noise began because I was in the middle of it. When the one to one iPad era arrived, it felt like a race and every school was in it. Devices rolled out at pace and the momentum was enormous. On reflection, what strikes me most is how unclear the rationale and the evidence were at the time. The promise was that putting a device in every student's hands would take care of the learning, and for two decades hardly anyone asked whether it was working. That question is being asked now, everywhere.
Sweden is the most striking example. For twenty years it was Europe's model of digital education, replacing textbooks with tablets and laptops more completely than almost anyone. It is now spending well over 100 million Australian dollars bringing printed books and handwriting back into its classrooms, with minimal device use for its youngest learners. UNESCO reports that more than half the world's countries now restrict phones in schools, up from fewer than a quarter three years ago. Closer to home, Victoria will limit device use in primary classrooms to 90 minutes a day for Years 3 to 6 from 2027, with minimal use in the early years, and secondary schools will be asked to build planned device-free time into their programs. NSW has funded a major research effort drawing on every university in the state, with findings due at the end of this year.
It would be easy to read all of this as a verdict that screens have failed. The research tells a more useful story.
Some costs are real and measurable. The OECD's most recent PISA testing found that students who are distracted by devices in every or most of their maths lessons score around three-quarters of a year of learning below those who are rarely distracted, and Australian students report classroom digital distraction at rates above the OECD average. The reading research is particularly interesting. A major meta-analysis found comprehension is measurably better from paper than from a screen, and separate studies have shown that readers tend to believe the opposite about themselves. We might think we are comprehending plenty on our phones, but we may well be better off with a physical copy of the Courier-Mail! Norwegian researchers have also shown that writing by hand produces far richer patterns of brain connectivity than typing. These are not sentimental findings about the good old days. They tell us something important about how young brains learn.
But the same research shows that students who use devices moderately and with purpose outperform those who use them not at all. The clearest finding of the past decade is not about screens versus no screens. It is about who is directing the learning and what the screen is being asked to do. In the hands of a teacher with a clear purpose, with students analysing data, building models, creating and testing ideas, technology genuinely adds to learning. As the default for every task, the evidence turns against it. A researcher who studied Sweden's shift described the goal as recalibration rather than reversal, and I think that captures it perfectly.
It also describes our approach at All Saints. A screen must earn its way into a lesson through clear value to learning rather than arriving there by default, and what is right for a Year 11 student modelling data is not what is right for a Year 2 student learning to read and write.
This week our staff gathered for our first whole school professional learning session of the semester, and we started with how we learn. Our teachers explored cognitive load theory, which describes the limits of working memory and the importance of stripping away the distractions that compete with learning for a student's attention. Protecting handwriting, deep reading and sustained attention is that theory in action. With Director of Teaching and Learning Mark Solomons and his Learning Team now casting a whole school lens across our classrooms, these are exactly the questions we will keep asking, guided by evidence rather than fashion.
The same thinking applies at home, and the research offers a surprisingly practical example. Reading is not one activity but three: a physical book, a Kindle and an iPad each make different demands on a young reader, and comprehension tends to fall as we move along that line. The question is rarely whether a device is good or bad, but whether it is helping your child think or thinking for them. It is worth asking out loud around the dinner table. Our young people are capable of more discernment than we sometimes credit, especially when they see the adults in their lives practising it too.
The correction underway around the world is not a retreat to the past. It is a return to the oldest question in education, asked of the newest tools: does this help a young person learn and think? To see what this looks like in our classrooms, I encourage you to read Head of Junior School, Bec Pearson's article in this edition on how our Junior School is finding the right balance. As she puts it, technology is a tool for learning, not a substitute for it.
Enjoy a wonderful weekend.
Matt Corbett
Principal
