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Смартфоны в школьной повседневности подростков: исследование при помощи включенного наблюдения
Background. The issue of smartphones in schools has been vigorously discussed over the past few years by school administrators, teachers, and parents. On the one hand, the prospects of using smartphones in the educational process look promising, on the other hand, concerns about negative impact on the learning and development of children are very high. To better understand the ways in which smartphones are changing school life and how they fit into it, a more open-ended analysis than measuring isolated target variables is needed. Qualitative methodology and specifically school ethnography allow us to undertake this kind of approach.
Objective. The research aims to study the ways in which smartphones are integrated into the school life of Russian teenagers through participant observation.
Methods. Long-term participant observation (school ethnography), consisting in about 350 hours of observations with
qualitative data analysis were applied.
Sample. A class of students aged from 13 to 14 years old at a Moscow secondary school.
Results. Adolescents use smartphones a lot at school, both during breaks and in class, although there are individual differences. In all areas (communication, education, entertainment, creativity), schoolchildren are able and sometimes prefer to do without a smartphone. The smartphone is an important means of communication not only online (within the device) but also offline (about the content or the device itself). Smartphone use is often combined with silent intimacy (schoolchildren gather in a group and silently use smartphones) or a lively dialogue. In learning, students use smartphoneы either in an approved by adults (access to MES, digital assignments, etc.) or in a disapproved (cheating, etc.) mode. Students successfully implement various practices of resistance against smartphone bans. In the absence of external control, there is a group dynamics of “smartphone saturation” which implies switching from the phone to offline reality.
Conclusion. Smartphones are an integral element of school everyday life partly due to the demands of adults. Adolescents’ media multitasking described by other researchers is confirmed in our observations and is partly caused by a large workload organized by adults. Our data on the absence of negative reactions to the interlocutor’s use of a smartphone during conversations disagree with the works on phubbing and require further clarification. Daily school routine is heavily driven by teachers’ disciplinary practices towards smartphones while students’ resistance practices call into question the feasibility of a smartphone ban in schools.