Paul Kirschner and yours truly just got a new article published in Teaching and Teacher Education on 2 common myths in education: the digital native and the multitasker. You can read it for free here (until Aug. 4)
The highlights:
- Information-savvy digital natives do not exist.
- Learners cannot multitask; they task switch which negatively impacts learning.
- Educational design assuming these myths hinders rather than helps learning.
The abstract of our paper:
Current discussions about educational policy and practice are often embedded in a mind-set that considers students who were born in an age of omnipresent digital media to be fundamentally different from previous generations of students. These students have been labelled digital natives and have been ascribed the ability to cognitively process multiple sources of information simultaneously (i.e., they can multitask). As a result of this thinking, they are seen by teachers, educational administrators, politicians/policy makers, and the media to require an educational approach radically different from that of previous generations. This article presents scientific evidence showing that there is no such thing as a digital native who is information-skilled simply because (s)he has never known a world that was not digital. It then proceeds to present evidence that one of the alleged abilities of students in this generation, the ability to multitask, does not exist and that designing education that assumes the presence of this ability hinders rather than helps learning. The article concludes by elaborating on possible implications of this for education/educational policy.
From experience to meaning... 
Reblogged this on kadir kozan.
[…] het of niet. Maar ik zeg dat wetenschappers Paul Kirschner en Pedro De Bruyckere – experten in het doorprikken van mythes in onderwijs – het gezegd en geschreven en […]
Hi Pedro. The links at the start of this post are both to the paper and abstract at Science Direct. Is there also an article not behind a firewall at “Teaching and Teacher Education”?
My school district is doing a year long instructional tech eval and I’d like to share this with them!
Gale Morrison 610.964.7926 home 215.317.6188 mobile
On Fri, Jun 16, 2017 at 12:50 AM, From experience to meaning… wrote:
> Pedro posted: “Paul Kirschner and yours truly just got a new article > published in Teaching and Teacher Education on 2 common myths in education: > the digital native and the multitasker. The highlights: Information-savvy > digital natives do not exist. ” >
Never mind I just caught that this is the name of the journal!
Gale Morrison 610.964.7926 home 215.317.6188 mobile
Great article! I wish the powers-that-be at the school division I just left would read this. But, alas, the division is 100% committed to 1 to 1 and no one with power wants to hear about the potential drawbacks.
[…] month Teaching and Teacher Education published an article about the Digital Native myth – and multit…. Our paper now made it… to an editorial in […]
[…] is in part based on our book Urban Myths about Learning and Education and in part based on the recent article I co-wrote with Paul Kirschner published in Teaching and Teacher Education (yes the one that was mentioned in […]
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