Associate Professor Louis-Philippe Beland has been cited in the Toronto Star for his research on smartphone usage in classrooms earlier this week.
The article delves into Ontario’s decision to prohibit mobile devices in classrooms. Here is the direct section from the article citing Beland’s results:
One of the most influential academic studies that has been used to justify school smartphone bans billed itself as being among the first.
Dating back to 2015 (the year that Apple introduced its iPhone 6S, and when the Canadian company BlackBerry still harboured hopes of a comeback), it was co-authored by Carleton University economics professor Louis-Philippe Beland.
The Canadian was working at Louisiana State University and studying test scores from schools in four cities in England. The research found that student performance in “high stakes exams” increased in schools with cellphone bans. The improvement was greatest for “low-achieving students.”
“Schools could significantly reduce the education achievement gap by prohibiting mobile phone use in schools,” the study concluded.
A few years later, a Swedish study set out to test the findings in that country, noting that education officials in France, Denmark, the United Kingdom and Sweden had relied on the 2015 study to enact or consider phone bans in schools.
The result?
“In Sweden, we find no impact of mobile phone bans on student performance and can reject even small-sized gains,” the authors concluded.
Professor Beland’s research paper is titled “III Communication: Technology, distraction & student performance” and is co-authored by Richard Murphy (University of Texas at Austin).
Read the full article on the Star website here.
Professor Beland also participated in a Radio-Canada round table discussing the presence of cells phones in Ontario schools. The interview is in French and can be listened here.