Exploring Wellbeing Related Issues Arising From the Unregulated Use of Screen-Based Technology During Breaktimes in an International Middle School Environment

Abstract

The following study uses a design-thinking and mixed methods research approach to elicit students’ views on the use of screen-based technology during break periods. An interest in this area emerged due to a noticeable reduction, in recent years, in the number of students spending time in outdoor play areas during morning and afternoon breaks. The context of the study is Year 1 of the IB Middle Years Program in an International IB School, in the Netherlands, which implements an inquiry-based approach to teaching and learning. The school is a 1:1 laptop, tablet, and ipad school, and the students, who are 11-12 years old, have unregulated open access to screen-based technology during lunch and break-times. This first part of the study, in line with the initial stages of the design-thinking process, involved initial exploratory interviews followed by whole-group surveys, and whole-group discussions to better understand the issue at hand. The findings indicate that students engage in a wide variety of screen-based activities during break-time, they have a range of opinions on how screen-based technology affects their well-being, and they hold differing perspectives on the need for the current levels of access to change. The students raised a number of questions surrounding the unregulated use of screen-based devices during break-times, and in a followup study they proceeded with design thinking approaches to generate practical solutions to the issues that were raised through this initial inquiry.



Author Information
Mary C. Kelly, Irish College of Humanities and Applied Sciences, Ireland

Paper Information
Conference: ERI2022
Stream: Design Thinking

This paper is part of the ERI2022 Conference Proceedings (View)
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To cite this article:
Kelly M. (2022) Exploring Wellbeing Related Issues Arising From the Unregulated Use of Screen-Based Technology During Breaktimes in an International Middle School Environment ISSN: 2435-1202 – The IAFOR Conference on Educational Research & Innovation: 2022 Official Conference Proceedings https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2435-1202.2022.19
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2435-1202.2022.19


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Posted by James Alexander Gordon