Teachers Still Rule in Writing Instruction-Not Digital Technology

Lenhart, Amanda, Sousan Arafeh, Aaron Smith, and Alexandra Rankin Macgill.  “Writing, Technology and 

     Teens.”  Commissioned by Pew Internet and American Life Project and The National Commission on

     Writing.  24 April 2008.  14 October 2010.  <http://www.pewinternet.org>

This Pew Internet and American Life Project study conducted with the National Commission on Writing offers insight into what teens think related to school writing, personal writing, and computer-based writing—not how to use digital technology in the writing classroom.

This study initially began with eight focus groups including 73 youths, grades 7-12 in which 47% were male, 53% female, 80% white, 16% black, and 20% of the focus group participants came from households with less than $40,000 income. 

What prompted this research were the results of the 2007 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NEAP); it revealed a drop in basic writing level proficiency scores among 12^th graders, from 26% in 2002 to 18% in 2007.  Another concern is the fact that “two-thirds of salaried jobs at large American companies require writing of some kind,” which companies believe is a vital skill. 

Current research looks at the influence of technology in the university classroom, but since technology use is increasing in the homes and at schools, the Pew Project wanted to assess “the state of writing from the students themselves.”  The Pew study revealed that 94% American adolescents, “nearly all demographic and socioeconomic categories,” use the internet, and many use it multiple times a day.  The location from which a teen uses the internet often determines the quality of her online experience. 

Regarding the influence of digital technologies on student writing, participants indicated where and how they use computers depended on the requirements of the writing assignments as well as access to computers.  Two-thirds teens preferred to complete writing assignments by hand compared with 16% who preferred computers, and most claimed the decision was based on their teachers’ preference.  The results were similar for personal writing.

This report also discovered how teens define writing and do they consider electronic communication use as writing.  Teens still subscribe to the traditional notion of what is writing and view their electronic devices as communicating “even though it is text-based.”  However, most black students saw electronic communication as writing more than their white counterparts.  Teens can distinguish between formal and informal writing and do admit that their technology-based writing bleeds into their school writings such as using emoticons and abbreviated words.

Ultimately, teens stated that what motivated them to write in school was not whether they were able to use digital technology, but it was what the teacher demanded of them, the knowledge of the teacher, how much time they spent writing in class, and the feedback they received from their teacher.   

As a high school teacher, I believe this study is valuable and should be read by all content teachers because it informs about how teens use electronic devices in their everyday lives, and understand that writing matters to them personally, and that they make decisions about writing according to audience and situation. And that the teacher is still the primary influence in students’ learning in the classroom.

The only drawback of this study is that it only included a small sample of minority students, which isn’t helpful for urban public school teachers to determine the true impact of computer-based writing. This definitely leaves a gap in the research of minority users.

T. Street 11/2010b