![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2018\/03\/180322_Anita_Charles_Class_0054.jpg\")
<\/a>Anita Charles teaches a class in special education. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n
In fact, says Charles, cellphones get at \u201cthe heart of rule-building\u201d in the classroom: The best rules are built on trust and respect, and that respect is a two-way street.<\/p>\n
Since 2008, Charles has been part of the scholarly discussion about cellphone use in schools. That year, she observed classrooms and interviewed high school students and English teachers for a paper that was published in the journal American Secondary Education <\/em>in 2012.<\/p>\n In 2017, she contributed a chapter to Researching New Literacies: Design, Theory, and Data in Sociocultural Investigation,<\/em> offering insights into technology in the classroom and the nature of trust between students and teachers.<\/p>\n What did you learn from interviewing students and teachers about rules about cellphones and enforceability? <\/strong><\/p>\n I found that when schools attempted a blanket policy, invariably, it was unenforceable. Teachers and students developed work-arounds.<\/p>\n What I found, without people explicitly stating it, or even knowing that they were doing it, was that managing cellphone use was really about contextualized negotiation, happening classroom by classroom, teacher by teacher, group by group. Overwhelmingly, I found that standards around cellphone use were founded on how students and teachers were building relationships with each other.<\/p>\n Even when teachers said, \u201cI have this rule,\u201d there was always the \u201cbut.\u201d \u201cI have this rule, BUT then again there are these times…\u201d or, \u201cWell there was a day when\u2026.\u201d Even a teacher who was working in a school which did not allow any of these items in the classroom said, \u201cI\u2019m the teacher they can come to if they need to call their mom or if they need to jot down their homework. I don\u2019t care.\u201d She said, \u201cI just think it\u2019s reasonable to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n Overwhelmingly, the students recognized when teachers were working with them to develop a reasonable policy. When they knew that teachers were developing policies that made sense, they also were much more likely to respect and honor those policies.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Your initial interviews were a decade ago. How have cellphones and their roles in classrooms changed in the decade since? <\/strong><\/p>\n Our technology is getting smarter and smarter, more intuitive, more sophisticated, more versatile, and also more prolific. It used to be easy enough to say, \u201cPut away your cellphone,\u201d when the only thing it did was make a phone call or text.<\/p>\n But now, it\u2019s also your calendar, it may be your note-taker, you may be taking a picture of the board to get your homework assignments, it may be recording something you need. And there may be kids with differences or disabilities who prefer using these tools as a way to access schoolwork. Teachers also have their own devices in their hands.<\/p>\n We\u2019re not turning back time, so we have to come up with a sensible way to say, \u201cHow do we engage with this in schools, and how do we develop rules?\u201d Not even how do we develop rules, but how do we talk <\/em>about reasonable guidelines?<\/p>\n What might a reasonable guideline be? <\/strong><\/p>\n It\u2019s not an all-or-nothing kind of thing. I think we need to have conversations. We can say to kids, \u201cHave you thought about the pros and cons? How does a device work in your own life? How much time are you spending on your devices? What kind of time are you spending on them? What\u2019s happening when you\u2019re feeling that urge to get on it in the classroom?\u201d<\/p>\n Students can articulate reasons, and I think we need to honor that and listen to that. I\u2019d ask the participants in my study, \u201cAre you texting in a classroom?\u201d \u201cWell, I\u2019ll text in English, but not in math.\u201d \u201cWhy?\u201d \u201cWell, in math, I have to pay attention more.\u201d Or, \u201cI never text in this particular class, because the teacher engages me, and I want to be learning.\u201d<\/p>\n In my own Bates classes, I\u2019ll start by saying that laptops and phones or devices may be used during class at their discretion, for class-related purposes. That gives a fair shot for people to be mature about the way in which they\u2019re using them. It also allows for the fact that there are class-related purposes.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t think we should shut down those processes, and it\u2019s not for me to micromanage them either. I should not have to rotate through the back of the room and say, \u201cAre those notes for this class? Are you enlarging that on your screen because you can\u2019t see?\u201d That\u2019s not my business. I think we need to let go of our control a little bit.<\/p>\n What do you say to Bates students studying to be teachers about technology in the classroom?<\/strong><\/p>\n I do observations with my student teachers who are placed in middle and high schools. One of the things I look for while scanning around the room is if any of those students are on devices.<\/p>\n Quite often, somebody does have one out, and they\u2019re doing something quick with it. I then have a conversation with my student teacher: \u201cDid you see it? What do you think about that? Is this becoming problematic?\u201d I ask, \u201cHow are you thinking about this issue in your classroom?\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s something in teaching called \u201cwith-it-ness\u201d and that can\u2019t really be taught. It can be encouraged, but it can\u2019t be taught. With-it-ness is having eyes in the back of your head, being aware of who has phones out. It\u2019s positioning yourself in the classroom so you can do a scan. I think I\u2019ve seen some pretty reasonable approaches with my student teachers who might say gently, \u201cPut that away now,\u201d or they go nearer to the student, tap on their desk, maybe give a reminder: \u201cIf I have to ask again, I\u2019ll need to take it.\u201d<\/p>\n You can\u2019t become a monster in the classroom any more than you can for any other rule-breaking \u2014 and there are lots of ways that we can break rules. So what do we do? We gently redirect, we acknowledge it, we help students self-monitor. Self-monitoring is ultimately going to be a lot more successful than top-down monitoring.<\/p>\n It seems that managing cellphone use is more about relationships and trust.<\/strong><\/p>\n The heart of rule-building in schools is about relationships. I\u2019m not comfortable with someone saying, \u201cWhat would you come up with for a rule?\u201d We need to ask, \u201cWhat\u2019s the scenario?\u201d and, \u201cLet me talk with people, and let\u2019s figure out what\u2019s happening.\u201d<\/p>\n In classrooms, we hear a lot about respect: Everyone needs to respect each other. But we don\u2019t really talk about what that looks like or means. We\u2019re all just supposed to know what respect is. Meanwhile, we can say that we believe in respect, but we also say, \u201cDon\u2019t touch your phones because I don\u2019t trust you with them.\u201d My take on that is that our actions certainly speak louder than words. If I say, \u201cLet\u2019s work through what we can all live with in terms of cellphone use in the classrooms,\u201d that relationship helps us negotiate out what\u2019s okay and what isn\u2019t okay.<\/p>\n And if we respect, trust, like, and support each other, then we are engaging in an agreement. We can explicitly articulate some of that agreement. We could even have it up on the walls and all sign off on it. But some of it happens when we engage with each other. When a student asks if they can take a photo of the board so they have the homework assignment, then that might become a new protocol in the classroom. I think that\u2019s a reasonable protocol.<\/p>\n And if someone abuses the trust then you can deal with it as an abuse of trust, not necessarily something specific to cellphones. <\/strong><\/p>\n Right, just like any situation where somebody abuses trust. If I have a rule about food in the classroom and somebody decides to throw food all over the place, they\u2019ve abused that trust. So we have to renegotiate, or we have to tighten up the reins or say, \u201cGosh, that really disappoints me.\u201d If we\u2019re in relationships, that sense of disappointment speaks more loudly than a hard and fast rule.<\/p>\n People can abuse any privilege, like driving a car or having a pen or pencil in your hand. We have to work with those cases as, \u201cGee, I was trusting you, and we were building a rapport, and you have really not abided by that expectation, and what do we do next?\u201d That\u2019s the way we should handle any of these things.<\/p>\n Teenagers have an uncanny sense of fairness and what\u2019s reasonable. They appreciate being treated as young adults, but they also appreciate boundaries \u2014 they don\u2019t actually want a free-for-all. Negotiation, when they feel that they\u2019re being listened to, benefits everybody, because the teacher finds that students become more cooperative.<\/p>\n If we approach cellphone use as negotiating a relationship, it\u2019s not all subversive. It\u2019s not all under the current somewhere. It\u2019s not kids sneaking out to the bathroom to use their phone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Cell phones get at “the heart of rule-making” in classrooms: relationships and trust, says Lecturer in Education Anita Charles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1005,"featured_media":113982,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[4,14],"tags":[10780,138],"class_list":["post-113980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-life","category-faculty-staff","tag-anita-charles","tag-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1005"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113980"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":117348,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113980\/revisions\/117348"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}