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Media Use and School Achievement
TECHNOLOGY AND LEARNING – ISSUES Contents Media Use and School Achievement Technology and Physical and Social Health
Media Use and School Achievement K Roe, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium ã 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Introduction Does media use have negative effects on literacy and academic achievement? The question is an old one. Concern among educators that media communication is detrimental to the work of the school, in general – and to the development of children’s literacy, in particular – can be traced back to at least to concern over popular literature in the mid-nineteenth century. Not surprisingly, then, the question of the nature of the relationship between educational achievement and the mass media is one that has been around since mass communication became a discernible area of study.
Historical Background In the 1920s, the question was posed by the Payne Fund Studies into the effects of movies on children. The results suggested that movies provide a special learning format that facilitates an unusually high retention of factual material, but that movie fans did worse in their academic work and were less well-behaved and less popular in school than members of the comparison group. The next major (and rather less objective) treatment came, in 1953, as part of Wertham’s broadside attack against comic books. In this instance, the reader does not need to go further than the inside flaps of the cover to learn that comic books are viewed as an invitation to illiteracy and, ‘‘harm the development of reading from the lowest level of the most elementary hygiene to the highest level of appreciation of good literature.’’ On the whole – except in very broad mass versus high culture terms – radio seems curiously to have escaped the odium of critics. Where found, criticism tended to focus on cultural passivity and vulgarization. During the 1950s, however, it was television (TV)’s turn to be examined and, as early as 1951, empirical studies began to appear. Most early research not only failed to find much evidence
for negative effects on school work, some studies actually stressed TV’s positive influence, conclusions subsequently reinforced on both sides of the Atlantic. In 1958, one major British study concluded that, on the whole, TV appeared to have no direct effects on school work, nor did it lead to poor concentration, a reduction of interest in school, or a correlation with reading skills. In 1961, an American study reported that watching TV could contribute to a fast start in learning because it helps broaden children’s vocabularies, although the advantage gained (over nonviewers) was only temporary. Although studies reporting negative relationships between TV and scholastic achievement did appear in the 1960s, the general consensus was that there were no simple, direct negative effects – with the result that interest in the topic began to wane. However, as TV became omnipresent in the developed world and cable, satellite and video developments led to a multiplicity of channels and contents, and the subject, once more, became topical. A good deal of the credit for this revival of interest can be attributed to Neil Postman – whose polemical books and articles set up the school as a vital bastion of traditional values against the (alleged) disastrous effects of TV. Although Postman’s rhetoric was impressive and his ideas, at times, seductive, only a minority of studies could still be said to have given unqualified support to his position. The mid-1980s to the mid-1990s witnessed another period of relative neglect – as research attention was diverted elsewhere. However, the last decade has, once again, seen a renewal of interest – undoubtedly, as a result of developments in digital technology. This time, however, the parameters of the discourse have been opened up to include not only specific forms of communication (such as computer games and the Internet), and specific skills (such as reading and writing) but the whole concept of literacy and what being literate in the digital world of the twenty-first century actually means. One consequence of these developments is an increasing tendency to differentiate the concepts of literacy and achievement into
109
110
Technology and Learning – Issues
various subdomains such as computer literacy, media literacy, etc. According to some observers, digital developments may be transforming the very way in which we communicate – a process which is moving us inexorably toward an entirely new form of literacy in which authorship and reading online will not involve anything resembling current literacy practices. As a result, it is argued, two ideologies of literacy are now in mortal competition: one encoded in books and traditional pedagogics, the other located in the media, computer games, and the Internet – with the educational system caught in the crossfire. In other words, the traditional praxis of the school – based on hierarchical access to print – is, increasingly, at odds with the more diverse, interactive, and less linear forms made available by digital technologies.
Theoretical Perspectives Based predominantly on studies of TV and school achievement, four major theoretical perspectives have been identified. The first is displacement theory – which basically states that TV-viewing takes time away from reading, schoolwork, and other activities beneficial to children’s intellectual development. However, the earliest studies in both the United States and Europe failed to find consistent evidence for such an effect. Rather, it appears that other mass media and play activities are TV’s main competitors and children who neglect reading because of TV would neglect reading in favor of something else if TV were not available. The second perspective is information-processing theory which postulates that TV (and by extrapolation other electronic media) influences the way people think. Commonly, while reading is assumed to activate the mind, TV-viewing is assumed to be mentally pacifying. However, there has been little, if any, convincing empirical support for this hypothesis. The third is short-term gratifications theory. This perspective argues that TV and computer games have radically altered the expectations which children have with regard to learning, most notably in the demand for novel, fast-paced, and constant stimulation – expectations which are antithetical to the slower pace, and deferred gratifications, of school-based education. There is much anecdotal and observational evidence for this hypothesis but it has seldom been tested rigorously. The fourth, and only positive, perspective is intereststimulation theory – which hypothesizes that the media can enhance learning by creating and stimulating interests and augmenting knowledge. However, while some early studies indicated that TV might stimulate reading by awakening interests in new subjects, more recently, there is a dearth of empirical support for this assertion.
Research Although there has never been consistent, conclusive evidence that TV displaces reading and has a negative effect on general school achievement, by the 1980s, a substantial number of studies had reported negative correlations between reading achievement and TV viewing. However, most of these studies were based on crosssectional data employing bivariate analyses that failed to control for possible mediating variables and were, thus, unable to address the issue of causality. These shortcomings led to more sophisticated research designs, making it possible to analyze different groups of children, different types of media and their contents, and different areas of academic achievement. The results of such research have considerably refined the nature of the relationship by identifying significant mediating factors such as age (TV does not inhibit reading achievement among young children but can do so among teenagers), cognitive development (among same-age younger children, the cognitively more developed watch more TV than the cognitively less developed, whereas the reverse is true among older children and adolescents), and academic achievement (with curvilinear differences between high, average, and low achievers). Socioeconomic status differences, too, influence both media-use frequency and reading achievement. In an attempt to bring some coherence to these disparate sets of results, some researchers have created large-scale, longitudinal designs employing multivariate analyses. The results show, for example, that TV viewing can be both a positive and a negative influence on achievement – depending on the type of content viewed, the social context of viewing, and the developmental level of the viewers. Other studies have tested the efficacy of the various approaches by comparing negative models (media use leads to lower school-achievement scores), positive models (more use of the print media leads to higher achievement scores), and school models (which postulate that school-based factors, such as motivation and academic self-concept, better explain variations in achievement scores than do external factors such as media use). While some support accrues to all three models, the negative model has been found to be empirically stronger than the positive model, while the strongest and most parsimonious results were provided by the school model. These studies also reaffirmed the importance of age, gender, and socioeconomic status in mediating the postulated relationships.
Conclusions There is no common agreement as to the definition or empirical operationalization of the concept of literacy which – both historically and in contemporary society – carries a multiplicity of meanings. Mostly, it seems to be
Media Use and School Achievement
equated with functional literacy – defined, basically, as the ability to read and write, although broader definitions encompass achievement in all academic areas. More recently, concepts such as digital or computer literacy have appeared. The predominant theoretical perspective informing most research has been – and to some extent still is – a simple negative-effects model, dominated by TV use. Various academic consequences of excessive TV-use have been postulated, for example, poor concentration, reading and writing difficulties, and poor examination results. Attempts to formulate and test alternative theoretical models have been uncommon. Empirical research in the field has seldom been sustained and systematic. The great majority of studies has been limited, one-off, and cross-sectional in nature and the fact that they have been conducted by researchers from a variety of different disciplines – using a wide array of measurement and analytical methods – has made rigorous comparison of results difficult and hazardous. Moreover, many studies of the relationship between media use and educational achievement have been based secondarily on data collected primarily for other purposes. As a result of the piecemeal nature of the research, it is still extremely difficult to draw firm conclusions from the available evidence. Consequently, there is little consensus among researchers. The enormous increase in the amount and types of TV now available to children – not to mention the rapid diffusion of other forms of media, such as computers (and their games) and the Internet (with all its diverse applications) – has radically altered the whole research context and has imposed new theoretical and methodological parameters. Moreover, this has infused the issue of whether or not media use retards academic achievement with a new sense of urgency and has accentuated the already serious concern felt by many educators, parents, and policymakers.
Further Reading Cool, V. A., Yarbrough, D. B., patton, J. E., Runde, R., and Keith, T. Z. (2004). Experimental effects of radio and television distractors on children’s performance on mathematics and reading assignments’. Journal of Experimental Education 62(3), 181–194.
111
Ennemoser, M. (2003). Television effects in kindergarten and elementary school Grades, and Differential Effects. Nervenheilkunde 22(9), 443–456. Jackson, L. A., von Eye, A., Biocca, F. A., et al. (2006). Does home internet use influence the academic performance of low-income children? Developmental Psychology 42(3), 429–435. Koolstra, C. M. and van der Voort, T. W. A. (1996). Longitudinal effects of television on children’s leisure time reading: A test of three explanatory models. Human Communication Research 23(1), 4–35. Koolstra, C. M., van der Voort, T. H. A., and van der Kamp, L. J. T. (1997). Television’s impact on children’s reading comprehension and decoding skills: A three year panel Study. Reading Research Quarterly 32, 128–152. Li, X. and Atkins, M. S. (2004). Early childhood computer experience and cognitive and motor development. Pediatrics 113, 1715–1722. Neumann, S. (1991). Literacy in the Television Age. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Postman, N. (1986). Amusing Ourselves to Death. London: Heinemann. Quaiser-Pohl, C., Geiser, C., and Lehmann, W. (2006). The relationship between computer-game preference, gender, and mental-rotation ability. Personality and Individual Differences 40, 609–619. Roberts, D. F., Henriksen, L., and Voelker, D. H. (1993). Television and schooling: displacement and distraction hypotheses. Australian Journal of Education 37(2), 198–211. Roe, K. (1992). Different destinies – different melodies: School achievement, anticipated status and adolescents’ tastes in music. European Journal of Communication 7(3), 335–358. Roe, K. (1995). Adolescents use of socially disvalued media: Towards a theory of media delinquency. Journal of Youth and Adolescence 24(5), 617–631. Roe, K., Eggermont, S., and Minnebo, J. (2001). Media use and academic achievement: Which effects? Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research 26(1), 39–57. Roe, K. and Muijs, D. (1998). Children and computer games: A portrait of the heavy user. European Journal of Communication 13(2), 181–200. Rosengren, K. E. and Windahl, S. (1990). ‘‘Media Matter’’ TV use in Childhood and Adolescence. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Salomon, G. (1984). Television is ‘‘easy’’ and print is ‘‘tough’’: The differential investment of mental effort as a function of perceptions and attributions. Journal of Educational Psychology 76, 647–658. Shin, N. (2004). Exploring pathways from television viewing to academic achievement in school age children. Journal of Genetic Psychology 165(4), 367–381. Subrahmanyam, K., Greenfield, P., Kraut, R., and Gross, E. (2001). The impact of computer use on children’s and adolescents’ development. Applied Developmental Psychology 22, 7–30. Vandewater, E. A. and Bickham, D. S. (2004). The impact of educational television on young children’s reading in the context of the family. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology 25(6), 717–728. Willoughby, T. (2008). A short-term longitudinal study of internet and computer game use by adolescent boys and girls: Prevalence, frequency of use, and psychosocial predictors. Developmental Psychology 44(1), 195–204. Wright, J. C., Huston, A. C., Murphy, K. C., et al. (2001). The relations of early television viewing to school readiness and vocabulary of children from low-income families. Child Development 72(5), 1347–1366.
Media Use and School Achievement K Roe, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium ã 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Introduction Does media use have negative effects on literacy and academic achievement? The question is an old one. Concern among educators that media communication is detrimental to the work of the school, in general – and to the development of children’s literacy, in particular – can be traced back to at least to concern over popular literature in the mid-nineteenth century. Not surprisingly, then, the question of the nature of the relationship between educational achievement and the mass media is one that has been around since mass communication became a discernible area of study.
Historical Background In the 1920s, the question was posed by the Payne Fund Studies into the effects of movies on children. The results suggested that movies provide a special learning format that facilitates an unusually high retention of factual material, but that movie fans did worse in their academic work and were less well-behaved and less popular in school than members of the comparison group. The next major (and rather less objective) treatment came, in 1953, as part of Wertham’s broadside attack against comic books. In this instance, the reader does not need to go further than the inside flaps of the cover to learn that comic books are viewed as an invitation to illiteracy and, ‘‘harm the development of reading from the lowest level of the most elementary hygiene to the highest level of appreciation of good literature.’’ On the whole – except in very broad mass versus high culture terms – radio seems curiously to have escaped the odium of critics. Where found, criticism tended to focus on cultural passivity and vulgarization. During the 1950s, however, it was television (TV)’s turn to be examined and, as early as 1951, empirical studies began to appear. Most early research not only failed to find much evidence
for negative effects on school work, some studies actually stressed TV’s positive influence, conclusions subsequently reinforced on both sides of the Atlantic. In 1958, one major British study concluded that, on the whole, TV appeared to have no direct effects on school work, nor did it lead to poor concentration, a reduction of interest in school, or a correlation with reading skills. In 1961, an American study reported that watching TV could contribute to a fast start in learning because it helps broaden children’s vocabularies, although the advantage gained (over nonviewers) was only temporary. Although studies reporting negative relationships between TV and scholastic achievement did appear in the 1960s, the general consensus was that there were no simple, direct negative effects – with the result that interest in the topic began to wane. However, as TV became omnipresent in the developed world and cable, satellite and video developments led to a multiplicity of channels and contents, and the subject, once more, became topical. A good deal of the credit for this revival of interest can be attributed to Neil Postman – whose polemical books and articles set up the school as a vital bastion of traditional values against the (alleged) disastrous effects of TV. Although Postman’s rhetoric was impressive and his ideas, at times, seductive, only a minority of studies could still be said to have given unqualified support to his position. The mid-1980s to the mid-1990s witnessed another period of relative neglect – as research attention was diverted elsewhere. However, the last decade has, once again, seen a renewal of interest – undoubtedly, as a result of developments in digital technology. This time, however, the parameters of the discourse have been opened up to include not only specific forms of communication (such as computer games and the Internet), and specific skills (such as reading and writing) but the whole concept of literacy and what being literate in the digital world of the twenty-first century actually means. One consequence of these developments is an increasing tendency to differentiate the concepts of literacy and achievement into
109
110
Technology and Learning – Issues
various subdomains such as computer literacy, media literacy, etc. According to some observers, digital developments may be transforming the very way in which we communicate – a process which is moving us inexorably toward an entirely new form of literacy in which authorship and reading online will not involve anything resembling current literacy practices. As a result, it is argued, two ideologies of literacy are now in mortal competition: one encoded in books and traditional pedagogics, the other located in the media, computer games, and the Internet – with the educational system caught in the crossfire. In other words, the traditional praxis of the school – based on hierarchical access to print – is, increasingly, at odds with the more diverse, interactive, and less linear forms made available by digital technologies.
Theoretical Perspectives Based predominantly on studies of TV and school achievement, four major theoretical perspectives have been identified. The first is displacement theory – which basically states that TV-viewing takes time away from reading, schoolwork, and other activities beneficial to children’s intellectual development. However, the earliest studies in both the United States and Europe failed to find consistent evidence for such an effect. Rather, it appears that other mass media and play activities are TV’s main competitors and children who neglect reading because of TV would neglect reading in favor of something else if TV were not available. The second perspective is information-processing theory which postulates that TV (and by extrapolation other electronic media) influences the way people think. Commonly, while reading is assumed to activate the mind, TV-viewing is assumed to be mentally pacifying. However, there has been little, if any, convincing empirical support for this hypothesis. The third is short-term gratifications theory. This perspective argues that TV and computer games have radically altered the expectations which children have with regard to learning, most notably in the demand for novel, fast-paced, and constant stimulation – expectations which are antithetical to the slower pace, and deferred gratifications, of school-based education. There is much anecdotal and observational evidence for this hypothesis but it has seldom been tested rigorously. The fourth, and only positive, perspective is intereststimulation theory – which hypothesizes that the media can enhance learning by creating and stimulating interests and augmenting knowledge. However, while some early studies indicated that TV might stimulate reading by awakening interests in new subjects, more recently, there is a dearth of empirical support for this assertion.
Research Although there has never been consistent, conclusive evidence that TV displaces reading and has a negative effect on general school achievement, by the 1980s, a substantial number of studies had reported negative correlations between reading achievement and TV viewing. However, most of these studies were based on crosssectional data employing bivariate analyses that failed to control for possible mediating variables and were, thus, unable to address the issue of causality. These shortcomings led to more sophisticated research designs, making it possible to analyze different groups of children, different types of media and their contents, and different areas of academic achievement. The results of such research have considerably refined the nature of the relationship by identifying significant mediating factors such as age (TV does not inhibit reading achievement among young children but can do so among teenagers), cognitive development (among same-age younger children, the cognitively more developed watch more TV than the cognitively less developed, whereas the reverse is true among older children and adolescents), and academic achievement (with curvilinear differences between high, average, and low achievers). Socioeconomic status differences, too, influence both media-use frequency and reading achievement. In an attempt to bring some coherence to these disparate sets of results, some researchers have created large-scale, longitudinal designs employing multivariate analyses. The results show, for example, that TV viewing can be both a positive and a negative influence on achievement – depending on the type of content viewed, the social context of viewing, and the developmental level of the viewers. Other studies have tested the efficacy of the various approaches by comparing negative models (media use leads to lower school-achievement scores), positive models (more use of the print media leads to higher achievement scores), and school models (which postulate that school-based factors, such as motivation and academic self-concept, better explain variations in achievement scores than do external factors such as media use). While some support accrues to all three models, the negative model has been found to be empirically stronger than the positive model, while the strongest and most parsimonious results were provided by the school model. These studies also reaffirmed the importance of age, gender, and socioeconomic status in mediating the postulated relationships.
Conclusions There is no common agreement as to the definition or empirical operationalization of the concept of literacy which – both historically and in contemporary society – carries a multiplicity of meanings. Mostly, it seems to be
Media Use and School Achievement
equated with functional literacy – defined, basically, as the ability to read and write, although broader definitions encompass achievement in all academic areas. More recently, concepts such as digital or computer literacy have appeared. The predominant theoretical perspective informing most research has been – and to some extent still is – a simple negative-effects model, dominated by TV use. Various academic consequences of excessive TV-use have been postulated, for example, poor concentration, reading and writing difficulties, and poor examination results. Attempts to formulate and test alternative theoretical models have been uncommon. Empirical research in the field has seldom been sustained and systematic. The great majority of studies has been limited, one-off, and cross-sectional in nature and the fact that they have been conducted by researchers from a variety of different disciplines – using a wide array of measurement and analytical methods – has made rigorous comparison of results difficult and hazardous. Moreover, many studies of the relationship between media use and educational achievement have been based secondarily on data collected primarily for other purposes. As a result of the piecemeal nature of the research, it is still extremely difficult to draw firm conclusions from the available evidence. Consequently, there is little consensus among researchers. The enormous increase in the amount and types of TV now available to children – not to mention the rapid diffusion of other forms of media, such as computers (and their games) and the Internet (with all its diverse applications) – has radically altered the whole research context and has imposed new theoretical and methodological parameters. Moreover, this has infused the issue of whether or not media use retards academic achievement with a new sense of urgency and has accentuated the already serious concern felt by many educators, parents, and policymakers.
Further Reading Cool, V. A., Yarbrough, D. B., patton, J. E., Runde, R., and Keith, T. Z. (2004). Experimental effects of radio and television distractors on children’s performance on mathematics and reading assignments’. Journal of Experimental Education 62(3), 181–194.
111
Ennemoser, M. (2003). Television effects in kindergarten and elementary school Grades, and Differential Effects. Nervenheilkunde 22(9), 443–456. Jackson, L. A., von Eye, A., Biocca, F. A., et al. (2006). Does home internet use influence the academic performance of low-income children? Developmental Psychology 42(3), 429–435. Koolstra, C. M. and van der Voort, T. W. A. (1996). Longitudinal effects of television on children’s leisure time reading: A test of three explanatory models. Human Communication Research 23(1), 4–35. Koolstra, C. M., van der Voort, T. H. A., and van der Kamp, L. J. T. (1997). Television’s impact on children’s reading comprehension and decoding skills: A three year panel Study. Reading Research Quarterly 32, 128–152. Li, X. and Atkins, M. S. (2004). Early childhood computer experience and cognitive and motor development. Pediatrics 113, 1715–1722. Neumann, S. (1991). Literacy in the Television Age. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Postman, N. (1986). Amusing Ourselves to Death. London: Heinemann. Quaiser-Pohl, C., Geiser, C., and Lehmann, W. (2006). The relationship between computer-game preference, gender, and mental-rotation ability. Personality and Individual Differences 40, 609–619. Roberts, D. F., Henriksen, L., and Voelker, D. H. (1993). Television and schooling: displacement and distraction hypotheses. Australian Journal of Education 37(2), 198–211. Roe, K. (1992). Different destinies – different melodies: School achievement, anticipated status and adolescents’ tastes in music. European Journal of Communication 7(3), 335–358. Roe, K. (1995). Adolescents use of socially disvalued media: Towards a theory of media delinquency. Journal of Youth and Adolescence 24(5), 617–631. Roe, K., Eggermont, S., and Minnebo, J. (2001). Media use and academic achievement: Which effects? Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research 26(1), 39–57. Roe, K. and Muijs, D. (1998). Children and computer games: A portrait of the heavy user. European Journal of Communication 13(2), 181–200. Rosengren, K. E. and Windahl, S. (1990). ‘‘Media Matter’’ TV use in Childhood and Adolescence. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Salomon, G. (1984). Television is ‘‘easy’’ and print is ‘‘tough’’: The differential investment of mental effort as a function of perceptions and attributions. Journal of Educational Psychology 76, 647–658. Shin, N. (2004). Exploring pathways from television viewing to academic achievement in school age children. Journal of Genetic Psychology 165(4), 367–381. Subrahmanyam, K., Greenfield, P., Kraut, R., and Gross, E. (2001). The impact of computer use on children’s and adolescents’ development. Applied Developmental Psychology 22, 7–30. Vandewater, E. A. and Bickham, D. S. (2004). The impact of educational television on young children’s reading in the context of the family. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology 25(6), 717–728. Willoughby, T. (2008). A short-term longitudinal study of internet and computer game use by adolescent boys and girls: Prevalence, frequency of use, and psychosocial predictors. Developmental Psychology 44(1), 195–204. Wright, J. C., Huston, A. C., Murphy, K. C., et al. (2001). The relations of early television viewing to school readiness and vocabulary of children from low-income families. Child Development 72(5), 1347–1366.