The myths of the digital native and the multitasker
By Paul A. Kirschner, Pedro De Bruyckere. 2017
663 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Abstract Current discussions about educational policy and practice are often embedded in a mind-set that considers students who were born in an age of omnipresent digital media to be fundamentally different from previous generations of students. These students have been labelled digital natives and have been ascribed the ability to cognitively process multiple sources of information simultaneously (i.e., they can multitask ). As a result of this thinking, they are seen by teachers, educational administrators, politicians/policy makers, and the media to require an educational approach radically different from that of previous generations. This article presents scientific evidence showing that there is no such thing as a digital native who is information-skilled simply because (s)he has never known a world that was not digital. It then proceeds to present evidence that one of the alleged abilities of students in this generation, the ability to multitask, does not exist and that designing education that assumes the presence of this ability hinders rather than helps learning. The article concludes by elaborating on possible implications of this for education/educational policy.
Subfields: Education, Information Systems, Sociology and Political Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1f3a376014256d3a0029e8a80877602ab85eed37
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Citations in the corpus
- Which academic search systems are suitable for systematic reviews or meta‐analyses? Evaluating retrieval qualities of Google Scholar, PubMed, and 26 other resources (2020, background): “Indeed, librarians affirm the lack of search skills prevalent especially among students(89,92) and so-called digital natives.(88,93) We hope our study helps to create awareness of the importance of search literacy.”
- Swedish teenagers’ difficulties and abilities to determine digital news credibility (2019, background): “…for citizens to navigate online information in critical and constructive ways (Hatlevik & Christophersen, 2013; Hatlevik et al., 2015; Hinrichsen & Coombs, 2014; Kahne & Bowyer, 2017; Kirschner & De Bruyckere, 2017; Kirschner & van Merriënboer, 2013; Livingstone, 2004; van Laar et al., 2017).”