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Laura Price
Mrs. Barnes
ENG 1201
25 October 2020
Literature Review
My research question I chose is “How does restricting cell phone use in school affect
students?” If phones are allowed in class, could they be used for educational purposes? Or do
most teachers just see them as a distraction? What are the rules for phones in schools that allow
phones to be used? I believe that smartphones would benefit students’ learning experience in
school. However, schools should moderate the use so that they won’t become a distraction. A
common theme throughout all my sources is that the majority of adults see smartphone use in
school bad. There are very few adults who can see the advantages there are to using them in the
classroom. The opposite is found for the teenagers and young adults, they can find many
instances where cell phone use in the classroom would be helpful and are quite creative with
coming up with ways a smartphone can be integrated into lesson plans.
Over the years the idea of using smartphones in school has changed. Since the creation of
IPhone in 2007, smartphones have increased in popularity all over the world. Just fourteen years
ago cell phones weren’t even thought to be used in school. As they gained popularity with the
younger generations they became more prevalent in school and were mainly distractions, so there
were rules placed over phones to keep learning in place. Over those fourteen years many
advancements have been made in technology, including cell phones, which have made them
more adept to help students learn. The older generations don’t believe and can’t see the benefits
of using cell phones in the classroom since they didn’t grow up with electronics and tend to stick
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to their old-school ways. In contrast, the younger generation can see the benefits and uses of
smartphones in school. This creates a disagreement between the teenagers, younger adults, and
older adults on what the policy should be on cell phones in schools.
In some of my sources, the authors believe that cell phones in schools are all bad and that
the negative effects far outweigh the advantages to even think to use them in school. However,
Lancaster disagrees with those ideas in that cell phones can be beneficial in classrooms with
certain rules and restrictions. The article, “Schools Say No to Cellphones in Class. But Is It a
Smart Move?”, begins by listing negative things that a student could do on their phone and uses
those as reasons to why schools are jumping on banning cell phones so quickly. The author goes
on to explain that, though these uses are harmful and the ban could help prevent them, there are
better ways to go about restricting smartphones than banning them all-together. Hayes explains
that “some experts say it's better to keep cellphones in school and help train students how to use
them responsibly, rather than just banning their use.” This is overall the main disagreement
between all my sources.
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Works Cited
Hayes, William, editor. “What to Do about Cell Phones?: Cell Phone Use in Schools.”
All New Real-Life Case Studies for School Administrators, Lanham : Rowman &
Littlefield Education, 2007, pp. 103–108. OhioLINK. Accessed 25 Oct. 2020.
Klein, Alyson. “Schools Say No to Cellphones in Class. But Is It a Smart Move?”
Education Week, 2 Apr. 2020, www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2019/09/11/schools-say-no-
to-cellphones-in-class.html. Accessed 25 Oct. 2020.
Lancaster, Alexander L. (2018) "Student learning with permissive and restrictive cell
phone policies: A classroom experiment," International Journal for the Scholarship of
Teaching and Learning: Vol. 12: No. 1, Article 5. Accessed 25 Oct. 2020.
Pulliam, Daniel, "Effect of Student Classroom Cell Phone Usage on Teachers" (2017).
Masters Theses & Specialist Projects. Paper 1915.
http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/1915. Accessed 25 Oct. 2020.
Strauss, Valerie. “Schools are banning smartphones. Here’s an argument for why they
shouldn’t - and what they should do instead.” The Washington Post, 21 Sept. 2018,
www.washingtonpost.com/education/2018/09/21/schools-are-banning-smartphones-
heres-an-argument-why-they-shouldnt-what-they-should-do-instead/. Accessed 25 Oct.
2020.
