School cellphone bans may improve teacher well-being and stress levels, according to findings from the first year of a multi-year study conducted by researchers at Kennesaw State University and reported in Education Week. The study examines the effects of a middle school cellphone ban on teachers’ perceptions of their own well-being and their students’ engagement. The research has not yet been peer-reviewed.
Preliminary findings show a potential for these policies to improve teacher job satisfaction and retention, says Mei-Lin Chang, a professor of educational research and one of the researchers for the study.
“What I’ve found in my other research where we look at teacher burnout [is that] a lot of them are saying the classroom dynamic is different” now than in the pre-smartphone era, she said. “Students are distracted, they’re not able to engage like the good old times.”
Chang and her team surveyed teachers from two middle schools in the Marietta City school district in Georgia in May, at the end of the district’s first year with a cellphone ban in place. The district requires middle schoolers to keep their smartphones and smartwatches locked in Yondr pouches for the entire school day. Exceptions are made for students with documented medical conditions.
Chang shared the early survey findings with Education Week in an interview.
Researchers found that 9 of every 10 teachers said the ban had helped them manage their classrooms and build stronger connections with students. Eighty-five percent said they felt the cellphone ban had overall improved their well-being — specifically that they felt less stressed about teaching and more supported overall in their jobs. More than 8 in 10 reported that they found teaching to be more rewarding under the cellphone ban.
Bur cellphone bans can also have the reverse effect, too, some teachers reported in separate surveys conducted by the EdWeek Research Center: 1) When measures can cause logistical headaches for teachers charged with enforcing them without adequate support from their schools’ administrators; 2) When lack of buy-in from fellow teachers leads to inconsistent enforcement; and 3) When there is no clarity around disciplinary steps for students who violate the policy.
“When you put more burden on teachers to implement the cellphone ban, then yes, we cannot guarantee there won’t be disruption,” Chang says. By locking students’ devices up in pouches when they enter the school building, teachers in Marietta schools are lifted from the burden of enforcing the policy. “Therefore, we see that overwhelming support from teachers,” says Chang.
The findings from the Kennesaw State University survey are similar to other studies also in the early stages. Research into their effectiveness is still emerging because cellphone bans are a relatively recent policy.
Preliminary findings from a separate survey of teachers in a Texas high school found that teachers there reported improvements in student engagement and school culture as well as a decline in classroom management problems after a cellphone ban was implemented.
Another analysis that has not yet gone through the peer review process found that in a large Florida school district, a cellphone ban improved students’ test scores and attendances rates in the second year of the measure. In the first year, school suspensions spiked before mostly falling back to pre-ban levels in the second year.
Cellphone policies may make it easier for students to pay attention and learn, but that’s only part of the equation, Chang says. Happy and satisfied teachers also improve student outcomes, she says.
“If we want to keep good teachers in the classroom, we have to trust them” when they say cellphones are a problem for them and their students, she says. “We need to take away that distraction so good teachers will remain teaching.”
Education Week
