SPACE, CONTEXT AND PERSPECTIVE - In the Regulation of MP3 Players and Cell Phones in Secondary School

Oct 15, 2026

Analyzes how students, teachers, and administrators perceive rules governing cell phones and personal music players in secondary schools. Using focus groups with students in Toronto and Whitton and interviews with teachers and administrators from Whitton, the study organizes viewpoints into themes including context, public/private space and cyberbullying, safety, regulation and enforcement, and differences between integrated and peripheral users of digital technology. Concludes that stakeholders understand device roles differently, that music players and cell phones are not treated as equivalent, and that top-down blanket rules restrict most stakeholders’ input.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages33

Reading Time1 h 23 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Background on school bans and regulations

Research approach and stakeholder viewpoints

Context of device ownership among youth

Related research areas and perspectives

ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME? SPACE, CONTEXT AND PERSPECTIVE IN THE REGULATION OF MP3 PLAYERS AND CELL PHONES IN SECONDARY SCHOOL Julie Domitrek and Rebecca Raby Brock University Recently, there has been much media coverage about cell phone and personal music player usage in schools, including in the Toronto and Whitton regions. However, there is little literature on how students and teachers view rules on the use of such electronic devices. Using data gathered from focus groups with students in Toronto and Whitton and interviews with teachers and administrators from Whitton, we present the viewpoints from these stakeholders on the usage of cell phones and personal music players. We frame this preliminary discussion around six themes: the importance of context; public/private space and cyberbullying; safety; regulation and enforcement; and tension between integrated and peripheral users of digital technology. We conclude that the role of such electronic devices in school is understood quite differently between administrators, teachers and students, that music players and cell phones are not equivalent and that movements towards top-down „blanket‟ rules limit input from most stakeholders. Introduction In March 2006, the Niagara Catholic District School Board instituted a board-wide ban of cell phones and mp3 players in classes (Beech, 2006; Scott, 2006) . A year later, there were many high-profile reports of the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) banning the use of cellphones anywhere in or on school property (CityNews, 2007) . The Dufferin-Peel Catholic School Board has a similar cell phone ban on school property (Brown, 2007) . There have also been reports of bans or strict regulations on cell phones and mp3 players in other Canadian schools, in Ottawa, Gatineau and Montreal, for instance, and in the United States (CityNews, 2007; CBC News, 2006a) . This paper grows out ofa larger on-going project investigating secondary student and teacher response to school rules in Toronto and “Whitton”(a pseudonym for a region in Southern Ontario) . While conducting focus groups with young people and interviews with teachers and administrators about school rules, we noted significant debate surrounding the regulation of electronic devices, more specifically cell phones and personal music players 1 , in the classroom and at school in general. In this paper, we thus present viewpoints expressed by various stakeholders in schools – students, teachers and administrators – on the usage of cellphones and mp3 players and debates arising from the implementation of policies governing their use in schools. While viewpoints sometimes overlap, administrators, teachers and students tended to approach the question of such personal electronic devices in schools in different ways, although it was administrators who were most involved in the development of school policy on them. Electronic devices, such as cell phones and mp3 players, are becoming increasingly ubiquitous in Canadian society. A Statistics Canada survey on residential telephone services found that 66.8% of households in Canada have cell phones, with Ontario having the second highest proportion of household ownership at 70.1%(Statistics Canada, 2007) . Insofar as youth are concerned, 46% of students in the eleventh grade in Canada own a cell phone (Canada's 1 “Personal music players” is a term that would include any device that is listened to using headphones which would include portable radios, cassette tape-playing Walkmans, compact disc-playing Discmans, mini-disc players or mp3 players. Today the most prevalent of these used in North American society is the mp3 player, which we refer to here. The most well-known and popular of these is Apple‟s iPod, which many individuals use interchangeably with“mp3 player” even though it is a brand name. Until recently some school codes also specifically referred to the brand name „Walkman‟. Office of Consumer A

FAQs

What does the paper investigate about electronic devices in secondary school?

It examines how students, teachers, and administrators view rules on using cell phones and personal music players in schools, including how those policies are debated and implemented.

How did the authors collect their data?

They used focus groups with students in Toronto and Whitton and interviews with teachers and administrators from Whitton.

What major themes structure the discussion of stakeholder viewpoints?

The paper frames the discussion around six themes: context, public/private space and cyberbullying, safety, regulation and enforcement, and tension between integrated and peripheral users of digital technology.

Oct 15, 2026

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