The “pilot and experimental project” starts after Easter holidays in that vocational school, installed in the Sines Petrochemical Complex, in the Setúbal district, and will take place until the end of the school year
A (ETLA) It will restrict, starting next week, the use of mobile phones in classrooms, with the objective of improving school learning about 250 students.
The “pilot and experimental project” starts after Easter holidays in that vocational school, installed in the Sines Petrochemical Complex, in the Setúbal district, and will take place until the end of the school year.
Speaking to Lusa agency, ETLA’s director, Eduardo Bandeira, explained that the idea has been studied after the covid-19 pandemic, when an “excessive use of mobile phone in school context was observed.”
“Although our internal regulation already restricts the use of mobile phones in the school space, saying that it cannot be used in the classroom, in fact there was no clear assumption of this rule,” he said.
Once confronted with this reality, which, according to the official, “disturbs not only the functioning of the class, but has consequences in students’ learning capacity,” the school management chose to “discuss this subject” and “evaluate pros and cons” with the school community.
Objective is to “test students and teachers’ reaction”
Thus, “personalized inquiries” were performed to those in charge of education and students, with “very clear” results that pointed to “the interdiction of mobile phones in the classroom,” said Eduardo Bandeira.
The remaining options were the “interdiction of mobile phone use in both the classroom and at intervals, allowing only its use at a large lunch break”, or the “total interdiction of mobile phone use at school,” he said.
According to the director of ETLA, the restriction only in the classroom, “experimental”, will allow “testing the reaction of students and teachers” so that in September it is possible to “make an assessment of results” and “make a decision for the next school year”.
School believes in better results
Thus, from the 22nd of this month, the students, most of them between 15 and 18 years old, “will not have their mobile phones exposed” in the classroom, and can “keep them in the cliffs or backpacks”.
If you want to take the devices to the classroom you will have to put them “in a box, off and without vibration,” said the director.
Eduardo Bandeira said he believed “that there will be no resistance” from the students, since “they are aware that the use of the mobile phone disturbs learning and classes.”
“Our perspective is that students’ performance improve with the slightest distraction in the classroom, with better use of the learning that is done in the classrooms, laboratories and workshops” of this professional school, he concluded.
