“Digital” generation in the educational system of the Russian region: problems and solutions

The purpose of the research is to analyze pedagogical problems stemming from the emergence of a new “digital” generation in Russian educational organizations of various levels (secondary schools, universities), and search for possible solutions to these problems primarily aimed at reducing the negative impact of digital devices in students’ activities.

Materials and research methods are based on a number of foreign publications in the field of pedagogy, psychology, neurophysiology, conducted in the USA, Great Britain, Singapore and other countries since the 2000s, as well as studies of the “digital” generation of Russia in the mid-2010s. This research applied a specially developed technique that enabled conducting a relative assessment of the impact of digital devices on the activities of various students’ groups of an educational system (secondary schools - university) in one of the major Russian regions.

Results of the study conducted in 2018 in one university and several schools of various types in a region of the Russian Federation reveals that the ninth grade lyceum students show a noticeably lower degree of the effect of digital devices on their daily activities compared to the first-year students of the same university. A similar indicator of a ninth-grade students’ group of a comprehensive secondary school, on the contrary, is significantly higher when compared to that of the first-year university students. The author substantiates two main reasons that lead to this result: 1) a more optimal workload of learning and cognitive activity of lyceum students, which, as a result, significantly reduces their free time, that could be spent on entertainment/ communication; 2) better control from the parents of lyceum students.

Conclusion. The article describes two pedagogical models that allow, according to the author, to reduce the negative impact of digital devices on the younger generation. The first model (demonstrated at the Singapore Institute of Education), aimed at encouraging students to use gadgets for educational purposes, suggests a number of pedagogical conditions, both artificial (organizational and technological) and natural (age restrictions). The second model, on the one hand, does not impose strict age restrictions, but, at the same time, requires an educational organization to implement the training system that would effectively motivate students to learning and cognitive activity (with or without gadgets) on school days.

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