Getting Beyond the Hype about Generational Differences

The idea that the "Net Generation" has distinct characteristics that affect the way they learn has been accepted as fact by many in the educational community. However, once you scratch below the surface of the punditry and hype, it is becoming increasingly evident that there is little solid research to support these claims.

Two recent reviews of research and one research study suggest we need need to be much more cautious about these claims, particularly when it comes to making changes to the way we teach and use technology.

According to Thomas Reeves and Eujong Oh (2007),

"There is relatively little consensus of opinion an scholarship about whether generational differences exist that are worth taking into consideration in the workplace, colleges, and universities, and other contexts."

"It is definitely unjustified to make assumptions about any one individual based on that person's membership in a chronological generational cohort."

"Most of the popular literature on the subject...appears to rest on limited data, almost always conducted by survey methods characterized by a lack of reliability and validity data."

Read the full chapter from the Handbook of Research on Educational Communications and Technology (2007), edited by J. Michael Spector, M. David Merrill, Jeroen van Merrienboer, Marcy P. Driscoll.

A more recent study by Anoush Margaryan and Allison Littlejohn at Glasgow Caledonian and Strathclyde Universities in the UK found supports the need for caution. It found little evidence that "Net Generation" students wanted different approaches to teaching:

"students’ attitudes to learning appear to be influenced by the teaching approaches adopted by their lecturers. Far from demanding lecturers change their practice, students appear to conform to fairly traditional pedagogies, albeit with minor uses of technology tools that deliver content."

Other key findings:

"students use a limited range of technologies for both learning and socialisation. For learning, mainly established ICTs are used- institutional VLE, Google and Wikipedia and mobile phones. Students make limited, recreational use of social technologies such as media sharing tools and social networking sites...the findings point to a low level of use of and familiarity with collaborative knowledge creation tools, virtual worlds, personal web publishing, and other emergent social technologies."

Margaryan and Littlejohn conclude:

"The outcomes suggest that although the calls for radical transformations in educational approaches may be legitimate it would be misleading to ground the arguments for such change solely in students’ shifting expectations and patterns of learning and technology use.

Read the full paper

Another review of research also supports the need for skepticism of the grand claims made about the "net generation". According to Sue Bennett, Karl Maton and Lisa Kervin, the claims that this generation of learners is so different from previous generations that a fundamental change to our educational systems is needed "have been subjected to little critical scrutiny, are undertheorised, and lack a sound empirical basis"(p. 776).

In their article in the British Journal of Educational Technology (Vol. 39, No. 5, 775-786). The three researchers from the University of Wollongong and the University of Sydney review the evidence and analyze the debate. They conclude that "...rather than being empirically and theoretically informed, the debate can be likened to an academic form of a 'moral panic'" (p. 775).

The full article is accessible online through library e-journal databases.

For more reading on this issue, check out Net Generation Nonsense.