EDTECH597 – Generational Differences Entry

One of the activities for Week 2 in my EDTECH597 – Blogging In The Classroom was for students to read items from Mark Prensky, Jamie McKenzie, and Tom Reeves on the topic of generational differences.  While not a requirement this week, I did indicate that they should feel free to post their thoughts on the reading or the topic in general. As I continue to model each of the activities I ask of the students, I wanted to post an entry that outlined my own thoughts on generational differences (although if you click on the “generational differences” tag you’ll see some of my previous writings on the topic).

As this is a topic that I have written about before, I figure the best approach this week is to quote from an earlier article of mine.

The nature of today’s student

There has been much written about the nature of this generation of students, both in the popular media and in the academic literature. They have been called Generation Y, Echo, Net Generation, Neomillennials, Generation NeXt, Millennials, Generation Me, Digital Natives, Generation txt and so on. Each of these generational labels has a prescribed set of (often contradictory) characteristics. However, before we explore some of these labels it is worth examining the notion of generational differences.

Generational differences are based on the theory that people born approximately within a 20-year time period share a common set of characteristics based upon the historical experiences, economic and social conditions, technological advances, and other societal changes they have in common. If we examine the past century, the commonly accepted generations (although some may have slightly different names for them) are:

• GI Generation (Greatest Generation): born between 1901 and 1924
• Silent Generation: born between 1925 and 1945
• Baby Boomers: born between 1946 and 1964
• Generation X: born between 1965 and 1980
• Today’s student: born between 1981 and 2000.

For example, the civil rights movement and the sexual revolution, along with the events of the Cold War, the various milestones in space travel, and the assassinations of numerous inspirational leaders probably influenced those who would be identified as Baby Boomers in the United States. According to Lancaster and Stillman (2002) those born on the edges of two generations are often referred to as cuspers, and may take the characteristics of either generation depending on their experiences.

When considering today’s students, it is important to note that one of the reasons we place so much attention on this group of individuals is their size. In 2005, this generation numbered approximately 60 million in the United States, making them the largest group since the Baby Boomers (who number 72 million) and three times larger than Generation X. At that time, this generation of students made up 37 percent of the population of the United States, and the teen population was growing at twice the rate of the rest of America. As such, this generation of students has the potential to have a great impact on society—from their involvement in the community to their purchasing power to their employment expectations.

In examining these generational labels, we find that three labels have been most prevalent in the media and literature: Net Generation, Millennials, and Digital Natives. The Net Generation was a label first used by Don Tapscott in his book Growing Up Digital: The Rise of the Net Generation. Tapscott (1997) believed this Net Generation comprised children of Baby Boomers, and that digital technology has had a profound impact on their personalities, including their attitudes and approach to learning. Essentially, he believes that the generation gap has become a generation lap—at least in relation to technology—and this generational lap has made this generation of students profoundly different from any other. In the opening pages of his book, Tapscott writes “the research team collaborated with several hundred children and adults located on six continents…. [and] the main reference source was the Web” (p. viii). In his acknowledgements, he indicated that, “the research team… held discussions on the Net with about 300 youngsters” (p. xi). This is the only information provided about the methodology he used in crafting his vision of this generation.

The difficulty with this methodology is twofold: there is not enough detail provided to understand whether it was reliable or valid, and the sample came primarily from those who were engaged in the medium that features prominently in Tapscott’s generational label. One wonders if his findings were a self-fulfilling prophecy—youth found on the internet, and who have grown up using technology all of their lives, were found to be strongly influenced by technology and the internet. If his sample had focused on youth and adults in rural and remote areas where access to digital technology and the internet is not as common, would his characteristics of this generation of youth be the same? In his follow-up book, Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World, Tapscott (2009) again employed an online questionnaire, a Facebook group, and a global online network with an international sample in the thousands, a strategy that raises similar concerns.

The Millennials generational label appears to be the most common within the literature (Howe & Strauss, 2000). Millennials are described as “more numerous, more affluent, better educated, and more ethnically diverse…. they are beginning to manifest a wide array of positive social habits…. [such as] teamwork, achievement, modesty, and good conduct” (p. 4). The problem with this optimistic generational label is again the methodology that was used. As they described on their website (see http://millenialsrising.com), the authors surveyed 202 teachers and 655 students from the class of 2000 in Fairfax County, Virginia. Fairfax County is an affluent suburb of Washington, DC. It has a median household income almost twice the national average; only a third of the student population studied was non-white, 18 percent of students qualified for free or reduced-lunch, and 5 percent lived below the official poverty line. I wonder if the authors would have found the same generational characteristics if their sample had been from Detroit, where over 80 percent of the population is black, over 20 percent live under the poverty line, and the on-time graduation rate is approximately 25 percent.

Probably the most familiar term among those involved in the K–12 environment is Digital Natives. According to Prensky (2001), Digital Natives “are all ‘native speakers’ of the digital language of computers, video games and the internet” (¶ 5); those of us who are not native to this digital language are considered Digital Immigrants. Of all of the generational labels this is probably the most dangerous, as it presumes a negative connotation towards Digital Immigrants that Prensky himself fosters, “If Digital Immigrant educators really want to reach Digital Natives—i.e., all their students—they will have to change” (Prensky, 2001, ¶ 34). Those educators who do not are “just dumb (and lazy)” (¶ 33). Bayne and Ross (2007) elaborated on this negative view of Digital Immigrants by examining the terms used in the Digital Native literature to describe both groups.

Table 1. Terminology used to describe Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants (Bayne & Ross, 2007, p. 2)

Digital Native	Digital Immigrant
Student Fast Young Future Multi-tasking Image Playful Looking forward Digital Action Constant connection	Teacher Slow Old Past or legacy Logical, serial thinking Text Serious Looking backward Analogue Knowledge Isolation

Unfortunately, like Tapscott’s conclusions, Prensky’s work is simply based upon his own, unsystematic observations. I should note that McKenzie (2007) does an excellent job of examining the ‘research’ (and I use that term extremely lightly) that Prensky uses to support his Digital Natives–Digital Immigrants dichotomy.One of the common themes that you should have noticed is the lack of reliable and valid research to support any of these generational labels—or at least the most common ones. In their funded literature review of how generational differences might affect the instructional design process, Reeves and Oh (2008) concluded, “the bottom line on generational differences is that educational technology researchers should treat this variable as failing to meet the rigour of definition and measurement required for robust individual difference variables” (p. 302). This finding is also consistent with many of the characteristics attributed to this generation of students by these various labels, such as this generation mistakenly being labelled as master multi-taskers (see Just, Kellera & Cynkara, 2008; Naveh-Benjamin, Kilb & Fisher, 2006; as recent examples that have failed to confirm this myth).

Reeves and Oh (2008) did describe one line of research into generational differences that they found to be “more rigourous” and “convincing”—the Generation Me work completed by Jean Twenge. Based on data collected from 1.3 million young Americans, Twenge (2006) used results from twelve studies dating back to the 1950s to trace the changes in narcissistic beliefs and behaviour over the past 6 decades. On the book jacket, Generation Me is described thus, “Today’s young people have been raised to aim for the stars at a time when it is more difficult than ever to get into college, find a good job, and afford a house. Their expectations are very high just as the world is becoming more competitive, so there’s a huge clash between their expectations and reality.” In a more recent article for Medical Education, Twenge (2009) indicated that Generation Me students were too ambitious, overconfident, self-centred, lacked empathy for others, entitled, and lacked self-reliance. This is not necessarily the same rosy picture as that portrayed by Tapscott, Prensky, or Howe and Strauss.

Based upon this review of generational differences, the commonly used labels of Net Generation, Millennials, and Digital Natives are based on no or flawed research (and for a more provocative review of the generational differences literature, see Reeves, 2008). When we examine many of the characteristics these labels prescribe to this generation of students (e.g., the fact that they are master multi-taskers), we find the current research supports the exact opposite. In fact, the only thing we can say about this generation of students—that is at least based upon reliable and valid research—is that they are more narcissistic than any previous generation.

References:

Bayne S. & Ross, J. (2007, December). The ‘digital native’ and ‘digital immigrant’: A dangerous opposition. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Society for Research into Higher Education, Brighton, UK. Retrieved on May 13, 2009 from http://www.malts.ed.ac.uk/staff/sian/natives_final.pdf

Howe, N., & Strauss, W. (2000). Millennials rising: The next great generation. New York: Vintage Books.

Just, M. A., Kellera, T. A., & Cynkara, J. (2008). A decrease in brain activation associated with driving when listening to someone speak. Brain Research, 1205, 70–80.

Lancaster, L. C., & Stillman, D. (2002). When generations collide. Who they are. Why they clash. How to solve the generational puzzle at work. New York: Collins Business.

McKenzie, J. (2007). Digital nativism: Digital delusions and digital deprivation. From Now On, 17(2). Retrieved on May 3, 2008 from http://fno.org/nov07/nativism.html

Naveh-Benjamin, M., Kilb, A., & Fisher, T. (2006). Concurrent task effects on memory encoding and retrieval: Further support for an asymmetry. Memory & Cognition, 34(1), 90–101.

Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants—Part II: Do they really think differently? On the Horizon, 9(6). Retrieved September 25, 2006 from http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf

Reeves, T. C. (2008, January). Do generational differences matter in instructional design? Paper presented to the Instructional Technology Forum. Retrieved May 13, 2009 from http://it.coe.uga.edu/itforum/Paper104/ReevesITForumJan08.pdf

Reeves, T. C., & Oh, E. J. (2008). Generation differences and educational technology research. In J. M. Spector, M. D. Merrill, J. J. G. van Merrienboer, & M. P. Driscoll (Eds.), Handbook of research on educational communications and technology (3rd ed., pp. 295–303). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Tapscott, D. (1997). Growing up digital: The rise of the net generation. New York: McGraw Hill.

Tapscott, D. (2009). Grown up digital: How the net generation is changing your world. New York: McGraw Hill.

Twenge, J. M. (2006). Generation me: Why today’s young Americans are more confident, assertive, entitled—and more miserable than ever before. New York: Free Press.

Twenge, J. M. (2009). Generational changes and their impact in the classroom: Teaching generation me. Medical Education, 43(5), 398–405.

Taken from pages 5-9.

Barbour, M. K. (2009). Today’s student and virtual schooling: The reality, the challenges, the promise… Journal of Distance Learning, 13(1), 5-25. Retrieved from http://journals.akoaotearoa.ac.nz/index.php/JOFDL/article/view/35