One Device for One Student: Elementary and Secondary Teachers’ Perceptions of the GIGA School Program in Japan

Asynchronous Brief Paper ID: 61350
  1. aaa
    Yoko Noborimoto
    Graduate School of Teacher Education, Tokyo Gakugei University
  2. Jun Takahashi
    Faculty of Education, Tokyo Gakugei University

Abstract: In response to issues such as the country’s declining birth rate and rapid population decline, Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) instituted the GIGA (Global and Innovation Gateway for All) School Program, which has its aim one ICT device per student from 1st through 12th grade. The program rollout has begun but is not expected to be complete until the end of 2022. We conducted this study to gain an understanding of the interim status of the project by comparing elementary and secondary school teachers’ impressions of one device per student in October 2020, when the program was still fairly new, and in October 2021, six months after it was complete in the elementary and secondary schools. We received completed surveys from 388 teachers in 2020 and 389 in 2021, and we found that although teachers showed increased awareness of the GIGA School Program and of cloud services in 2021, they still had low understanding of both, particularly of cloud services. We also asked teachers about their concerns and found that concerns had increased in 2021 as well. Notably, however, teachers showed the greatest concerns about negative impacts on students’ mental and physical health in the lower grades (1–3), and their concerns declined as grade level increased. We present other findings in the main paper related to teachers’ understanding of and support for the GIGA School Program’s one device per student initiative.

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