Korean Educational Development Institute(KEDI)

A Study on the Culture of Students in the Digital Generation

This study puts a distance from the approach of technological determinism, which defines the interaction between the digital media technology and student culture as a singular relationship and fails to consider the social contexts, in which the technology is embraced, interpreted and used in various manners. Rather, we took into consideration a diverse nature of practical interactions and conditional contexts between student culture and digital media technology so as to promote more comprehensive and dynamic understanding of the culture of students in the digital generation.

We started with four research questions: 1) How do students organize their daily experiences of using digital media technology and what meaning do they find in them? 2) How do students, as part of the digital generation, perceive their school life and student culture and what are their coping strategies at school? 3) What are the experiences and/or perceptions of the digital student culture shared by teachers and parents? 4) What are the conditions that formulate the culture of students in the digital generation?