Reducing students’ ‘absent presenteeism’ and mobile misbehaviour in class: an empirical study of teacher perspectives and practices

Advances in information technology and communication through new social media platforms have enormous benefits in many contexts, including education. At the same time, self-distractive use of technology–or ‘absent presenteeism’–can have negative effects in the classroom. The main research question of this study is the relationship between organisational leadership, enforcement of discipline and self-distractive use of technology in the secondary school setting. The finding indicated that the permissive style of discipline appeared to be the most effective at reducing self-distractive mobile phone use. However, a more authoritative style of discipline, short teacher tenure and the principal’s transformational leadership style contributed to high self-distractive mobile phone use. The authors rely on empirical data collected in Israeli public high schools from two independent sources: 144 teachers and 591 students, which yielded 4440 teacher-student events. Implications of the findings are discussed in the context of the school setting characterised by rapid changes in technology.