The Two Faces of Digital Transformation in Education: The United Kingdom vs. Turkey
Over the past decade, the most beguiling slogan in the world of education has, without doubt, been “digital transformation”. Interactive whiteboards, tablets and cloud-based classrooms were marketed as the “gold standard” of modern education. Turkey became one of the most enthusiastic champions of this transformation, most notably through vast initiatives such as the FATİH Project. Bringing technology into the classroom was held up as a symbol of modernisation.
During the very same period, however, we witnessed another striking development: just as we were changing up a gear, something curious was happening in the United Kingdom, home to one of the world’s most established education systems. The system began to apply the brakes.
The picture that has emerged today is a remarkable one: while Turkey is still pursuing ever-greater digitalisation in education, many schools in the United Kingdom are debating whether to limit the use of technology and, in certain areas, to return to more traditional methods of learning.
So why is this?
Has Digitalisation Delivered the Results We Expected?
For many years it was assumed that educational technology would accelerate learning. The promise of rapid access to information, personalised learning and limitless digital resources captivated everyone. In recent years, however, research in educational psychology and neuroscience has begun to show that learning is not merely a matter of accessing information — quite the opposite.
Generation Z Faces a First: Development in Reverse
The picture before us today overturns everything we thought we knew. Since the late 1800s, each generation has demonstrated higher cognitive performance than the one before it — yet Generation Z is the first to break this trend. For the first time, we are seeing declines in measures of attention, memory, literacy and general intelligence.
What is more, the cause of this decline is neither the curriculum nor some biological change. Data spanning 80 countries points to a direct link between the spread of digital technology in schools and falling academic attainment. Students who spend more than five hours a day in front of a screen perform markedly worse than peers who rarely use technology.
It is therefore no coincidence that the following question has come to the fore in the “Western” education world:
“Just because we are able to make something digital, does that mean it is any better for education?”
A New Trend in the United Kingdom: “Digital Minimalism”
The approach that has drawn attention in British boarding schools in recent years is not to reject technology outright, but to use it in a controlled and purpose-driven way.
Many schools now argue that constant screen exposure among students:
- increases distraction;
- makes deep concentration more difficult;
- reduces social interaction;
- renders reading habits more superficial.
For these reasons, some schools have introduced “tech-free zones”, limited device hours and screen-detox practices.
When I visited Marymount International School in the United Kingdom a few months ago, I encountered a particularly striking approach to the use of technology in education.
At the school, students were not permitted to use their phones during the day. They could access their phones only in the evening, between 6.00 pm and 9.30 pm, once all academic work and the daily schedule had been completed. More intriguing still, internet access had been deliberately restricted in certain parts of the campus. This technical arrangement was no accident; it had been specifically designed to reduce students’ state of being perpetually online.
At first glance, this approach may seem strict. Yet the longer I spent on campus, the more the atmosphere that emerged proved to be quite different.
Students talked to one another more, socialised more in communal areas, and were able to devote their attention to a single task for longer. In boarding-school culture in particular, the aim is for students to develop not only academic success but also independence, communication skills and emotional resilience. This was precisely the ethos of the school’s leadership: not to remove technology from life altogether, but to protect the student’s mental space from the constant stimulation of screens.
Turkey’s Approach: Digital Extravagance = Modern Education
In Turkey, the picture is unfolding rather differently. The use of technology in education is still, to a large extent, regarded as a marker of progress.
Interactive whiteboard infrastructure, digital content platforms and tablet-assisted learning models occupy a prominent place, particularly within state policy. For parents, too, technologically equipped classrooms are often seen as one of the factors that reinforce the perception of a “good school”.
Here, however, lies a crucial distinction:
Is technology a tool within education, or is it becoming education itself?
