This same teacher shows a digital culture that has developed around the various issues related to digital uses. This culture leads her to consider the risks:
We can limit the use of social networks and control them well, but that doesn’t mean we’ll relay good information. So, I refer you to the fake news that we talk about so much at the moment, but it’s not just related to current events, we can relay completely false information of all kinds, we can be taken in by false ideas, we can even, without going so far, simply read content that is slightly false or politically biased… (English teacher in a high school, age 25).
This teacher is joined by a young high school biology teacher who believes that digital networks are also learning spaces and that young people are not necessarily aware of this:
So social networks, in my opinion, should not be banned but should be used correctly, […] there are also advantages to uh... Facebook, or Twitter, etc., in that you can monitor information and follow interesting pages. For example, in biology there are very interesting pages. There is the page of the Museum of Natural History which publishes articles, there are the museums of Bordeaux which publish articles, and also American sites. So why not, um, do interdisciplinary work with the English teachers? Explain to the students that ok there are funny things on Facebook but there are also sources of information that are reliable and that they can go and look for information on them and often it’s small articles that are not very complicated. And then when it comes to digital literacy, in my opinion it’s like all the other types of education, be it sex education, citizenship education, etc. It should be part of the core curriculum. It concerns all the teachers because at the end of the day, our role as teachers is to give students the keys so that they become responsible citizens. And, well, being responsible also means paying attention to what we do with digital technology, and so for me it’s something in the core curriculum that all teachers should strive to do, and they don’t necessarily do it, so it’s a shame (biology teacher in a senior high school, age 22).
These teachers seem to be informed by the media. They are not unaffected by the talk of risk, but they are not overwhelmed by emotions. Instead, they seek to better understand the risks so they can explain them to students. Thus, unlike those who prefer to stay away from all the threats that digital uses can evoke, others, like these teachers, consider that it is essential to address these issues with students and to help young people more generally:
I’m a teacher, so of course I like to help students and I can’t just leave them struggling, but also and above all because very often Facebook and the Internet and social networks are very impersonal spaces where people expose their happiness or their unhappiness without any real human impact in fact and uh… I don’t claim to change the Internet, but in any case I use the Internet in a human way and if I see that people are putting up alarmist or sexist, xenophobic, discriminatory messages in general, well, I act. I don’t let... I don’t let it go. I don’t remain indifferent (English teacher in a high school, age 25).
Considering her role as an educator, this teacher tells us that she is even involved in providing mediation and helping young people who are being harassed on social networks. She says that she has joined the association “Marion 13 ans pour toujours” and regularly participates in the exchanges that take place on Facebook. She explains that she sometimes offers her help when a teenager appears to be struggling:
It seemed a bit worrying so I sent her a Facebook message saying, I’m at this association, you can get in touch or you can reply to me and then I’ll redirect you somewhere else (English teacher in a high school, age 25).
In the panel of new teachers we interviewed, this category of teachers, who are very committed, is still largely in the minority. Thus, the information and training efforts seem insufficient to go beyond the vision of risks and turn it into a lever for educating students.
1.5. Reflection on the role of digital risk representations in education
When new teachers are asked about their perception of digital risks for themselves and their students, the majority of them see an amplification of risk when it affects students. According to them, students are more exposed than they are to most risks.
This trend can be explained by the idea that teachers have been trained or have trained themselves and feel they have more experience, or because they perceive students as being less armed and feel threatened themselves. This amplification therefore also refers to a sense of personal insecurity with digital technology, as this physics and chemistry teacher shows:
I get the impression that in the face of social networks and perhaps digital resources in general, there is something that appears, that is to say that there is a little bit of a decline in personal reflection, and again I say this... well, perhaps with some nuance, but I have this feeling. I have the impression that sometimes there is so much information that is given to us, so much ease of access to a lot of information that sometimes… there is a passive attitude that is established in the sense that the students, but I think it is also true for me and for many of us, we tend to use our personal reflection a little less and that I think is a drawback (physics and chemistry teacher in a senior high school, 30 years old).
Figure 1.3. Teachers’ perceived risks to themselves and students
Official texts are also understood in different ways by different people. The level of teaching can have an impact on the representations of what is valued or not valued in teaching. Among those who attempt this venture, there is often a feeling of not being supported by the institution, which gives too few means (equipment, time) to allow the achievement of the requested objectives and imposes too many constraints (school programs, locking certain sites, etc.).
The feeling of belonging to a digital native generation appears to be a lever for teachers who feel better able to transmit and share their know-how.
On the other hand, some of them do not consider digital technology as part of their role as educators and neglect both assistance for its use and the critical approach that underlies digital literacy:
I know that in history and geography they will do this much more because the subject lends itself to it and then they have the teaching of EMC (moral and civil education) where they… often they will lend themselves to it. It’s true that I consider that the students currently handle computer tools much better than I would, insofar as they have access to them […] But I’m not going to teach them how to use them (math teacher in a senior high school, 31 years old).
In this confusion between technical skills (using the tool) and intellectual and cognitive mastery (understanding/evaluating/criticizing), digital uses do not appear to be an educational issue for these teachers. The (technical or manipulative) skills of the students are not taken into account by the teacher and are even rejected, even though they could be a lever for critical education in digital uses.
The teachers who consider training students to deal with digital risks say that the protection of personal data and privacy on the Internet is the first topic to be addressed (89.2%). Image rights are also cited by 67.3% of them. Next come media literacy and copyright, cited by half the teachers, as well as cyberbullying.
However, only half of respondents (51.8%) report consulting information about digital risks, and more than half of the new teachers who have consulted information on digital risks (54.2%) feel that this information is insufficient. Another 52.3% say they have not been trained in digital uses in teaching situations. Among those who have received training in digital uses, opinions are very divided: half of them (50.1%) state that this training was not useful to them in dealing with the risks; the other half (49.3%) believe that the training enables them to deal with them. The majority of respondents