Survey: 95％ of Elementary, Junior High Principals Favor Mix of Paper, Digital Textbooks

The Yomiuri Shimbun

7:00 JST, January 17, 2025

Elementary and junior high school principals overwhelmingly want to use digital textbooks in combination with paper textbooks, rather than digital textbooks alone, according to a Yomiuri Shimbun survey.

The education ministry is aiming to expand the use of digital textbooks, but the survey results indicate that the continued use of paper textbooks still has deep-rooted support in actual schools.

Of the elementary and junior high school principals across Japan who responded to the survey, 95% said they want to use both forms of textbook.

The survey was conducted online between late November and early December. Two members were selected from the elementary school principals associations and junior high school principals associations of each of Japan’s 47 prefectures, for a total of 188 respondents. Responses were received from 162, or 86.2%.

When asked how they wanted to proceed from the current situation, in which paper and digital textbooks are both used, 154 principals, or 95.1%, replied that they would continue to make both forms available in the classroom. Seven principals, or 4.3%, said they would do away with paper textbooks and use digital textbooks only.

Among the main advantages of paper textbooks cited by respondents were that “students can easily return to earlier content any time, and they have the advantage of being well-understood and aiding retainment,” and they are “more effective” in getting students to “think deeply” about a topic.

A total of 146 respondents, or 90.1%, said they would “have concerns” or “somewhat have concerns” if the distribution of paper textbooks was halted and schools shifted completely to digital textbooks. The survey asked principals what concerns they had about digital textbooks, to which they were allowed to give multiple answers. The most common response, given by 59.9% of respondents, was problems such as devices “freezing and connectivity issues.” About 48% of principals also mentioned “dealing with the loss of or damage to learning devices.” The most commonly cited advantage of digital textbooks, identified by 93.8% of respondents, was that students “could watch videos and hear audio content.”

In August 2022, the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry decided that paper and digital textbooks would be used in tandem for the time being. However, the Central Council for Education has since last autumn been advancing discussions aimed at expanding the use of digital textbooks.

Tohoku University Prof. Fujio Ohmori, an expert in education policy, said, “It’s reasonable for paper textbooks to be used most of the time and to supplement them with digital textbooks. The central government should carefully decide on this issue based on the actual situation in schools and scientific evidence.”