Ubiquitous learning environments or u-learning represent the new generation of virtual learning environments (VLE), applied in the field of education as a didactic resource capable of offering several benefits for the teaching-learning process, such as mobile learning, recommendation of personalized content and proactive adaptation of didactic materials to the student's learning context, through the devices and technologies of mobile computing, context-sensitive and wireless communication networks. However, the development of u-learning environments is a difficult and time-consuming task, especially when the environment incorporates contextsensitive learning content authoring services, which increases the complexity of development. Motivated by this scenario, this doctoral thesis investigated and defined a service-oriented reference architecture for the development of ubiquitous learning environments, called MOA-RA, with the main objective of contributing to architectural projects of u-learning environments. The architecture was built based on the "ProSA-RA" reference architecture development process and validated through three types of architectural assessment: Inspection by checklist, questionnaire with domain experts and case studies as proof of concept of the instantiation of the proposed architecture. The results were positive and indicated that the MOA-RA achieved the expected objectives.