Mobile practices in everyday life: Popular digital technologies and schooling revisited

Abstract

Mobile phones have rapidly been absorbed into the fabric of our day‐to‐day lives. They are now a key consumer item, a symbol of social capital and they connect their users to a mobile web with multiple applications. As ownership and access to smartphones has spread into the teenage years, their place in institutions of formal education has been marked by contention. The dominant view that mobiles have no place in the classroom has recently been contested by educators, such as Parry, who suggest that mobile learning, and the literacies involved, should play an important role in education. This paper argues for a more nuanced view of mobile technology, one that focuses on everyday social practices as a way of understanding the relationship between mobiles and learning. Using practice theory as a starting point, I suggest a way of mapping everyday mobile practices on to educational activity to illustrate potential areas for innovation and evaluation. I conclude by returning to the debate about mobiles in education, noting that familiar arguments about popular digital technology and schooling are once again being rehearsed. If ways of accessing, sharing and building knowledge are changing then a more principled consideration of how educational institutions relate to these changes is needed.Practitioner Notes What is already known about this topic There is growing interest in the use of mobiles in educational settings. Practitioners are beginning to look at the advantages and disadvantages of mobile learning. Increased ownership of smartphones and other mobile devices amongst the youth population is well documented. What this paper adds Social practice theory offers a useful perspective for looking at the use of mobiles in different contexts. Comparisons and contrasts between the uses of mobile technology in everyday life and in school settings can help in evaluating its potential. A consideration of ownership and access, and how this may reproduce social inequalities, are important to innovations in technology and education. Implications for practice and/or policy There is a need to move beyond debates about prohibiting or encouraging the use of mobiles to look at more specific examples of their advantages (and disadvantages). Policy and implementation should be informed by a finer‐grained analysis of mobile practices in everyday and educational settings. Mobile devices are highly desirable consumer items. Schools and other educational establishments have a responsibility to adopt a critical approach to ownership and use.

Nuevos procesos de interactividad e interacción social: uso de smartphones en estudiantes y docentes universitarios

“…Lo anterior coincide con los hallazgos de algunas investigaciones (Merchant, 2012;Butoi et al 2013) que destacan que aprendizaje móvil se puede comprender a partir de ciertas dimensiones relacionadas con la independencia espacio-temporal de los procesos educativos, la expansión del espacio formal (salón de clases) y la apertura de nuevos escenarios y contextos para su desarrollo, el acceso inmediato a la información y recursos educativos, junto con la conectividad y consecuente promoción de nuevos flujos de comunicación entre estudiantes y docentes. Al respecto, Kearny et al (2012) identifican tres características fundamentales del aprendizaje móvil: personalización (propio control de los espacios, ritmo y tiempos para aprender, junto con la autonomía para acceder a los contenidos educativos), autenticidad (aprendizaje situado y contextualizado, el cual implica actividades relacionadas con problemáticas del mundo real) y colaboración (la interacción social que permite la tecnología portátil promueve el desarrollo de prácticas colaborativas en los procesos educativos).…”

“…En este sentido, Pask (1976) propuso la teoría conversacional en el ámbito educativo, donde considera al diálogo como el punto de partida para la facilitación del aprendizaje. Siguiendo esta teoría, algunos autores (Sharples, 2005;Yousef Martín, García Rueda y Ramírez Velarde, 2006;Sharples, 2007;Laurillard, 2007;Kearny et al 2012;Merchant, 2012) destacan que los recursos tecnológicos portátiles son especialmente idóneos para fomentar la comunicación y los flujos conversacionales, dada la movilidad que permiten y los múltiples contextos en los cuales se pueden desarrollar las actividades educativas.…”

“…En los últimos años se han realizado una gran cantidad de estudios a nivel internacional que destacan la rápida expansión y uso de las tecnologías portátiles en el ámbito educativo (Gómez y Martínez, 2008;Brazuelo y Cacheiro, 2010;Romero, 2011;Crovi Duettra, Garay Cruz, López González y Portillo Sánchez, 2011;Kossuth y Levine, 2011;UNESCO, 2012;Merchant, 2012;Pegrum, Oakley y Faulkner, 2013;Guo, Fu, Yin, Yuan, Zhang y Gao, 2013). Este fenómeno es particularmente notorio entre las nuevas generaciones, en quienes se observa una mayor tendencia hacia la posesión y uso de recursos tecnológicos tales como asistentes personales digitales (PDA), dispositivos de almacenamiento de datos, teléfonos celulares, tabletas, smartphones, entre otros.…”

Investigating the use of mobile applications in everyday language learning

“…It appears that the fragmentary and cumulative learning practices of today are the norm and new theories of learning would have to be conceptualized to explain the new ways of learning. It may be argued that Schatzki (2002)'s social practice theory could theorise 'everyday mobile practices' as the "doings, sayings and relatings" that constitute informal learning in everyday life (Merchant, 2012). Through the cumulative nature of these doings, sayings and relatings, learning takes place as there is repetition, review, reflection, analysis, application and evaluation.…”

“…Merchant (2012, p. 772) describes 'everyday mobile practices' as the "doings, sayings and relating that constitute informal social practice' grounded on Schatzki (2002)'s social practice theory. There is emergent research on MALL practices in everyday environments (Song and Fox, 2008;Underwood, Luckin andWinters 2010, Wang et al, 2017), although a more detailed analysis of evidence-based technological experiences and MALL practices and their relationship to formal and incidental learning have been suggested (Jones et al, 2014;Merchant, 2012) . With the scarcity in the literature of how smartphones are used to learn multiple languages in everyday settings, this study addresses this gap by exploring the everyday MALL practices and lived experiences of student participants in Malaysia to uncover the significance of this learning and its perceived value.…”