Using secondary school students’ own mobile devices: How teacher and student networks and practices engage with personal, heterogeneous mobile devices

Submission note: A thesis submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the School of Education, College of Arts Social Sciences and Commerce, La Trobe University, Bundoora.

Mobile learning is often presented as a new paradigm for learning. A new paradigm implies a new practice, which challenges traditional education. However research to underpin mobile learning is limited, the perspective of the teacher and exploration of the use of students’ personal heterogeneous mobile devices are mostly absent from the mobile learning literature. This research addresses this problem by exploring the implications of using student heterogeneous mobile devices in the classroom, including the perspective of the teacher. Classroom data was gathered in two six month phases, two years apart. In Phase 1 the students came from three Year 8 science classes. In Phase 2 the students came from a Year 8 science and maths class and a Year 7 Literacy class. Networks were used to analyse the interactions between students, their mobile devices, the learning object and the teacher. Networks articulated the teacher interactions with the actors in the classroom, revealing the newness of mobile devices but showing that it is manageable and accessible to the teacher. Context is a way of explaining learning with mobile devices. Drawing upon these researchers I explain that a student creates a learning context consisting of location (digital and physical space) agency and repertoire. The significance of mobile technology in education is that location, agency and repertoire can magnify the potential for learning and for disruption. A thoughtful and prepared teacher though can build up agency, access and develop repertoire, expand the location through technology and manage disruption in the classroom to help students learn. This suggests that mobile learning may be better reframed as learning with mobile technology rather than as a separate paradigm.