Teacher development with mobiles: Comparative critical factors

Abstract

This paper addresses ways that mobile technologies can be used in teacher development, and focuses on mobile technologies. In particular, it addresses issues of context. It outlines and explores accepted practice and illustrates how mobility invites change and reappraisal of the teacher education process. It places this against a backdrop of current global challenges and questions the validity of existing educational systems in the face of those challenges. It then places mobile technology in the role of digital learning tool rather than content delivery system and explores how teacher education needs to adapt to the context of learning that is presented by increased mobility. Finally, it explores the relationship between knowing and doing in teacher education, acknowledging tension in two areas: first, between the standardisation of practice and the creation of user-defined and user-owned knowledge creation based on interaction with distinct contexts and second, between the social practice of learning through mobility and the 'otherness' of formal education. © 2014 UNESCO IBE.