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It has been emphasized that students and teachers have dissimilar ideas about how mobile phone use could be utilized and limited. Moreover, these differences have been identified as a crucial problem that has caused conflicts in education. In order to resolve the problem, research has stressed that it is very important to increase teachers' knowledge about how mobile phones can be used in students' work. However, the topic of how teachers could increase their understanding related to students' ideas has remained largely unexamined. Thus, this pilot study explores the following research questions using cultural-historical activity theory and qualitative methods: How is teachers' possibility knowledge influenced when they are exposed to students' ideas about how mobile phones could be both supportive and problematic in school activities? What are the similarities and differences between the students' ideas that have, and have not, influenced the teachers' possibility knowledge of mobile phone use? The results show how the teachers' possibility knowledge increases concerning the features that could be both supportive and problematic and must be limited by rules and a division of labor. Moreover, it transpires that the teachers' possibility knowledge is not always affected. It appears that the teachers' understanding is influenced if they can relate the students' ideas to the teachers' division of labor. These results could be used by schools to resolve problems caused by the different ideas of students and teachers regarding mobile phone use. The results could also be used when implementing mobile phones in educational research.

PurposeThe digitalization of society places new demands on education. It is apparent since most countries have introduced curricula requirements to digitalize teaching. This study examines the organizational support teachers need to digitalize teaching. The study is being conducted in Sweden because they have experienced challenges with the introduction of new national digitalization requirements. Thus, this study explores the following research question: What organizational support do Swedish teachers describe they need to meet the curriculum requirements for digitalization?Design/methodology/approachCultural–historical activity theory and qualitative methods have been used to explore the research aim and answer the question.FindingsThe results show that teachers need organizational support to gain equal and easy access to digital tools. Moreover, digital tools in an organization must be relevantly related to the requirements. Teachers also need support to increase their knowledge as well as the knowledge of the students. Also, organizations must support teachers by distributing the work of digitalization clearly and reasonably. These results, thus, show that teachers cannot be solely responsible for meeting these curriculum requirements. They need organizational support in the process.Originality/valueThe study reveals teachers' recurring problems concerning digitalized education and their need for organizational support. Thereby, the knowledge can be used to avoid similar problems, in organizations on different society levels. This contribution is useful for organizations, politicians, school leaders, principals and teachers who are introducing 1:1 and new curriculum requirements for digitalization of education.

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Tiina Leino Lindell is Ph.D student at The School of Education and Communication in Engineering Science, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, with specialization in mobile learning and multimodality. Her research focuses on how learning and communication occours in technology education, by using digital and multimodal resources. She also teaches students at high school level in a technology education. AbstractThis paper engages with how students use multimodality on mobile devices as support for school assignments. The broader aim of this pilot study is to explore understanding of teachers' and students' expressed experiences of students' multimodal mobile use. Focus group interviews and multimodal analysis have allowed investigation of the following research questions:-What experiences do teachers and students express from students' multimodal mobile use related to school assignments? -Which advantages and disadvantages have teachers and students expressed concerning students' multimodal mobile use as support for school assignments?The results show that students and teachers have many different experiences of students' multimodal mobile use related to school assignments. However, the use is limited in several ways. To a large extent teachers and students have expressed that multimodal mobile resources can be used advantageously by students to support school assignments for several purposes. Among disadvantages identified mobile device multimodality in some respects can be disruptive. The result also indicates that different multimodal mobile media have specific possibilities for supporting students' learning as it is related to school assignments.