“It must not disturb, it’s as simple as that”: Students’ voices on mobile phones in the infrastructure for learning in Swedish upper secondary school

Abstract

Drawing from a survey and focus group interviews, this study explores how Swedish upper secondary students reason about the usage of their personal mobile phones in school. As a contribution to the debate around the mobile phone's role in school, we present the students' own voices relative to the question of regulating mobile phone use. We use the notion of infrastructure for learning (Guribye and Lindström 2009) to analytically approach the social and technological dimensions of the students' narratives on their use of mobile phones in school practice. The students' narratives present an intricate account of students' awareness and concern of the implications of mobile phone presence in school. The students describe that the mobile phone is both a tool that facilitates their school work and a distraction that the teachers pursue. In school, the students are balancing their mobile phone usage with the teachers' arbitrary enforcement of policy. Despite this process, the mobile phone is becoming a resource in the students' infrastructure for learning. The findings from this study add to the limited body of research on the use of mobile phone in upper secondary school from a student perspective.

Exploring teachers’ increased knowledge of the potential of mobile phone use: pilot study reducing the difference between students’ and teachers’ ideas

“…It has been found that teachers and students have different ideas about how mobile phones could be used supportively but are also problematic in school activities (Ariel and Elishar-Malka 2019). Although students use mobile phones for their schoolwork, teachers can regard this as a distraction (Ott et al 2018). Additionally, many teachers are worried that students' mobile phone use could cause problems.…”

“…Thus, some teachers advocate strict regulation, and teacher-driven use (Dinsmore 2019). In contrast, a teacher-centered division of labor and its rules against mobile phone use risk leading to significant opposition from students (Dinsmore 2019;Fernandez 2018;Gentina et al 2018;Ott et al 2018). This is because students might consider that mobile phones are useful for their schoolwork (Fernandez 2018;Ott et al 2018).…”

“…In contrast, a teacher-centered division of labor and its rules against mobile phone use risk leading to significant opposition from students (Dinsmore 2019;Fernandez 2018;Gentina et al 2018;Ott et al 2018). This is because students might consider that mobile phones are useful for their schoolwork (Fernandez 2018;Ott et al 2018). Muñoz-Cristóbal et al (2017) discovered that although students want rules against disruptive use, they do not support strict mobile phone regulations.…”

“…Muñoz-Cristóbal et al (2017) discovered that although students want rules against disruptive use, they do not support strict mobile phone regulations. Instead, it is common for students to use their mobile phones despite their teachers' rules (Joyce-Gibbons et al 2018;Nikolopoulou and Gialamas 2018;Ott et al 2018).…”

From a student perspective, what constitutes a good (or less good) use of ICT in teaching?

“…For instance, research on teachers has focused on their use of or opinions about ICT Ryan et al 2010) and their competencies and strategies to enact ICT in teaching (Keane and Keane 2017). Among other things, research on students has focused on their use and views of ICT in general (Olofsson et al 2018;Bulfin et al 2016) and of specific digital hardware, software or applications in particular (Duran and Aytaç 2016;Ott et al 2018;Towndrow and Fareed 2015;Räihä et al 2014). An increased research focus can also be seen on students' views of the 1-1 concept (Keane and Keane 2017;Spanos and Sofos 2015), mobile use (Gromik 2017), coding (An 2016;Falloon 2016) and the idea of a 'flipped classroom' (Hatakka et al 2013;Limniou et al 2018).…”