Mobile Learning in the Global South

Learning with mobiles seems to have obvious advantages as an educational technology in what is often called the 'developing world' or the 'global South' and there is indeed currently a lot of activity and interest. This does however often seem to be informed by inappropriate theorising or by none at all. The purpose of this paper is to encourage the mobile learning research community to theorise critically about 'development' issues and make tentative steps towards recognising and incorporating some of the theoretical work of the development studies community into more appropriate forms of mobile learning for the global South. In many senses this is at the boundaries of mobile learning. The paper draws on a book chapter containing full references and attempts to outline a new research agenda. There are two ways of tackling disadvantage in the 'developing' world, in the global South. Firstly to treat it as merely a dimension of disadvantage, comparable to gender inequality or economic deprivation and the second is to recognise it as something distinct and different. The choice has implications for the development of any conceptual or analytic framework. This paper takes the second approach in order to explore the possibilities of generating new theoretical approaches at the broad intersection of mobile learning with development studies. Owing to the dramatic increase in mobile use, ownership and familiarity in the US and the emergence of sustainable business models around some aspects of mobile learning, it is no surprise that much of the aid, donor and agency community, the World Bank, UNESCO or USAID for example, staffed by US nationals or headquartered in the US, suddenly saw mobiles as the obvious delivery technology for their educational objectives in the global South in the recent past. Their over-­‐riding emphases on scale, sustainability and content with or around a largely US perspective on mobile learning make it imperative to develop rigorous and appropriate theory. Here we discuss some early projects in order to illustrate how concepts and practices, taken-­‐for-­‐granted or not-­‐worth-­‐mentioning along with the unexpected consequences and hidden causes, and the role of anecdote in the development of theory.