A Postphenomenological Exploration of Mobility in Post-Secondary Teaching and Learning

Abstract

Increasingly, we work, learn, travel and spend our leisure time with highly portable, micro technologies and we have less direct, face-to-face contact with people and the world. Education has become “mobilized” with teachers and students regularly using smartphones, tablets, laptop computers and mobile applications. These technologies function as portals into other, virtual worlds where there are both educational opportunities and new challenges. This study moves beyond the hype of mobile technology and the discussions of “technology-as-tool” and “technology-as-future” and considers how the increased mobility of students and teachers is subtly changing education practices in postsecondary education. The study begins with the acknowledgement that things (including technologies) are inseparable from their contexts or worlds (Borgmann, 1984, p. 41) and explores students’ and teachers’ pre-reflective experiences while they are using mobile technologies for teaching and learning. By applying a unique, postphenomenological research lens, which combines insights from hermeneutic phenomenology and actor-network theory, the study investigates some of the human-technology interactions that occur in post-secondary classrooms, the ways in which students and teachers are influenced and changed by the use of mobile technology and what this means for twenty-first century teaching and learning.