British Journal of Educational Technology

doi:10.1111/j.1467-8535.2012.01352.x

Vol 43 No 5 2012

770782

Mobile practices in everyday life: Popular digital technologies

and schooling revisited
Guy Merchant
Guy Merchant is Professor of Literacy in Education in the Faculty of Development & Society at Sheffield
Hallam University. Address for correspondence: Prof Guy Merchant, Sheffield Hallam University, Faculty of
Development and Society, Sheffield Hallam University, 122 Charles Street, Sheffield S1 2NE. S41 9QW, UK.
Email: g.h.merchant@shu.ac.uk

Abstract
Mobile phones have rapidly been absorbed into the fabric of our day-to-day lives. They
are now a key consumer item, a symbol of social capital and they connect their users to
a mobile web with multiple applications. As ownership and access to smartphones has
spread into the teenage years, their place in institutions of formal education has been
marked by contention. The dominant view that mobiles have no place in the classroom
has recently been contested by educators, such as Parry, who suggest that mobile learning, and the literacies involved, should play an important role in education. This paper
argues for a more nuanced view of mobile technology, one that focuses on everyday
social practices as a way of understanding the relationship between mobiles and learning. Using practice theory as a starting point, I suggest a way of mapping everyday
mobile practices on to educational activity to illustrate potential areas for innovation
and evaluation. I conclude by returning to the debate about mobiles in education, noting
that familiar arguments about popular digital technology and schooling are once again
being rehearsed. If ways of accessing, sharing and building knowledge are changing
then a more principled consideration of how educational institutions relate to these
changes is needed.

Introduction
Early images of computing depict lab-coated scientistsusually white malesin room-sized
environments surrounded by large cabinets, spools of tape and coils of wire. In less than 50 years
we have seen the development of powerful and affordable pocket-sized devices, such as smartphones and MP3 players. Development and diffusion has been remarkably rapid. Moreover, it is
apparent that mobile practices have evolved as rapidly as the technology itself. In urban environments, the air is filled with the half conversations of passers-by, the corner cafes with individuals
checking their messages. Couples share digital photo albums, as others move around them
cocooned in an audio world tethered by their earbuds to hidden devices. And so the idea of the
computer, a machine that processes huge databanks of information, housed in a room, has given
way to the seemingly straightforward everyday social and portable uses of technology. Technology is on the move; it moves with us now. It is as mobile as we are. If we are to learn from this rapid
development and diversification of digital technologyor even if we are to learn with this new
technologyit may well help us to stand back, for a moment, to examine some of its key characteristics. It has been argued that educators would benefit from a stronger focus on students
everyday use and learning with Web 2.0 technologies in and outside of classrooms (Greenhow,
2012 The Author. British Journal of Educational Technology 2012 BERA. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford
OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

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Practitioner Notes
What is already known about this topic
There is growing interest in the use of mobiles in educational settings.
Practitioners are beginning to look at the advantages and disadvantages of mobile
learning.
Increased ownership of smartphones and other mobile devices amongst the youth
population is well documented.
What this paper adds
Social practice theory offers a useful perspective for looking at the use of mobiles in
different contexts.
Comparisons and contrasts between the uses of mobile technology in everyday life and
in school settings can help in evaluating its potential.
A consideration of ownership and access, and how this may reproduce social inequalities, are important to innovations in technology and education.
Implications for practice and/or policy
There is a need to move beyond debates about prohibiting or encouraging the use of
mobiles to look at more specific examples of their advantages (and disadvantages).
Policy and implementation should be informed by a finer-grained analysis of mobile
practices in everyday and educational settings.
Mobile devices are highly desirable consumer items. Schools and other educational
establishments have a responsibility to adopt a critical approach to ownership and use.

Robelia & Hughes, 2010, p. 255), and this argument could well be expanded to include the use of
mobile devices. But I want to stand even further back, by looking first at everyday mobile
practices, bracketing, at least for the moment, the thorny issues associated with mobile learning
(see Pachler, Bachmair & Cook, 2010), in order to grapple with some fundamental issues about
popular uses of technology and online social networking.
First of all, a little about everyday mobile practices and what I mean by that phrase. Here my focus
is on how portable devices, and particularly those with some level of connectivity, are being used
in peoples day-to-day livesin informal spaces and in those boundary spaces that are only
loosely controlled by institutions, employers and so on. This focus is informed by two propositions.
The first, borrowed from postphenomenology (Verbeek, 2005), argues that people and the material things they use are inextricably bound together. Looking at them in isolation does not really
work. This is the point that Ihde (1993, p. 34) makes when he suggests that, Were technologies
merely objects totally divorced from human praxis, they would be so much junk lying about.
Once taken into praxis one can speak not of technologies in themselves, but as the active
relational pair, human-technology.
In other words, although we might profit from examining the semiotic affordances of a smartphone (Adami & Kress, 2010), the key negotiations that take place are through interactions
between people and technology. From this perspective, as Pachler et al, (2010) suggest, the things
in use, the incorporation of these devices into social life, become a central concern. The relationship between users and mobiles does not take place in a social vacuum; it is situated in a larger
context, constituted by both discourses and practices (Caron & Caronia, 2007; Caronia, 2005).
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The second proposition, which is closely related to the first, is that the concept of social practice is
a helpful way of thinking about the role that technology plays in our lives. Here I draw, in
particular, on Schatzkis (2002) social practice theory. For Schatzki, practices are organized
nexuses of activity that involve bodily doings, sayings and relatings. These doings, sayings
and relatings take place in, and constitute, the human interactions that comprise social order
(Schatzki, 2001, p. 56), as the following commentary explains:
A practice is a coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity in which
characteristic arrangements of activities (doings) are comprehensible in terms of characteristic arrangements of relevant ideas in discourses (sayings), and when the people and objects involved are distributed in
characteristic arrangements of relationships (relatings), and when this complex of sayings, doings and
relatings hangs together. (Kemmis & Heikkinen, 2011, p. 5)

In an alternative formulation, Reckwitz helpfully defines practices as forms of bodily activities,

forms of mental activities, things and their use (Reckwitz, 2002, p. 5). According to both
sources, practices are rather like routines, in that they are carried and transmitted by human
actors, but they are also susceptible to innovation and change, and will exhibit the characteristics
of both synchronic and diachronic variation. Whilst recognising that routinisation offers ontological security (Giddens, 1984, p. 23, 50), contemporary practice theory also allows for the
emergence of new routines. This helps us to account for the ways in which new technologies
become integrated into existing social practices, in turn developing them, as they are taken up and
absorbed into daily life. For example, institutional uses of email built on, extended and transformed
the exchange of memos and letters. On the other hand, the social practices of mobile phone
conversations developed from early telephonybut have, in a relatively short space of time,
evolved into something rather different. In these sorts of ways, technologies can become part of
the material arrangements that mesh with practices (Schatzki, 2005, p. 47). The practice
theory position, then, offers an explanation of how practices may evolve, as new possibilities
arise.
In developing the idea of site ontologies, Schatzki (2005) also provides us with an account of
how practices help to constitute organisations, such as schools. Here, he suggests that a mesh of
practices and material arrangements (Ibid. 474) provide an established institutional order that
is governed by chains of action and commonalities of purpose. But, importantly, the constituent
practices are not staticthey evolve as circumstances change, opportunities and problems arise,
personnel changes, new ideas arise and so on (Ibid. 476). However, Schatzki also suggests that
most organisational change is piece-meal and gradual, with modifications in some practices
being accompanied by continuities in others. Radical change, such as that anticipated by some
technologists (such as Leadbetter, 2009), is only likely to occur when conscious intervention
(from the inside or outside) reworks goals, alters rules, and redesigns projects (Ibid. 476). In
other words, organisational practices tend to be inherently more conservative than everyday
practices, precisely because of the way they are enmeshed in chains of action and commonalities
of purpose.
In contrast, what I call everyday mobile practices can be seen in the observable ways that people
interact with, or incorporate, portable digital devices into existing, or emerging, sets of actions
the doings, sayings and relatings that constitute informal social practice. Whether or not
we believe that the devices themselves are overpriced toys, fashion accessories, the next generation in convergence technology or a basic necessity for twenty-first century living depends to a
large part on how we conceive of their place in these ecologies of practice. In fact, the devices we
use have a key role to play in many of our social interactions, they have a material significance,
but at the same time they are objects of desire in a consumer culture that places high value on
new, and ever newer, technologies.
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Selling and using mobiles

If we think of what Ihde (1993) calls the active relational pairhuman-technologythe ways
in which mobiles have become absorbed into social networking practices is an obvious starting
point. The mobile phonewith Facebook, Twitter and YouTubeis heavily marketed by a range
of providers. As an example, consider the way in which the new Blackberry Curve is promoted by
the phone network Orange. Figure 1 shows the cover of the October 2011 issue of Oranges
Explore magazine. The background image is a dense mesh of intersecting fibres. Their fiery
yellows, oranges and reds criss-cross to form an image that calls to mind familiar diagrammatic
representations of social networks. The device itselfthe Blackberry Curveappears to glow, as
a live hub, in the centre of these interconnections. Orange promises that you will be always
connected to your social networks, and you can be sure that the social networking icons of
Facebook and Blackberry Messenger are displayed on the screen. They are, and what is more,
the icons are tagged with the white star on a red circle that indicates that several new messages
have arrived and await our attention and response. In this way, communicative interaction is
constructed as compelling and immediate.
In these and many other similar ways, social networkingor at least a particular, mediated
version of itis sold to us by the makers of smartphones, as well as by the powerful companies
that exert their control over our communication and connectivity. I have argued elsewhere
(Merchant, 2011) that the boundary between online and offline social networking is becoming
increasingly porous. With 3G mobiles, phones can be both the symbol and the hub of an individuals portable and dispersed connections. Gergens idea of an invisible web (of networks) in the
floating world is a powerful image for this:
We may imagine here that dwelling about us at all times are small communities that are unseen and
unidentifiable. However, as we stroll the thoroughfare or sip coffee in a caf their presence is made constantly
known to us. Each mobile phone [. . .] is a sign of a significant nucleus, stretching in all directions, amorphous and protean. (Gergen, 2003, p. 105)

This view places the mobile device at the very centre, and helps us to imagine the connectivity of
the networked individual (Wellman, 2002). But, if this sounds a little techno-centric, a practice
theory perspective brings us back to a consideration of how the technology is embedded in, and
continuous with, everyday social spaces. It turns out that most mobile social networking prac-

Figure 1: Orange promotes social networking

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tices are more concerned with thickening existing social ties than forging new ones (Ellison,
Steinfield & Lampe, 2007). And, as Sheller (2004, p. 48) observes, they enable their users to hold
multiple connections and identities in play at any one time. In this way, social networks have
become more densely layered with the advance of new communicative tools (Merchant, 2011).
Although the general association of mobiles with social networking is important to acknowledge,
we need a more fine-grained analysis to better understand emerging mobile practices. What are
the sayings, doings and relatings that might describe these practices, and how does portable technology become part of the fabric of everyday life? A more detailed analysis of this area
is required. Such an analysis would need to look at the specifics of how devices are worn and held,
where they are placed and shown, how they are referred to and, of course, how and in what ways
they are used in acts of representation and communication. We might imagine how such
accounts, informed by practice theory, would follow practitioners across a variety of sociotechnical settings (online, mobile or co-present) and across different timescales (see Postill, 2010).
Simply on the basis of observation and experience, though, it is apparent that mobiles are regularly used for a range of purpose. They are used in maintaining lightweight contact with friends
and family membersthose short inconsequential interactions that maintain social connections
(Ito, 2004); casual entertainment (watching and sharing short movies, photo albums and playlists); arranging both formal and informal meetings, navigation and micro-coordinationsuch
as negotiating and renegotiating the time and place of informal meetings (Ling & Yttri, 2002);
capturing objects and events (usually as still images); and accessing web-based information as
need arises and just in time. Emerging research into everyday practices provides some evidence
of the spread of such practices (Caronia, 2005; Carroll, Howard, Peck & Murphy, 2002; Ito,
Okabe & Matsuda, 2005; Tamminen, Oulasvirta, Toiskallio & Kankainen, 2004; Thulin & Vilhelmson, 2007; Wilska, 2003). The list, of course, is by no means exhaustive, but it points the
way to a better understanding of how the mobile phone is subtly insinuating itself into the
capillaries of everyday life (Gergen, 2003, p. 103). Looking at this list through the eyes of an
educator, as we shall see, may help to identify some matches and mismatches between everyday
practices and educational practices as they are currently defined and enacted.
But first of all, as it has already been acknowledged that mobile devices are key products in the
global market place and that they are part of the desireacquiredispose circuit that underpins
our consumer-oriented economy (Bauman, 2005), it is worth considering the local patterning of
mobile use and ownership amongst the young. Survey data can provide us with some useful
insights into this. It is beyond the scope of this paper to look at international comparisons, so I will
concentrate on the key messages that emerge from the recent Ofcom survey in the UK (Ofcom,
2011). Those interested in comparisons might, for instance, consult the Pew Internet Studies for
the USA (Lenhart, Ling & Campbell, 2010), or EU Kids Online for the European picture (Livingstone, Haddon, Gorzig & Olaffson 2011). Broadly speaking, though, it is safe to assume that
mobile practices, whilst similar across these regions, are always shaped by local circumstances.
According to the Ofcom survey, 47% of UK teenagers (12- to 15-year-olds) now own a smartphone, and this is a clearly a big growth area in the mobile phone market. Furthermore, teenagers
report that their use of mobiles is taking over from their use of older media. Sixty-five per cent of
those with smartphones reported that they use their phone for social networking. In addition to
this, the data suggest high levels of mobile texting, music and gaming amongst teens (Ofcom,
2011). These headline statistics alone point to a rise in the availability and use of mobiles in the
youth population, and certainly support claims that teenagers may be passionately engaged in
mobile practices (indeed some of those surveyed describe this engagement in terms of addiction).
But what a survey like this can not, of course, capture, are the practices and aspirations of the
53% who do not have smartphones, yet we may guess that patterns of ownership are likely to
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map on to particular social groups and, as with earlier technologies, socio-economic status may
play a significant part in access (see Facer & Furlong, 2001, for example). Whilst we might predict
differences between countries, there are also important differences within countries, and unevenness of ownership and access may well reflect other inequities. Despite all this, it can still be
argued that mobile computing is a significant trend, and is certainly one that has begun to
impinge on the discourses of technology and education.
Mobiles in schools
In many formal educational contexts, mobile use is heavily restricted, more often than not, simply
banned. Mobiles, like other technologies, can easily disturb what I have called the fragile
ecology of classroom life (Merchant, 2009). Partly this is because new digital practices can have
a destabilising effect, in that they begin to open up the possibilities for different kinds of learning
relationship, different kinds of interaction and different genres and communicative purposes.
From a practice perspective, the world of the classroom is a social site composed of a bundle of
practices and material arrangements (Schatzki, 2005, p. 474). It is a social site patterned by
established relationships, mediated by sets of accepted school practices and instructional routines. This bundle of practices is, of course, powerfully shaped by curriculum discourses (Crook,
2012). Practice theory implies that organisational change is a complex undertaking and that
routines and continuities are part of the fabric of institutional life.
Working against the dominant perception that mobile practices are disruptive in formal educational settings can be seen as a key challenge, particularly when professional scepticism combines
with moral panic. For example, in 2009, when Notre Dame High School in Sheffield adopted a
policy of allowing mobile use in classrooms, reports of the initiative were quickly seized upon by
the national press, with claims that parents and unions criticised the move. The Daily Mail
wrapped up its coverage of the story with a quotation from a little-known research report:
technology obsession hinders spelling skills, implicitly encourages plagiarism, and disrupts
classroom learning (Daily Mail, 14/10/09). It seems from this, then, that mobiles sit at the more
contentious end of the continuum of opinion about technology in education. Despite this, the
school in question continues to promote the use of mobiles for a variety of purposes including:
making visual notes; producing portfolio content; searching for information; accessing material
on the virtual learning environment (VLE); and for scheduling homework, hand-in and exam
dates (Haigh, 2011).
A rather different trajectory has shaped practice at Campsmount Technology College, also in the
South Yorkshire region of England. This school, located in a former mining village near Doncaster, was burnt down in December 2009. The fire was thought to be the result of an electrical fault.
All school records were obliteratedthere were no longer any student contact numbers and
addresses, no coursework, no VLEno servers. The fire raged through the early hours of a wintry
Sunday morning, but by the following Monday, the schools newly created Facebook group had
1500 members, and the head teachers press release on YouTube had attracted 3000 views. A
Wordpress blog, Twitter feed and Facebook group were quickly set up by staff who saw that social
media could reach and mobilise the community, the parents and the students in ways that
traditional media could not. The school was reinvented, almost overnight, with classes in youth
centres, the town hall, vacant premises on an industrial estate and in a former primary school.
Timetables and travel arrangements were made available on Google docs, sixth-formers were
back at work within a day and the rest of the students only lost 1 week. Although the reinvention of the school was built on the strength of the community, this was galvanized by the creative
use of new media (ap Hari, 2010).
Here we are presented with a rather different conception of what mobile might mean. Although
some students and staff were using portable devices at the time, the nature of the events that
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unfolded had less to do with the technology itself, and more to do with the fluid movement of a
relatively large number of individuals. This fluidity was made manageable through the possibilities of navigation and micro-coordination that are characteristic of everyday social media practices (Ling & Yttri, 2002). Although more concerned with the logistics of creating a school
without a fixed location, the Campsmount experience introduces a different set of considerations.
This is an instance in which the use of technology is not tethered to a particular site, and mobility
describes the coordinated movement of learners and teachers. In some ways, the experience is
closer to everyday practice than it is to any emerging conceptions of mobile learning (Pachler
et al, 2010; Sharples, Taylor & Vavoula, 2005).
Out of the ashes of the former infrastructure at Campsmount, a newer vision of technology has
arisen, and it is one that is cloud-based, wireless and portable. Only time will tell if this vision will
transform the learning and the attainment of students, because when all is said and done, the
students follow the same curriculum and sit the same examinations as students elsewhere, and
the school and its staff are subject to the same mechanisms of accountability that keep the
education system as a whole in check. Yet, if we believe that our future will be mediated and
stitched together by the mobile web (Parry, 2011, p. 16), what Campsmount school learned
through difficult circumstances may have lessons for all of us.
We may, then, be tempted to agree with Parry that teachers need to show students:
. . . how to use these technologies effectively to ensure they end up on the right side of the digital divide: the
side that knows how to use social media. . . (Parry, 2011, p. 2)

In developing a rationale for what he calls mobile literacy, Parry identifies three areas of focus.
These are (1) understanding information access, 2) understanding hyperconnectivity and (3)
understanding the new sense of space. The first is about encouraging students to use mobile
devices to search for (and presumably evaluate) informationand to appreciate the differences
and similarities between this and desktop searches. The second, hyperconnectivity, relates specifically to developing new types of learning relationships, and is about using social media to
connect learners with those outside the immediate classroom context in advantageous ways
(selective use of Twitter is offered as an example). The third and final of focusthe new sense of
spaceis about developing an appreciation of how mobiles can be used to mediate ones experience of the material/physical world through so-called augmented reality applications and the
whole gamut of data-enriched geolocation.
Framing the use of mobiles in this way is helpful. The three areas clearly build on everyday
practices, but at the same time they suggest how these can be incorporated into the practices
associated with formal learning. A few cautions, though, before proceeding. First of all, as with all
technologies, it may be useful to ask the familiar question: is the fact that we can do these things
sufficient justification for actually doing them in an educational contextand what specific
advantages do we envisage? Parry argues that we are ethically obliged to embrace mobile
technology so that students know how to use social media to band together (Parry, 2011, p. 2),
yet this moral imperative argument may not, in fact, be strong enough. It might be better to look
at educational contexts in which mobile searching is useful, ways in which hyperconnectivity can
help to build understandings, and how deeper knowledge of locations can actually be built by
learners. In short, we could turn our focus to learning and to the social practices in which it is
embedded. Teachers will want to be convinced of the practicality of Parrys suggestions, they will
want to know how they could manage the potential levels of distraction, and how they might
exercise their own necessary (and imagined) control over learners and learning. It may also be
useful to look at a wider range of possibilities for the use of mobiles in educational settings. There
is a growing body of literature in this area, from explorations of mobile gaming (Facer et al, 2004)
to the use of context-aware technology on school field trips and museum visits (Sharples, 2006).
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Everyday practices

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Educational practices

capturing objects and events

photographing notes, experiments, activities

checking web-information

mobile desk referencing

casual entertainment (short movies, photoalbums etc)

video records of projects or products being

tested

maintaining lightweight contact

video, voice, image responses to learning tasks

arranging meetings, navigation and micro-coordination

organising learning (noting schedules, timelines

etc)

Figure 2: Mapping everyday practices on to educational practices

In a useful review of European initiatives, Kukulska-Hulme, Sharples, Milrad, Arnedillo-Snchez

and Vavoula (2009) report on a variety of projects that use mobile technologies to help connect
learning across contexts and life transitions, and to form bridges between formal and informal
learning (34).
In the second section of this paper I referred to the fact that, in everyday practice, mobiles are
regularly used for a range of purposes. I conclude this current section by looking for equivalents
in educational contexts. Whilst recognising that there are a number of reasons why everyday
practices may not be readily transferable to educational contexts (see Crook, 2012), it is still
worth tracing the ways in which some practices may have the potential to cross over. In Figure 2,
the practices referred to previously are listed against their possible equivalents in school settings.
The first thing that this list reveals is that everyday mobile practices tend to be driven by individual
preference and need, rather than by the requirement to perform for othersin this case the
requirement to be a student, by recording specific events, finding out about particular things
and so on. In other words there is a significant move from the casual or informal (everyday
practices) to the formal (educational practices). This is nowhere more obvious than in the third
and fourth items in each list, which have very weak correspondences. In the end, what remains
begins to look rather thin. Mobiles can be used for still and moving image capture, for web
searches and for scheduling, but then again, other devices, both portable and static, perform the
same functions equally well. It could then be the case that the everyday practices associated with
the mobile phone bear only a passing resemblance to school routinesroutines that are better
suited to other portable devices such as the iPod touch, iPad or tablet PC.
Popular digital technologies and schooling revisited
Mapping everyday mobile practices on to school practices helps us to show how these technologies could be deployed in educational settings, but it falls short of presenting us with a coherent
rationale. As we have seen, there is no doubt that mobiles are being rapidly absorbed into daily life,
and the evidence currently available certainly suggests increasing uptake by the school-age
populationparticularly in the teenage years. Yet to argue that their popularity alone makes
them an attractive option for educators is a weak argument. It is weak in that it assumes
ownershipremember that 53% of UK teenagers do not own a smartphone (Ofcom, 2011)and
also familiarity (many mobile practices may be limited and repetitive). Arguments based upon the
supposed widespread use of mobiles by teenagers are clearly flawed, and at worst become yet
another iteration of the idea of youth as digital natives. Bennet and Maton (2011, p. 171) provide
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a searching critique of this position. They trace the way in which the notion of digital natives
(from Prensky, 2001) continues to shape the way we think about new technologies in education.
They argue that it is time to move away from this limiting perspective, and urge researchers to
provide well-founded, transparent empirical research. . . rather than unsubstantiated or
unclearly evidenced claims (Bennet & Maton, 2011, p. 182). If mobile learning, and the literacies involved, is to play an important role in education, it is now down to the advocates to provide
robust evidence of the benefits, to sit alongside the growing number of examples of use (Naismith, Lonsdale, Vavoula & Sharples, 2004; Pachler et al, 2010). Furthermore, following the
argument for a social practice approach, made earlier in this paper, it will also be helpful to know
about how mobiles are used by young people, and how their everyday practices are differentiated,
because if one thing is clear, they are not an homogenous population. Research that closely
documents how mobile technologies are used, across a variety of socio-technical settings and
over time, is now needed (Postill, 2010).
The relationship between everyday practices and educational practices is as contentious in the
area of technology as it is elsewhere (eg, in media studies, popular culture and new literacies). In
general, schools and other educational institutions have tended to appropriate a small subset of
everyday practices, recruiting them to perform adapted routines within existing curricular structures. This is as true for new technology use as it is for literacya field in which this phenomenon
is perhaps better documented (eg, Dyson, 2008; Heath, 1983). The result of these appropriations
is that the seemingly arbitrary selections from everyday practices that are made tend to favour
students from already advantaged sectors of society. This is perhaps unsurprising when we
consider that the enterprise of education, although often egalitarian by intent, is organised,
maintained and serviced by the same dominant groups that succeed in it. Yet, as we have seen, it
has repeatedly been argued that if educators place a stronger focus on students everyday use
and learning with Web 2.0 technologies in and outside of classrooms (Greenhow et al, 2010, p.
255), more appropriate, inclusive and advantageous approaches are possible. This may not be as
straightforward as it seems, particularly when we consider the long and difficult history of
attempts to include everyday practices in school. But if we believe that the mobile web changes
what it means to be knowledgeable and educated in our culture (Parry, 2011, p. 16), it may be
the time for serious reflection on the future of our formal institutions of education. Ignoring new
digital practices may reduce the capacity of educators to intervene in the uneven distribution of
resources and access.
The existing literature on popular digital technologies has plenty to say about schools as institutions. A significant trend in this debate is to suggest that schools, as institutions, are becoming
increasingly irrelevant in the lives of young people. As social structures strongly formed by
modernist thought, they perpetuate a factory model of education, which attempts to prepare the
young for a world that has long since disappeared. This argument is strongly made in the work of
Gee (2004), who draws extensively on the contrasts between learning in school and learning
through video-gaming. The position has been developed by Jenkins, Purushota, Clinton, Weigel
and Robinson (2006), whose White Paper suggests ways in which schools should deliver the
kinds of understandings and skills, or cultivate the habits of mind that will produce twenty-first
century citizens. Thus it is argued that a new vision of schooling is requiredone that incorporates the new literacies and is responsive to emerging patterns of social organisation. Yet, as we
have seen educational practices can be resistant to change and are often concerned with the
maintenance of practices over time through the successful inculcation of shared embodied
know-how and continued performance (Schatzki, 2005, p. 480).
From the previous argument, it becomes clear that discussion about the implications of the
widespread use of mobile technology in compulsory schooling quickly begins to resemble early
discussions on the role of popular culture (Marsh & Millard, 2000), the relevance of everyday
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literacies (Dyson, 2006) or the incorporation of Web2.0 technologies into school settings (Crook,
2012; Davies & Merchant, 2009). Yet in these and other areas, significant educational developments have followed from paying close attention to everyday practices. For example, the careful
analysis of multimodality in social contexts provided by Kress (2003, 2010) has led to changes in
both classroom practice and curriculum guidance. Paying similar attention to everyday mobile
practices, to their sayings, doings and relatings will, I suggest, help to illuminate where
educational practices could be reimagined, as well as to the necessary distinctiveness of these
institutional settings and the formal learning that takes place within them.
Conclusion
Mobiles are remarkable for the fact that they have been so quickly and so seamlessly absorbed into
the fabric of day-to-day life. This phenomenon could be attributable to a particular genealogy of
practices: phones have been in circulation for several generations now and computers for a
shorter length of time, but their convergence in the guise of sophisticated, portable and fashionable devices that appeal in terms of their perceived convenience and entertainment value, positions them as objects of desire that we often think we can not do without. Mobiles could be seen
as state-of-the-art, well-designed technologies that work for us. Take, for example, the way in
which Hollan and his colleagues in the field of distributed cognition conceive of ideal humancomputer interfaces:
. . . just like a blind persons cane. . . so well-designed work materials become integrated into the way
people think, see and control activities. (Hollan, Hutchins & Kirsh, 2000, p. 178)

When we observe everyday practices, such as those descriptions of contemporary urban life at the
start of this piece, we may see that mobile use is approaching the state, famously described by
Heidegger as the blind mans cane, in which a material object becomes the extension of the
human being. Further to this, suggestions that new techno-social mobile practices are having a
transformative effect on our social life are abundant. For example, it is claimed that mobile
communications are:
. . . enabling a new kind of public-private, a kind of fluid social space in which communication occurs
which spans absence and presence, personal and impersonal, micro and macro, local and global (Sheller,
2004, p. 46).

Putting this together with the idea that ways of accessing, sharing and building knowledge are
changing and that we are witnessing the emergence of new digital epistemologies (Bruns,
2008; Guedon, 2001; Lankshear & Knobel, 2010), points to some fundamental changes in the
social landscape. How schools and other educational institutions relate to these changes is,
however, far from simple. Based on the observations made in this paper, I want to suggest that
there are two avenues of development that are worth exploring. The first, and the one that has the
most immediate currency, is to help students at all stages to develop a critical appreciation of the
uses (and abuses) of mobile technology in everyday life. The second, and the more challenging, is
to consider how educational experiences might be enhanced or transformed through the use of
mobile technology.
Critical appreciation, or critical digital literacy, has been discussed in a number of related contexts
in recent work (see Burnett & Merchant, 2011; Dowdall, 2009; Merchant, 2007). Adopting a
standpoint which examines the taken-for-grantedness of mobile technology, which evaluates the
ecologies of practice associated with mobiles, as well as the inequities of access and use is
important to understanding and participating in contemporary life and constitutes an important
strand in this project. A critical perspective is key to interrogating the competing discourses that
surround mobile technologiesthe positive stories of participation and empowerment on the one
hand and the more negative associations with consumerism, exploitation and bullying on the
other. A citizen of the twenty-first century, it could be argued, needs to know how mobiles can
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be used to advantage, when they are disruptive and how they are framed by the desireacquire
dispose discourse of consumerism, and this, I suggest, is a fitting task for public education in a
digital age.
The question of how education might be enhanced or transformed by mobile technology is
harder to envisage at this point in time. There are early indications that some mobile devices are
more readily absorbed into school life than othersiPods and iPads are the obvious candidatesand this may be because their affordances sit more comfortably in the site ontologies
of educational settings (Schatzki, 2005). But beyond this, we are left with some intriguing questions. If many everyday practices involve mobile subjects in multiple connections, engaged in
lightweight contact, in navigating, reporting and coordinating their movements, what bearing
might this have upon an education that has traditionally been conceived as location-based and
predominantly sedentary? When an educational setting becomes more dispersed, as in the
Campsmount example, and when contexts for learning are seen as multiple and diverse, might
these everyday practices become more relevant to formal learning? Locating information in
the field, in so-called augmented reality applications and using audio-visual capture as an
alternative mode of recording offer interesting possibilitiespossibilities that we are just beginning to imagine and experiment with. Yet these, with the support of policy changes may, to
paraphrase Schatzki (2005), lead to the reworking of educational goals and projects.
Much remains uncertain in the relationship between mobile technologies and education, but I
have argued that practice theory provides a useful methodology for further exploration. Following the line of argument in this paper, a number of considerations emerge, and these provide
some important areas for further research and development. I have argued that:
1. A more detailed analysis of mobile practices in everyday life is needed. It is suggested that
practice theory offers some useful frameworks for exploring the day-to-day use of mobiles.
2. A better understanding of how technologies become absorbed into existing and evolving
practices would be useful.
3. How schools accommodate and adapt everyday mobile practices so that they mesh with the
structures of formal learning is an important topic for further investigation.
Finally, I want to underline that a consideration of the social embedding of mobile technology can
not avoid the interrelated issues of cost, patterns of ownership and use. Mobile phones are
powerful symbols of social capital, and they are also a highly desirable commodity in the global
marketplace. Particularly amongst the youth population, there are significant issues of ownership at stakewhich students have devices that are sufficiently nimble to access the mobile web,
who owns them and who pays for them, are issues that can not be avoided. In the marketisation
of social networking, there are likely to be winners as well as losers. Adopting a critical approach
(Burnett & Merchant, 2011) may be a fruitful way of laying bare some of the contradictions that
lie beneath the rhetoric of hyperconnectivitythe promise that we will be always connected to
our social networks.
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