Appropriation of Mobile Cultural Resources for Learning

Abstract

This article proposes appropriation as the key for the recognition of mobile devices — as well as the artefacts accessed through, and produced with them — as cultural resources across different cultural practices of use, in everyday life and formal education. The article analyses the interrelationship of users of mobile devices with the structures, agency and practices of, and in relation to what the authors call the “mobile complex”. Two examples are presented and some curricular options for the assimilation of mobile devices into settings of formal learning are discussed. Also, a typology of appropriation is presented that serves as an explanatory, analytical frame and starting point for a discussion about attendant issues.