Mobilities and Ecologies: Reflections on Paradigms for Mobile Learning

Abstract

Mediated lifeworlds and a diversity of physical, geographical, technological, cultural, and social mobilities involve new challenges for education and learning in a digital age. In recent years, a variety of corresponding conceptualizations and methods has been developed in educational research and practice. One the one hand, we find technologically or culturally abridged concepts and reductionist approaches, more or less dealing with one category or dimension of the topic. On the other hand, there are ambitious approaches dealing with the enormous complexities of the issues concerned. The latter frequently refer to ecological or mobilities frameworks. Moreover, among the many ‹turns› that have been claimed after the linguistic turn, especially the ecological turn and the mobilities turn play an important role in the context of theorizing mobile learning and education. For one thing, a new mobilities paradigm has been proposed, then again various ecological approaches have been promoted, among them media ecology, information ecology, knowledge ecology, socio-cultural ecology, communicative ecology, political ecology, and ecologies of affect. In addition, there are different understandings of ecology, for example, as environment, social movement, moral norm, or network theory. The paper reflects on potentials and limitations of mobilities and ecologies as theoretical frameworks in the context of mobile learning.