photo credit: The Lightwor

David Wiley once coined the sentence that content is only the fireplace that we use to gather around. One could continue that learning does not happen via the burning wood alone but learning is always happening in a given (social) context that influences the learning process. For mobile learning the topic of “contextualized learning” is a very important one since the context of learners has to be taken into account for the design of innovative mobile learning scenarios. But how can we approach the complex topic of the context of a learner?

Figueiredo & Alfonso (2006) develop a philosophical framework to describe the relation between context and learning. In this framework positivist and constructivist perspectives on context are compared and discussed. According to the authors context is viewed from a positivist perspective as being part of a realist world and therefore it is an entity external to the learner. It is often defined as the environment around a learning event. This leads to the assumption that context is a predictable variable that can be controlled in advance. From a constructivist perspective “context cannot be located and delimited…[and] context is only perceived through its interaction with the learner”. Most of the papers about mobile learning follow a positivist view of context. In this view context variables can be changed, controlled and compared in (quasi-)experimental setups and the influence of contextual variables can be compared. Due to the high usage rates of mobile devices and the increase of mobile internet flatrates the context of learners is more and more an authentic one that cannot be easily controlled through lab experiments. Therefore the constructivist view of context will get more attention. At the same time intelligent research designs are needed to conduct research about the influence of context to learning and the development of context aware learning support services.

[Disclaimer: This posting is part of a series of the current hot topic "mobile learning" of the Learning & Technology Community]