Conceptualizing mobile literacy skills for educators

Abstract

With mobile phones as a near pervasive technology amongst the youth, their use in classroom practice are often considered particularly daunting by the teaching fraternity. Many teachers qualified in the so-called ‘pre PC’ era, and do not consider themselves on technology par with their students. Their students on the other hand are growing up in an era of technology immersion. In order to enact the ‘loco parentis’ role often required, these educators need to be equipped with mobile digital literacy skills; often neglected in, amongst other, Teacher Professional Development interventions. The purpose of this paper is conceptualize mobile digital literacy skills for educators in using mobile technology in formal education. The research exapts the ‘best-fit’ framework synthesis of Carroll et al. (2013) from the health domain, towards this end. The strategy is operationalized through two phases. Phase 1 identifies the Ng (2013) digital skills model as a priory framework. Phase 2 utilizes the categories presented in Phase 1 to guide the classing of purposefully selected literature towards conceptualizing mobile digital literacy skills for educators using mobile technology in formal education. The literature considered was identified in accordance with Grant et al. (2014) description of a systematized scoping review. The contribution of this paper lies in its outcomes to identify and classify literacy skills for mobile technologies. These identified skills can further guide interventions aimed at educational mobile phone use.