Pedagogical and socio-cultural research on mobile learning, which is currently in a phase that can be characterised as theory building, is a discipline which does not focus on educational establishments as the only or even main places for learning, and, by implication, not just on traditional learning theories in order to explain learning with mobile devices. Rather, different contexts – geographical as well as conceptual spaces – are viewed as central to fully understanding the challenges and changes attendant to mobile technologies in learning contexts. To fully understand learning from a socio-cultural and media-educational perspective, we argue, practitioners and researchers need to explore the life world contexts of learners in terms of their personal lifestyles, socio-economic status, experiences, interests and media practices. The challenge is not only to learn from the agency of the learners, to critically reflect upon the changing socio-cultural practices that emerge from the use of new, ubiquitous digital technologies, and to integrate the cultural practices that young people develop and acquire in leisure contexts meaningfully into learning in formal contexts such as school, higher education and work. Also, it is necessary to find frameworks, which can adequately describe such activities, and which provide standardised tools in order to achieve replicability and transferability of mobile learning projects, as well as the operationalisation of these components (see Seipold et al. forthcoming). We conceive of the dynamics around these interacting processes and variables as a socio-cultural ecology (see Pachler et al. forthcoming, Bachmair et al. forthcoming). Within this theoretical and conceptual framework, which was developed by the members of the London Mobile Learning Group (LMLG), different research traditions and theoretical backgrounds based on leading theoretical work and conceptual thinking in the respective national contexts of group members are brought into a synergy with each other. Using a mobile learning project undertaken by a Swiss school, which used mobile phones to work on a topic in German, French or Mathematics with a view to producing “microlearning content”, we will focus on the learners’ cultural practices. The content rooted in the learners’ everyday life and is able to give evidence to individualised meaning making; the learners’ cultural practices are suitable to transform individualised meanings into objectified learning products, which serve as a basis for common meaning making in curricular terms. Our methodological as well as our theoretical/conceptual/methodological frameworks will be discussed with reference to this example of school-based learning.

With reference to a particular example, we discuss a set of variables in terms of a descriptive framework. They allow us to refer to central aspects of our theoretical, conceptual and methodological framework which is characterised by - agency: appropriation as internalisation and externalisation in relation to media use and learning habitus; - structures (social, cultural, technological): media convergence, applications, media literacy; - cultural practices: linking informal and formal learning. Furthermore, they provide systematic access to aspects of curriculum planning. Therefore, four ‘parameters’ are used in order to integrate highly personalised, contextual and agentive meaning making and uses of media from outside school in school learning: - Parameter (A): Learning set practice of school ― practices of mobile media; - Parameter (B): Relationship to the object of learning mimetic reproduction ― personal reconstruction; - Parameter (C): Institutional emphasis on expertise school curriculum ― personal expertise; - Parameter (D): Modes of representation linear ― convergent.

Our work aims to support the transferability and replicability of our theoretical and methodological frameworks by seeking to provide tools with which to examine individualised practices and affordances emerging around mobile devices in the context of learning as well as to enable a systematic and analytical engagement with research and practice in the field. Through our work we also wish to draw attention to the need for evolutionary, rather than revolutionary paradigms in relation to pedagogical innovation around the integration of mobile devices into teaching and learning in formal settings.