Mobile learning communities: lessons for and from academic mobility, the knowledge economy and sustainability

Abstract

This paper’s objective is to articulate possible lessons for conceptualising and interrogating academic mobility to be learned by drawing on contemporary thinking about two key social and educational issues: the knowledge economy and sustainability. In turn, the paper also explores how current understandings of academic mobility can contribute to challenging and extending the comprehension of those issues. The theoretical framework is composed of the concepts of situated learning, systems thinking, risk and capacity building, clustered around the ways in which various groups of occupational Travellers conform to and depart from the notion of mobile learning communities (Danaher, Moriarty, & Danaher, 2009). The paper’s principal finding is twofold. Firstly, concepts associated with the knowledge economy and sustainability are helpful in extending our current understandings of the manifestations and effects of academic mobility in different contexts. In particular, those manifestations and effects demonstrate the impact of changing notions of knowledge and its intersection with economic and social life, as well as enhanced comprehension of the benefits and costs of academic mobility when evaluated against a fluid and situated view of sustainability. Secondly, constructing academic mobility through the lens of mobile learning communities adds to the depth and richness of contemporary conceptualisations of the knowledge economy and sustainability, thereby highlighting the ongoing significance of academic mobility as a growing field of scholarship. Seen from this perspective, mobile learning communities can indeed teach us valuable lessons for and from academic mobility, the knowledge economy and sustainability.