Supporting Practitioners in Implementing Mobile Learning and Overcoming Ethical Concerns: A Scenario-Based Approach

Ethical concerns about mobile learning have been raised across all sectors of the educational system, sometimes resulting in the banning of mobile phones in schools and retarding the adoption of mobile learning as rapidly as might have initially been envisaged. A way of dealing with this problem is to empower mobile learning practitioners and researchers to deal effectively with ethical dilemmas through the development of their ethical reasoning. A commonly accepted approach to ethical development is by means of scenarios, to which ethical principles are applied in order to produce solutions. In this paper four scenarios are presented which were developed at two mobile learning and ethics workshops conducted in 2012. An ethics framework for the analysis of the scenarios is described and finally a strategy is outlined for conducting professional development of teachers and academics as well as training for student teachers. The authors propose that ethical scenarios provide not only a means of developing the competence of teachers and academics in dealing with ethical issues in their mobile learning practice and research, but may well lead to the greater adoption of mobile learning as fears of ethical issues diminish once a way to providing solutions is demonstrated. Finally, scenarios are seen as a tool to foster conversations with educational managers and administrators in order to promote policy development and practical responses to ethical issues in mobile learning.