Using mobile phones to enhance teacher learning in environmental education

This study focuses on how actionlearning sets helped preservice teachers (PSTs) to use mobile phones to augment their developing pedagogy. These school-based, action-learning sets consisted of groups of PSTs allocated to five schools that participated in the study. For six weeks they worked in pairs to teach a class for two hours per week. During this time the PSTs had access to mobile phones that had an inbuilt camera, Excel, Word, audio recording, video recording, internet, and email features. The phones were used to support and inform the teaching of an environmental education unit that had as its focus on waste and energy management. The findings indicated that the action-learning sets provided a vehicle for sustained and targeted professional growth.