Review of Mobile Learning: Languages, Literacies, and Cultures

While the targeted audience of Mark Pegrum’s Mobile Learning: Languages, Literacies and Cultures is made explicit, its content is best suited to those endeavoring to understand MALL (Mobile-Assisted Learning) within the broader context of mobile learning. In this regard it is much more than historical, with nearly two thirds of its references dating from the past six years (2008–2013). The work is commendable for the background it provides on mobile learning across a wide spectrum. Of particular note is the attention paid to initiatives in developing countries to exploit mobile technologies to remedy high native-language illiteracy rates and overcome educational disadvantages of women, especially in rural communities. This information is all the more in that it derives mostly from international project reports, which is otherwise largely absent and from published academic research sources. What the work gains in breadth in regard to learning in general, however, it loses in depth in respect to MALL in particular. Of the book’s chapters, the first three are entirely devoted to general issues concerning mobile learning. In fact, the fourth and fifth chapters focus explicitly upon language teaching. The sixth chapter concerns in its broadest possible interpretation, of which reading and writing are but two of eight abilities. Lastly, while taking most of its examples from language-based projects, the focus of the final of the book is very much on the general issue of teacher and student training needed in the digital.