Umeå University's logo

In the recent decades, there has been a growing international consensus about importance of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) at all educational levels, in different subjects, as well as in formal and informal structures. ESD is actively promoted by teacher education institutions around the world. The area of interculturality is also used to be in focus of international collaboration projects aiming to enhance sustainability in teacher education. However, natural science and mathematics teacher education has traditionally paid lower attention to “soft” parts of subject teaching such as internationalization, intercultural and critical competencies which are closely relate to 21st century skills (Bellanca & Brandt, 2010) then that of social sciences. Our previous research (Popov, Sturesson, 2015) shows that interculturality is not yet part of the Swedish science education mindscape. Moreover, current pandemic situation changed dramatically preconditions for physical meetings as well as for student and staff mobility especially outside EU-states area.

The rapidly expanding mobile learning (m-learning) that employs handheld technology is a powerful international trend (Yildiz, et al. 2020).  Our smartphones are packed with internal sensors that can measure sound, light, acceleration, magnetic field strength, etc. (see below app Sensors). The smartphones' sensors are reliable and accurate enough to permit good measurements.

This paper presents theoretical foundations and practical solutions demonstrating how smartphones and use of modern mobile applications can assist teacher education in fulfilling goals of sustainable development. In particular, focus is on mobile learning (m-learning) collaboration in geographically distributed and culturally diverse settings.