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| 25 Sep 2026 | |
| Written by Sergio QUIROGA | |
| Old School News |
The smartphone has become ubiquitous in the daily lives of students and teachers. Its entry into the classroom—whether spontaneously or through institutional BYOD ("Bring Your Own Device") policies—reopens a debate that intersects pedagogy, digital culture, and classroom management.
Quiroga (2014) proposes adopting Beatriz Fainholc's (2012) model of "Appropriate and Critical Educational Technology" as a framework for considering the use of ICT—and, by extension, mobile phones—in the classroom. We start from the premise that technology is not neutral and must be used critically—neither instrumentally nor deterministically—by combining two types of actions: instrumental/intelligent actions (the technical and strategic use of the tool) and symbolic/intersubjective actions (dialogue and the collective construction of knowledge), both mediated by technology.
Didactic strategies should incorporate technology based on learning objectives, curricular content, and the specific context of each institution—not the other way around. Based on this framework, in 2014 we recommended that Argentine schools move away from the "hybrid model"—which mixes technology with traditional practices without transforming them—and advance toward what we termed a "critical, integral model of ICT use." This model would be built collaboratively by teachers and students and adapted to each school's specific context, rather than being a technological integration imposed "from the top down."
Advantages
The smartphone can serve as a legitimate pedagogical tool when its use is intentionally directed. Recent research within Spanish universities indicates that, despite the controversy surrounding their presence in early education, at the higher education level, the device is part of the student's routine; it can be leveraged pedagogically if directed toward productive use within the teaching-learning process—for instance, through frameworks for teachers' digital competence like DigCompEdu and m-learning methodologies.
Along these lines, Sergio Quiroga—in his book *Tecnologías, Comunicación y Aprendizaje* (2012)—noted that technologies facilitate daily life and that their educational applications seem limitless, though he also warned early on about their side effects in the professional and social spheres. Among the advantages most frequently cited in the literature are:
• Immediate access to information and resources (dictionaries, databases, multimedia content).
• Flexible, out-of-classroom learning—a practice that intensified during the pandemic, when mobile devices became essential for maintaining educational continuity.
• Organizational tools (calendars, reminders for assignments and deadlines) that assist both teachers and students.
• Development of digital competencies transferable to an increasingly digitized workforce.
Disadvantages
Alongside these benefits, well-documented tensions persist—such as those highlighted by Quiroga and Juárez (2014) in their study on teaching practice and technology in San Luis, Argentina. They describe the friction that arises when the introduction of devices—specifically the netbooks from the *Conectar Igualdad* program—is not accompanied by a genuine recontextualization of teaching processes, resulting in a strained coexistence between traditional oral knowledge transmission and modern forms of technological mediation. This same tension carries over, with some nuances, to smartphone usage:
• Distraction and fragmented attention—identified in much of the literature as the most frequently cited risk associated with unregulated mobile phone use in the classroom.
• The gap between education policy and classroom practice: introducing devices "from the top down" does not guarantee their pedagogical adoption unless accompanied by teacher training and curriculum redesign.
• Inequality of access, as not all students possess the same devices, connectivity, or prior digital literacy.
• The risk of substitution without transformation: using the smartphone merely as a "digital notebook" without fundamentally altering the instructional approach.
Available evidence suggests that the use of smartphones for learning depends on whether their introduction is accompanied by an explicit pedagogical policy, teacher training, and an instructional design that integrates the device as a tool rather than a mere substitute for existing practices.
References
