Mobile Reading for Sustainable (Digital) Futures? The Potential and Pitfalls of Secondary Schoolgirls' After-School Mobile Use in Nairobi

Education interventions designed for girls in the Global South often seek to expand girls’ future life choices. Increasingly, this goal is pursued by enhancing pre-existing mobile ownership so girls can access digital... [ view full abstract ]

Education interventions designed for girls in the Global South often seek to expand girls’ future life choices. Increasingly, this goal is pursued by enhancing pre-existing mobile ownership so girls can access digital resources which might support their education. However, girls’ personal characteristics, particularly their age and gender, shape their mobile appropriation – and by extension the outcomes they can realize when utilizing their phones. This carries significant implications for how mobile technologies might be used to bolster digital pedagogies in ways that contribute to education development that is both sustainable and more gender equal.

Accordingly, this presentation will evaluate the development outcomes of an action research intervention implemented during the after-school hours with a community of secondary school girls in Nairobi, Kenya. The study and its design was grounded in the capability approach, the people-centered perspective of human development articulated by Amartya Sen. The aim was to help 22 girl research participants from disadvantaged backgrounds investigate how they might increase their access to educational content after school. The work was facilitated by the introduction of two mobile applications for after-school use in the girls’ homes. Data collection was undertaken over 13 months, in three phases, and during after-school hours using mixed methods including app usage statistics analysis and in-home participant observation.

It emerged by the study conclusion that myriad structural factors mutually influenced by the girls’ age and gender gave rise to notable differences among the research population in terms of the ability to sustainably use their mobile phones to learn by reading educational content after school. The intervention serves as further evidence that enhancing a girl’s agency by augmenting her resources – digital, pedagogical, or otherwise – is insufficient to bring about future educational empowerment if the after-school structures within which her resources are used remain unaltered.