Liu et al. (2014) examined studies on mobile learning in K-12 from 2007 to the present. They found in 63 studies from 15 refereed journals that research was primarily exploratory in nature and focused on understanding the educational affordances of using mobile devices in instructional practices. A survey of 114 papers from mLearn 2005, 2007, and 2008 conducted by Wingkvist and Ericcson (2011) investigated and compared the research methods and research purposes of these papers. The papers reviewed were evenly distributed among the research methods investigated, with one exception. There were few papers using basic research, which would allow the researcher to study problems to which methods or possible solutions have yet to be identified. In terms of research purposes, papers that describe research were well represented, but there was a lack of papers targeting evaluation. These authors stated that a challenge for mobile learning research is to stop, turn around, and reflect over the research results in order to avoid already known pitfalls. They also stated that a head start is given if research is built on previous research instead of reinventing the wheel every time a new mobile learning initiative begins. However, they caution that much of the research being conducted describes how the real world works and is often presented as the result of a small-scale
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study. This calls into question the generalizability of the research. The preceding studies have provided a big picture look at how mobile learning is occurring in education. However, these studies do not provide any valuable insights into specific content areas.