Page 109 - Education in a Digital World

96 Local Variations

use. Take, for instance, the differences between the collective social-welfare
orientations of Scandinavian Lutheran societies as opposed to the individualistic
market-led cultures of North America. Similarly, clear differences exist between the
class-based systems of status and entitlement within the UK and French class system
as well as the Indian caste system, as opposed to more ostensibly meritocratic sys-
tems. While subtle, these differences can be said to influence perceptions of educa-
tional technology. For instance, as Carr-Chellman (2005, p.149) observes with
regard to the cultural ‘fit’ of online learning and American values:

We, in America, love our independence. There is almost nothing that is more
precious to us than the ability to determine our own individual destinies and
to pursue with all vigor, potentially alone … Online learning is directly in
line with this stereotypical American value.

Making Sense of the Localisations of Education and Technology

It should now be clear from these brief examples alone that the local implementa-
tion and enactment of educational technology is a complicated affair. Despite the
best ‘global’ intentions of technology designers, learning scientists and pedagogical
experts, a host of powerful ‘local’ factors will influence how similar educational
technologies are received and used in different social contexts and circumstances. It
is important to note here that these issues are not occasional interruptions of
otherwise pervasive global trends. These are not peripheral factors that simply ‘add
colour’ at the margins of generally universal forms of educational technology use.
As such, these are not local peculiarities that can be countered by the addition of
some tokenistic local adjustments in a manner akin to the ‘glocalisation’ of US
fast-food menus throughout the world (where, for example, one can order a
McFalafel burger in Egypt or a McHuevo burger in Uruguay). Instead, these are
deep-rooted influences that impact upon any instance of education technology use,
and therefore should underpin any understanding of how digital technologies
are actually being used by different sets of groups of people in different social,
cultural and political contexts. It is important, therefore, that we take time to con-
sider fully how these issues of local context and local circumstance act to shape
technology use in education.
Let us take, for example, ‘virtual’ and ‘de-territorialised’ forms of technology-
based education. A growing number of recent studies have focused on how indi-
viduals in different national contexts and from different cultural backgrounds engage
with ostensibly the same forms of online learning. In Selwyn’s (2011) study of dis-
tance learners from around the world taking the same UK-provided degree courses,
a range of ‘local’ contextual influences were found to underpin students’ diverse
experiences of what was assumed by the educational providers to be a global
common experience. These influences included individuals in countries undergoing
civil wars facing obvious restrictions in terms of the times that they could study due