Page 107 - Education in a Digital World

94 Local Variations

consistency, encouraging individualism and valuing autonomy, egalitarianism, com-
petitiveness, self-reliance and directness. In contrast, Eastern thought can be
characterised in a number of other ways – e.g. accepting contradiction, encouraging
collectivism, valuing deference to older or authoritative persons and encouraging
‘high context communication’ where words are seen to be less important than
context. While these precise differences between ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ traditions
are contestable, it is clear that many of the dominant ways in which educational
technology is positioned and discussed within academic, political and commercial
circles is done through Western values and principles. For example, as Dillon et al.
(2008) observe, many of the assumptions of ‘sociocultural’ learning that underpin
dominant educational technology thinking are strongly Western constructs that are
associated with settled and largely urban lifestyles. In an East-Asian nomadic context
such as Outer Mongolia – where the majority of people are what Dillon describes
as ‘mobile pastoralists’– talk of learning ‘environments’ and ‘context-dependent’
learning are of perhaps of less meaning and relevance.
Such contradictions are prompting some educational technologists to begin to
question the compatibility (or otherwise) of Western conceptions of technology and
education with other traditions of thought and philosophy – not least the ‘Confucian
heritage education’ that shapes much of the educational provision in East Asia.
Indeed, it could be argued that the Eastern educational tradition is often at odds with
many aspects of ‘globalised’ educational technology thought. As Richard Nisbett (2003)
has reasoned, the Confucian emphasis on valuing group success and achievement and
regarding the individual learner as a subordinate part of a larger independent collective
could be seen to clash with many of the prevailing assumptions surrounding the indi-
vidually-empowering potential of digital technologies in education. Similarly, the
Confucian tendency to see education in terms of a “teacher-dominated and centrally
organized pedagogical culture” (Zhang 2007, p.302) could be seen to clash with the
notion of the technology-empowered individual learner. Thus in Confucian-led
countries the use of digital technology in education may well be valued in different
ways than is assumed by Western commentators. As Fang and Warschauer (2004,
pp.314–15) observe with regard to Chinese forms of educational technology use:

In China deep-rooted cultural norms and beliefs mandate that teachers control
the classroom and deserve utmost student respect. The methods suggested
by the [digital technology intervention] – which focused teachers’ efforts on
providing guidance, scaffolding, and feedback rather than lecturing – ran
contrary to these cultural norms and beliefs. Teachers who engaged in student-
centred learning risked disapproval from their students, who were used to
other forms of learning, and from their peers, who view linguistic knowledge
and lecturing ability as the cornerstones of good teaching.

Of course, culturally-based explanations are not restricted to the clashes between
Eastern holistic thought and Western notions of technology-based learning. For