Page 116 - Education in a Digital World

Local Variations 103

[Policy] borrowing does not mean that national and local communities will
implement an exact replica of these policies and practices. Changes are made
to meet the conditions and desires of local communities.

One key point that has emerged from this chapter and is certainly worth taking
forward into the remainder of our discussion is the idea that many forms of educa-
tional technology as used in regions such as the Middle East, South and East Asia
and sub-Saharan Africa perhaps represent a grafting of Western values into non-
Western contexts. Could it be that most dominant forms of educational technology
constitute a digital form of the ‘Eurocentricism’ of education provision and prac-
tice – thereby doing little more than reinforcing the linguistic codes, cultural
assumptions and models of what constitute ‘desirable’ knowledge particular to a
Western perspective? Certainly, it could be concluded that most of the forms of
educational technology discussed up until this point in the book do not appear to
particularly “respect indigenous knowledge present in any given context and tend
to view Western solutions as superior regardless of the systematic implications of
those solutions in different cultures” (Carr-Chellman 2005, p.8).
This charge of an implicit cultural imperialism in educational technology is a
serious and wide-ranging one, and certainly merits more detailed consideration. At
best, these issues are usually only acknowledged briefly in the educational technology
literature – and even when highlighted are usually quickly moved on from. Indeed,
the implications of most of the issues raised in this chapter could be considered
as simply too disruptive to be taken up within the field of educational technology.
As Alison Carr-Chellman (2005, p.9) reflects:

How can American professors, instructional designers, and web educators
realistically be expected to anticipate the cultural needs and contextual sensi-
tivities necessary to create a course deliverable worldwide? Or will we focus
instead on creating completely homogenised courses that will not offend
anyone from Kazakhstan to California? Can education be homogenised? …
Isn’t learning necessarily contextualised in our own cultures and contexts?

Clearly we cannot afford to take such an evasive position on the significance of
context and culture. These are certainly matters that educational technologists
should be obliged to engage with – however uncomfortable this may make them
feel. With such thoughts in mind, it is now time to move our attention away from
the forms of educational technology found in rich (over)industrialised contexts and,
instead, consider the forms of educational technology that can be found in the
majority of the world’s less-wealthy countries. We shall now go on to consider the
role of educational technology in what is often termed ‘international development’.