ICT and International Learning Ecologies

Representation and Sustainability Across Contexts

Ian A. Lubin, Ian A. Lubin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000397185
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Inclusive Education

Winner of the Outstanding Publication Award - Book by AECT's Culture, Learning, and Technology Division! ICT and International Learning Ecologies addresses new ways to explore international, comparative, and cultural issues in education and technology. As today's development orthodoxies push societies around the world to adopt imported information communication tools, new approaches are needed that integrate cultural responsiveness, autonomy, and sustainability into technology-enhanced learning. This edited collection conceptually and methodologically reframes the complexities of teaching and learning in historically marginalized communities around the world, where inequities are often exacerbated by one-size-fits-all programs. Graduate students and researchers of educational technology, international/comparative education, and sustainability education will be better prepared to lead information and communication technologies (ICT) implementation across a range of contexts and learner identities.

Part I
Introduction and a Landscape of Literacies and Language

Frameworks, Models, and Illustrations

1
ICT and International Learning Ecologies

An Introduction

Ian A. Lubin

1. Introduction

Western forms of education are characterized by hierarchical categorization, chronological sequencing, and institutionalized knowledge, configurations, and relationships. These modalities have come to be regarded as formal/mainstream education (Coombs & Ahmed, 1974; La Belle, 1982) and reflect a Western modernistic emphasis on productivity and a view of human beings and the natural world as exploitable in the quest for material wealth accumulation. Further, these modes of education reflect conceptions of Western civilization and knowledge that center and solidify questionable beliefs and attitudes about the exceptional power of Western institutions and people. While linked to discernible cultural, economic, and social change, it is debatable whether the spread of Western education around the world has resulted in a more just and culturally diverse global society.

Notwithstanding, information and communication technologies (ICT) have been effective transmitters of Western formal education around the world with the promise to improve the life outcomes of the world’s poorest. Out of prudence, it must be stated that while ICT have been shown to improve access to education, serious questions remain about their impact on education quality (Di Battista, Dutta, Geiger, & Lanvin, 2015). Moreover, there are persistent concerns about the rate of implementation failure of these technology innovations as well as the concentrations of inappropriate, inequitable, and seemingly intractable outcomes (Lubin, 2016, 2018).

In some places of the world, the limitations of the colonial expansion of Western education have been laid bare revealing a cultural bankruptcy and an inability or unwillingness to take into consideration local knowledge and ecologically specific modes of meaning. Even worse, Western education has come under criticism for its role in actively destroying local or what is otherwise referred to as traditional and/or indigenous forms of knowledge and culture through systemic means of delegitimization.

ICT and International Learning Ecologies is a book that focuses attention on diverse ontologies, design methodologies, and innovations in ICT. The new attention challenges existing perceptions about the learning that occurs outside of the boundaries of traditional Western institutions, settings, and knowledge systems and re-presents this learning as legitimate with ineffable value to an information society. The work embraces an ecological framing that recognizes and promotes traditional/indigenous/local information and knowledge, languages and literacies, oral and textual cultural content, and intangible cultural heritage as inseparable components of peoples’ learning. The authors encourage a careful inspection of the diverse cultural and socioeconomic contexts that are featured by the inquiries in this book. Two distinguishing characteristics of these inquiries are: 1) the explicit framing of ICT to find sustainable solutions for engaging traditional/indigenous information and knowledge; and 2) the endorsement of participatory, experiential, and grassroots co-design methods for international development projects. The work therefore links theory and research on learning design and technology with cultural and ecological sustainability and the promotion of a pluralistic knowledge society.

The studies in this collection are at the vanguard of a conceptual and methodological reframing that conjoins the complexities of teaching and learning and the nuances of sustainable cultural life. The cultures and communities encountered in these inquiries help us to unravel the challenges of connecting the digital world (via ICT innovations) to traditional/indigenous/local contexts. The stories portray community life in terms of what the members have reason to value within their ecologies, without discrimination. ICT are therefore given significance by members explicitly for a range of activities deemed congruent with their values and needs, including: 1) safeguarding traditional information and knowledge; and 2) from a ‘development’ standpoint, sustainably improving personal, social, and economic life outcomes. In response, the research traditions reflected in this volume include community co-design, participatory design, and critical and analytic reflection.

Learning is complex and overlaps multiple social systems and contexts that embody human activity and experience. That is the quintessence of an ecological framework. Put simply, thinking of learning as ecological allows us to recognize individuals and their social relationships that span the multiple contexts (historical, cultural, political, etc.) through which they experience their lives. This conceptualization has established support in the social sciences (Bateson, 1972; Garbarino, 1977; Germain, 1973, 1979, 1991), including in education and human development (Barab & Roth, 2006; Barron, 2004, 2006; Bronfenbrenner, 1979, 1993, 1995; Lemke, 2000, 2002; Odom, Brown, Schwartz, Zercher, & Sandall, 2002; Timberlake, 1984). Particular to education, ecological perspectives have guided studies in various domains, including, for example, teacher identity (Goodnough, 2010) and perspectives on formal, non-formal, and informal learning, as well as personal and lifelong learning (Barnett & Jackson, 2019; La Belle, 1982; Maina & García, 2016). Ecological frameworks have also influenced some work related to information and educational technologies (Barron, 2004, 2006; Luckin, 2010a, 2010b; Nardi & O’Day, 1999; Normak, Pata, & Kaipainen, 2012; Pachler, Cook, & Bachmair, 2010; van den Beemt & Diepstraten, 2016).

In spite of these efforts, previous work fails to fully explore the cultural and ecological landscape of technology with a specific focus on ICT and global contexts. This volume provides such an examination of technological innovations in cultural contexts as it expands the ecological framework to the field of educational technology and ICT.

1.1 International Learning Ecologies

When the term ICT is used to prepose social and economic endeavors (e.g. ICT‑4learning, ‑4development, and ‑4peace‑building), there often is an implicit proposal of beneficence toward deficient others in faraway places. The ICT enterprise is seen to take on an international aspect. We are cued to think about the social, political, cultural, and economic collectivities of these people in these contexts, as well as their shortcomings that validate the need for our ICT interventions—their ignorance, poverty, and conflict. Yet in spite of the values we hold about other people, we often think of technologies in agnostic terms—as being neutral and value free. This potentially serious conflict results in us failing to think about how our own cultural values, embedded in our technologies and instructional processes, collide with the values of others in the international ecologies where we export and implement our innovations. In reality, our ostensibly benevolent ICT advocacy reflects our value judgments (valid or not) about those people and places, and our values are transmitted through our technology designs and modernizations.

I introduce the term ‘international learning ecologies’ to respond to learning that takes place in contexts that are not considered Western or mainstream, and to integrate this conception and phrasing into the common education technology research parlance. As new attention is being placed on the importance of recognizing the diversity of these non-Western learning contexts, an accepted or even useful nomenclature paves the way for legitimizing research and discourse.

2. Reflecting and Representing the Traditional, Local, and Indigenous

Three main terms in the literature denote or describe the contexts and people studied in this book: Traditional, local, and indigenous. While the terms are sometimes used interchangeably, they convey different meanings depending on use, and therefore need some clarifications for our purposes.

First, when we speak of traditional people or contexts, we are referring to individuals or groups who observe specific customs, values, or beliefs that have been handed down from generation to generation. Traditional may also refer to the manner in which people pass down their traditions, or the stated condition of being passed down in this way. In this sense, traditional speaks to the transmission of customs in a way that is distinguished from knowledge or cultural diffusion in Western society. Thus, it is common to see the juxtaposition of traditional versus Western modes of human activity and experience.

A second term, local, conveys individual or group identification with a specific area, and also denotes a specific area. In other words, local customs can be thought of as belonging or relating exclusively to the people of a particular area. Additionally, the term local contrasts with notions of being imported from some other place, and therefore signals the importance of origin and source. Local is therefore often used to distinguish the insiders and outsiders of a community. However, it is conceivable for an outsider to eventually become an insider through various mechanisms, e.g. exposure or acceptance. This characteristic does not apply for the term indigenous discussed as follows.

A third term, indigenous, while also conveying similar meanings as traditional and local, is a bit more nuanced. To be indigenous means to originate or be born in a specific place. It refers to natives or first people by birthright. It also denotes things that occur naturally in such an environment, e.g. the language. An outsider cannot plausibly become indigenous. Notably, in every part of the world today, indigenous people and their ecologies have become marginalized, undervalued, and vulnerable. The following sections bring this state of affairs into sharper focus.

2.1 Indigenous People?

There is no single definition for indigenous (UNHR OHC, 2013). Indigenous people are quite heterogeneous, even as there is overlap in how they are described. The United Nations (UN) and other international organizations, such as the World Health Organization (WHO), have opted to describe indigenous people rather than to define them. What their various descriptions have in common is that indigenous people are the historical inhabitants of land spaces and they maintain an identity, culture, and way of life that is closely linked to this land. According to the WHO (2020),

Indigenous populations are communities that live within, or are attached to, geographically distinct traditional habitats or ancestral territories, and who identify themselves as being part of a distinct cultural group, descended from groups present in the area before modern states were created a...