Conference:
ECER 2005
Format:
Paper
Session Information
Session 7, Critical, Cultural and Post-Modern Perspectives
Papers
Time:
2005-09-09
09:00-10:30
Room:
Arts G108A
Chair:
Mart Laanpere
Contribution
The paper will focus on the ideas underpinning the use of new technology in educational settings and to what extent these basic ideas accompanying the technology reflect new and unique positions in emerging post-modern environments, the information society, the hypercomplex society or whatever we might call it. Most people seem to agree that it's necessary to develop new learning strategies to be able to face the challenges and possibilities of the new kind of society. Established ways of teaching are put under pressure, and the use of computers and the Internet is quite often made an integrated part of how we imagine teaching and learning ought to be conducted in the future. By analysing the rhetoric of the field, we realize that great changes have occurred during the last two decades. In many ways we have witnessed a new language of learning developing. "Teaching" has to a large extent been replaced by "learning", and along with this the arguments of flexibility, individualisation, the learners as consumers etc. are placed at the forefront of the discussions (Biesta 2004). These changes are most often parts of attempts to meet the needs of the future as it's expected to be. To some extent, however, the new language of learning seem to have been influenced by rhetoric connected with the use of ICT in educational settings and by the language of the sellers of the new technological devices. We might talk about a technology-push regarding the development of the language of learning. In addition to this, due to the position that new technology still has within education, the general reflections of the field are influenced by profound technological optimism and technological determinism. However, to a large extent these represent ideas and perspectives regarded as being fundamental to the industrial society that we are about to leave.The paper will examine this situation in more detail, how the ideas connected to technology and teaching are rather confusing as we enter the post-modern era and also why this is so. We might detect ideas and ambitions bringing new perspectives to the discussions, but also quite obvious prolongations of established ways of thinking. The basic ideas of the Enlightenment are rather prominent, even in the new millennium. Furthermore, we occasionally still might experience quite a heavy resistance toward both the new technology and the actual educational reforms that are probably influenced by romantic, pre-modern ideas. This constitutes a rather mixed, but very interesting picture.
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