Saleh,

I know a graduate student from Iran who is studying just that for his dissertation. If you would like I could give him your contact information.

Kind regards.

Janet

Culture communicates in many even subversive ways lead models which people have identified as the successful ones in such a system and which they tend to imitate. This is because culture is largely determined by the media. As a matter of fact the media culture is such that it makes everything else into its own tool. Crucial is, therefore, whether or not a city and its social and economic groups can come to agree on keeping free some areas of their culture from over commercialization while still giving in to such money based activities as they mean a net return for the city in terms of cultural investments made.

Krishnan,

I find your comments insightful and relevant. The priming effect in our environment influences what and how we remember. 

Do you have any references to studies showing the influence of the media on school systems or how students engage in learning? Or do think that the media indirectly influences student learning? I once read an article that explained students learn more from television than from school. Therefore it might be worthwhile to include media influence when evaluating student outcomes.

I also read that a few individuals own the majority of the influential media sources though not the majority of sources, just those that have the most distribution and influence.

Lastly, do you have a recommendation for further reading? I appreciate your input.

Kind regards,

Janet

This is a question with some fascinating strands!

The literature on teachers and the adoption of digital technologies is vast but some of it takes a rather techno-centric approach with the notion that teachers are largely polarized along a continuum of “technophobe” to “technophile”. The cultural and religious dimension, though is, as far as I know, largely under-researched.

One issue which can usefully be explored is attitudes of the teacher who is labelled as “technophobe” due to their unwillingness to use technology in the classroom. If we look at such individuals in their wider life context we often find that they have and use a smartphone, do their shopping on-line, email and text their friends and book their holidays on line etc. etc. So, clearly the reluctance to use technology should really be explored by looking at the specifics of their views in relation to “the context of use” rather than their response to technology in general. Here we may see that the issue is not a blanket rejection of digital technologies but a mismatch between their values and views of teaching as an act which is shaped by beliefs and values and the affordances of a particular technology.

When we speak to people who “reject” such technologies in the context of teaching their conversations often centre around its impact on the power relationship between the learner and the teacher.

I’m not sure that much in any religion or culture is overtly “technophobic” but reactions centre around the “dysfunctional affordances” which can become associated with a particular technology. For example the Internet can be used to disseminate undesirable and destructive material but so can writing and books but we do not see often see a cultural rejection of literacy.

In 1922 Ogburn explored the concept of “cultural lag” where society and culture constantly lags behind technological development constantly seeking to adjust its value set, practices and institutions to accommodate the new technology. Perhaps a good example is the way that digital technologies make possible “crimes” which are not actually illegal because laws have not yet been developed to address the emerging “criminal affordances” which appear with new technologies.

@ Janet

Even the most seasoned education expert is likely to stare blankly if terms such as ‘cloud computing’, ‘m-learning’, or ‘total cost of ownership’ are introduced into the conversation.

Smartly and strategically deployed, modern information and communications technology holds great promise in helping bring quality learning to some of the world’s poorest and hardest-to-reach communities. The strategy for doing so need not emulate the trajectory of educational technology use in wealthier developed nations. Indeed, in some of the most remote regions of the globe, mobile phones and other forms of technology are being used in ways barely envisioned in the United States or Europe. Necessity is truly the mother of invention in these contexts and often leads to creative and promising ends for teachers and learners.

http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2012/1/education%20technology%20winthrop/01_education_technology_shearer.pdf

Hi Saleh,

I personally don't see any relationship between religion and the use of technology.

However, I happen to believe that personal experience, the instructor's knowledge, the module, teaching methods, the faculty's policies, personal point of view and public opinion are indicators of using a specific technology for teaching.

At the same time, that perhaps everybody shall agree on the advantage of using modern technology for teaching many students and even instructors may believe that unfamiliarity with new teaching methods in addition to changing the pattern of teaching which lead to higher expectations is actually a hitch.

Good afternoon Saleh, we have found culture & religion affect the use of ICT and new technologies in Education at Postgraduate Level. On-line chat rooms and collaborative developments is one area; e-learning, and division through religion is a divide in certain cases. I will add supportive materials shortly (Supporting postgraduate needs, you can see it clearly through different regions).

It depends on what culture you are investigating. Computers and software have been largely designed by Western designers for Western cultures. This is not a criticism. From a Human Computer Interaction perspective, for non-western cultures, there are significant differences in mental models and learning styles which have seldom been explored, in the development of educational computer systems. 

Robert,

I agree with you. In a recent pilot study with University professors from a Middle Eastern country and those at a U.S. University it was shown there are significant cultural and religious perspectives that reduced the use of technology in the Universities in the Eastern oriented culture.

Further studies on the view of leadership styles showed a Middle Eastern perspective that was self-protective and autonomous in practice. Whereas in the U.S. and Anglo oriented cultures, the leadership style preferred was charismtic/value based and participative (Northouse, 2007). These leadership styles could also contribute to choices to include or exclude technology in the classroom or within University models.

Additionally, another study revealed that the level of trust the individual teacher has in the availability of technical support in 1) learning the technology and 2) in providing assistance when needed on the hardware, software, and tools of use in the classroom was shown to be the key factor in the professors' choice to use technology in their classes (in the U.S. university context).

There was also suggested in the pilot study that in the Middle East there are concerns expressed that technology based education could result in cheating and is therefore viewed with some distrust.

Hope this helps,

Janet

Hi Saleh,

I personally see relationship between culture and technology but also we can´t forget that the access to culture and technology is related with economy and politics decisions. For example, I can tell you about the case of Brazil – a multicultural country – that in the last 5 years began to invest in technology in public education. The government bought a lot of computers and tablets for the public’s schools – to students and teachers. However they didn’t implement any formation – course to teach the teachers how to use it (the teachers and also the students were outdated).

Many thanks all 

what you have added is really helpful. I will be back with more sources about cultural & technologies 

Yes Culture does have impact on every aspect of life as, it is learned early in life  and can not be relearned or changed (Hofstede, 2000). So perspective on any thing will be differ from person to person. Therefore  use of anything, not only ICT will have impact of cultural diversity. 

Adrian raises an important point that needs to be studied further--the use or non-use of technology in education is not so much the dichotomy of technoprobe vs. technophile. I am personally neither, but I use a "hybrid" mixture of online and in-class learning. Personally, I do not like the totally online classes because in  the more than 10 years our university has had computer technology in place, I have found few professors who can or do attempt to re-create a classroom effect online.  I tutor extensively for much of the core curriculum at the university so I see a variety of online courses--many of them seem no more than a fancy correspondence course. There is almost no professor-student interaction, only the 2-3 points student earn by posting a response to two students on the Discussion Board question for that week (and most students rarely go beyond the "I agree" or "I disagree" with a brief, inadequate reasoning to back up their point).  But I also cannot imagine grading a nearly three-hour final that is handwritten in class.  I love the feedback from students in the classroom and the eye-to-eye contact that lets an instructor know "who gets it" and "who doesn't get it." But I love that online materials allows me a wider range of resources for my students--music files, videos, films, journals, and a host of other materials that are often prohibitive per the short class time given to us. I do not have to drag the huge TV, DVD player, a multitude of cords and cables from one floor to another by means of a decrepit elevator.  I can post grades quickly and comment to students inside a secure system (when compared to more accessible email messages). 

My department uses the online system the least of all disciplines/departments on campus, but there are a number of professors who avoid all technology in the social sciences and humanities.  But again as Adrian points out, these same people use smart phones, email, even Twitter, so they are not phobic about technology.  I think that the problem is part the ideology of teacher/student in a classroom setting as the traditional approach.  But the other part of the "problem" may also be related to the amount of time spent uploading an entire course, scanning materials, transferring films and audio files from the links provided through IT (at my university this is the system in place). Then, one must be careful about availability dates so that students can't access tests easily.  And the list of potential problems can be threatening at times. Since I have worked for more than 30 years chiefly in humanities, I wonder if there may be a more evident "cultural lag" here than in engineering and the natural sciences--those professors seem to operate high-tech approaches with ease.

Even in my EFL classes, when I introduce them to the online system (Canvas) at our university, it is usually my engineering students who first express interest and pleasure in having materials at their fingertips. The science students (most of them young women) do not seem as enthused.  My students are chiefly from Saudi Arabia, so I can't tell whether any of these differences are the result of educational differences in Saudi or something else. My students also hold degrees from Saudi and are here to attend grad school at the Master's level.

But to think of these differences as based on religion, I think, is very doubtful. For instance, in the U.S., we know that ISIS and other "jihadi" groups (media term, not mine) are experts at media use worldwide. In fact, their propaganda presence online is light years ahead of anything the U.S. is producing right now to counter these claims. The young Americans flying to Syria have been swayed by technology--Twitter, online websites--not one recruited through personal contact or "radical" clerics (the situation of 1993 is usually cited as an example of the radical cleric idea). If anything, it seems that the more extreme groups and smaller sects have benefited dramatically from online technology because they can spread their message worldwide in the click of a button.  But because religion influences culture and the paradigm that governs that particular culture or society, one cannot totally discount religion in any analysis of culture.

For instance, years ago, the Sheikh I studied with (graduate of Al-Azhar) told me a story about the ulama when first presented with the technology of the telephone and TV.  They didn't like it because that technology could give to Shayton/Satan and his followers access to those who would otherwise be inaccessible.  I laughed when he told me that story about Muslims because my grandfather (Evangelical Zionist) thought exactly the same thing; he was finally convinced to permit the TV because he could listen to his tele-evangelists nearly all day and the phone allowed his children to come help him out whenever he needed.  As is true in most things, technology can be used for the good or for the bad--or some things ranked in between.  Technology is a tool that is completely amoral--what we do with it creates the "right" or wrong" and "good" and bad." But it is culture that sets the norms and mores of those categories, and it can never be lightly regarded or ignored.

Schools in both the public and private sector in the education industry had taken advantage of the ICT innovation and were making good progress. Increase in teacher - student interaction, student-centred learning, increased level of capability on the part of students to do independent learning and the practice implementation of theoretical and abstract concepts on the part of both students and teachers.

http://www.adeanet.org/triennale/Triennalestudies/subtheme1/1_4_04_BAKU_rocare_en.pdf

"Cultural lag" is a term used when a new thing is introduced in a community. And the community don't know its proper use and it is then used for negative purposes and eventually the opposition to that new thing arise and that is barred to use. Same happened in our country Pakistan where loudspeaker was rejected but same thing become a part thier masajid. This happen when internet came to our society but it was only famous for Chat-Rooms and watching videos so it was countered by the masses and a negative perspective was developed for it. But now its because of its widespread use, internet is mandatory part of every home.

Definitely, critical thinking has a strong correlation with Religiosity.

In my opinion, in a society where new generation students use technology very often, technology can be used to teach culture and religious information to students. But in a society where technology culture is not very common, it would not be right to use technology in teaching culture and religious knowledge.

 In other words, this situation is related to how societies are intertwined with technology.

Best Regards..