Knowledge transfer and technology in education: toward a complete learning environment

Education as a field where social relations are played out immediately raises concerns regarding the sources of power which regulate the ways in which knowledge is introduced and managed. Questions thus arise regarding the criteria by which decisions are made regarding the teaching/learning objectives and the means for their achievement. Which understandings, or reference contexts, are mobilised in order to justify the decision process put in place? How is it ensured that learners are not excluded from the process of formulation of the learning objectives? In other words, how is it ensured that learners would understand the interests which generate these objectives? Furthermore, how can it be shown that the new technological applications truly serve learners’ needs rather than the interests of the invisible but omnipresent spirit of true ’Competence’? This paper has been written with the aim to problematise the question of the pedagogic task and its articulation in the context of the opportunities that multimedia technology opens up to education. Fundamental to this goal has been to illustrate the relevance of the assumptions about learners and the task of learning which underpin educational environments and which, in turn, inform different uses of technology. Drawing on the intellectual frameworks of postmodernist/postructural authors, the question of the pedagogic task has been posed as embedded within the larger framework of understandings that shape institutional and individual perceptions of the goals and methods by which education should proceed. These perceptions are formed in the contexts of social interactions which are not free from models of the social order, social power, and social change; and, to paraphrase Luke, ultimately models of how learners should look and be (Luke, 1995: 97). Therefore to reflect upon the ‚How?™ of technology (or its place and function) in education is to reflect upon the goals which technology is to support and make possible. To facilitate a step in this direction, this paper attempts to sketch out a framework for thinking about technology and education. In particular, it looks at the concepts of