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21st Century Knowledge‐Building in the Asia Pacific: Towards a Multi‐Disciplinary Framework for Linking ICT‐Based Social and Personal Contexts of Education and Development
Author(s) -
Richards Cameron,
Nair Govindan
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
the electronic journal of information systems in developing countries
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.41
H-Index - 18
ISSN - 1681-4835
DOI - 10.1002/j.1681-4835.2007.tb00226.x
Subject(s) - information and communications technology , context (archaeology) , knowledge management , tacit knowledge , knowledge building , lifelong learning , sociology , dialogical self , discipline , public relations , political science , pedagogy , computer science , social science , psychology , geography , social psychology , archaeology , law
Abstract In the larger context of an emerging global knowledge society and economy, education policies around the world have stressed the increasing importance of both information and communication technology (ICT) and ‘active’ models of lifelong learning. Similarly, new ‘knowledge management approaches involving such concepts as ‘community of practice’ and ‘individual tacit knowledge’ are related aspirations for capacity‐building on both sides of the so‐called digital divide between rural or developing areas and modern progressive cities and countries. Common to both informal and formal learning models on one hand, and community and enterprise development is an alternately theoretical and informal assumption of “knowledge‐building” which is often contradicted or frustrated in practice because of the difficulty in effectively reconciling or connecting top‐down imperatives and bottom‐up aspects of the local context. In other words, there are some common aspects of (and lessons in) the struggle by educators to effectively integrate ICTs to enhance education on one hand, with achieving sustainable capacity‐building in ICT‐related community development projects and enterprise development initiatives on the other. This paper outlines a framework for better recognizing and engaging with similar and convergent “missing links” in the areas of education and development that have to do with the learning process, cultural change, and new conceptions of both individual and community knowledge. With particular reference to an Asia‐Pacific context, it argues for a kind of ‘dialogical’ approach that is needed in the 21st Century or digital age to better organize, manage, and apply the alternately tacit or informal and explicit connections between human knowledge as both ideas and practice.