Chapter 6: A Scheme for Positioning an Integrationist perspective

1. Chapter 6:A Scheme for Positioning an Integrationist perspective

2. The Technology-Context Scheme • Analysis of Jackson’s 1996 technology-context scheme • The scheme focuses on the nature of the technological artifact itself • Jackson argues that dominant perspectives may be organized in terms of how each views the relationship between technology and context • The separation of context and technology provides a distinct method for comparing existing theories and for furthering theory building

3. Comparison and Analysis of Existing Research Perspectives Determinism • The constitution of technology is separable from context, and the constitution of context is separable from content, and the constitution of context is separable from technology • The initial research that cultivated the use of media technology in education for development stemmed from work done by Paul Lazarsfield, a communication research scholar at Columbia’s Bureau of Applied Science Research (BASR)

4. Technology as Change Agent • The constitution of technology is separable from context, but the constitution is not separable from technology • The human capital perspective advances the idea that the specific investment in the number of years spent in education would have an economic toll • One example of the human capital perspective comes from an effort involving American Samoa in which television was used to modernize primary and secondary schools to improve student’s performance

5. Integration • In the integration relationship, the constitution of technology is not separable from context, nor is the constitution of the context separable from technology • For research on the integrationist perspective, development is not so much a question of outcomes as it is a question of process • Integrationism is better suited to offering explanations for complex phenomena than it is to predicting or measuring development processes

6. Emergence of a Nonlinear Process as an Integrationist Perspective on Development • A theoretical frame for understanding an alternative development perspective grounded in new developments in science illustrates an integrationist perspective • Problems ensue when we assume local conditions are related proportionately • Propositions, structure, pattern, and process, associated with emergent systems, highlight the contribution of the integrationist perspective

7. Chapter 6 Conclusion • Research across disciplines generally acknowledges the biases, assumptions, and values that lie behind any development technology. Marshall McLuhan agrees • No perspective has been successful in resolving all of the problems posed by its predecessor, namely modernization • The pursuit of perspectives that meet the integrated criteria proposed by the technology-context scheme might allow us to examine the more dynamic relations in developing societies