Introduction: a Frame for the Discussion of Learning Cultures

For guidance on citations see FAQs. c [not recorded] Version: [not recorded] Copyright and Moral Rights for the articles on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. For more information on Open Research Online's data policy on reuse of materials please consult the policies page. It would be customary to begin discussion of a topic like 'learning cultures in online education', with a definition of terms. However, in the case of a concept like 'culture' we feel justified in sidestepping this task, because, as some of the authors who have contributed to this book, and many of those in the literature they refer to, have pointed out, it is simply too complex an idea to do justice to in a single definition. Why then, address it at all, when there are so many other less theoretically problematic aspects of teaching and learning in online environments waiting to be investigated? Well, in a sense, the whole project of this book is about answering that question. As editors, we have, through our shared background in the use of technology for distance teaching across languages and other domains of social difference, become convinced that cultural issues are inseparable from educational, linguistic and technological ones. Indeed, a review of past research that is focused on the cultural dimensions of learning with technology suggests to us that the cultural perspective necessarily incorporates consideration of other areas such as curriculum, interaction, collaboration, pedagogy, language or assessment, albeit it can be argued that these are more readily definable. In our view, discussions of theory and practice in all these areas usually leave implicit questions that a 'cultural' perspective throws up explicitly: who the participants are, what determines how they relate to each other, who values what and why, who has power and who has not. Further, our attention has sharply focused on these issues because of the international, multilingual and increasingly 'global' context in which we now work. Increasingly the technologies of online education are being used to extend teaching and learning policies and practices developed by