Instructional technology research in Latin America

Conclusions

Instructional technology research (using the term in a more-or-less restrictive sense) is quite limited in Latin America but has begun to grow in the last decade and may be heading toward a productive period. The restraints on this type of research (lack of funding being the primary one) will continue to impede further development. Two major areas of considerable importance in the field are transfer and implementation studies, subjects not normally seen as researchper se, but particularly useful in the Latin American context because adaptation and adoption of innovations is a typical and logical process in educational improvement.

Educational technology in Latin America should be asking new and different questions. It should not be asking how to use specific objectives to improve teaching but should ask what is the role of specific objectives in the development of cognitive structures in the students. It should not be asking how to use television to massify education but rather which are the critical aspects of educational television and how may they be integrated into systematic programs of educational development. It should not be asking how to apply instructional design procedures to teach specific subjects but asking what is the basic nature of student learning and how can that be facilitated through careful design of the conditions of learning. Educational technology should be making more efforts to respond to the specific necessities of the societies in which it is supposed to be functioning, making its efforts more relevant and pertinent, adjusting itself to political variables, social systems, linguistic interests of participating groups (cultures and sub-cultures), and to the demands for more democratic educational processes. From the Latin American perspective it is important to increase the willingness to intensify the participation of the recipients of the diverse innovations. This means valuing the ideas, beliefs, interests, and role of the participants, giving them greater levels of participation in those critical decisions which concern them, and responding to their cognitive styles and their interests.