Description

Although Japanese universities have relied on information technology to resolve numerous problems, their high expectations are undermined by lags in implementing that technology. This innovative edited volume argues that lags in IT implementation in Japanese education are created by contradictory and challenging responses of the social environment. If this dialectic can be visualized as having hands, the right avidly promotes IT, while the left hand simultaneously blocks it. The result, of course, is an impasse. The issues central to this stalemate are significant because they point beyond the schools, to a broader set of problem areas in Japanese society.
The contributors to Roadblocks on the Information Highway discover and discuss the contradictions inherent in Japanese society and culture as they are played out in the social contexts of IT service providers, web masters, and classroom teachers who implement IT. They then show how these contradictions indicate broader, structural problems that pervade the dynamic between Japanese education and the state and business sectors. Ultimately, in a reach that goes beyond Japan, this book examines relationships between technology and society, persuasively convincing readers that the modern age has created an inextricable link between the two.

Table of Contents

Part 1 Introduction: Social Challenges to the IT Revolution in Japanese Education
Part 2 Reluctant Providers, Hesitant Users: IT Support Services
Chapter 3 A Nationwide Assessment of IT Implementation in Higher Education
Chapter 4 The Unbearable Lightness of Being an IT Service Provider: A Case Study
Chapter 5 No Faculty Service Stations on the Information Highway: A Case Study
Chapter 6 Do IT Yourself: Short-circuits in Technical Support Services
Chapter 7 Social and Structural Barriers to the IT Revolution in High-Tech Industries
Part 8 Open Circuits and Closed Doors: Institutional Barriers
Chapter 9 Cyberstructure, Society, and Education in Japan
Chapter 10 Barriers to Educational Use of the Internet in a Japanese University
Chapter 11 Lessons from a Program to Develop Faculty IT Skills
Chapter 12 Developing a University Website: A Webmaster's Perspective
Chapter 13 Implementing IT in the "Perfect Bureaucracy"
Part 14 Pedagogy: More than Technology
Chapter 15 Teaching, Learning, and Computing in Japan and the United States
Chapter 16 The Significance of Off-line Learning for On-line Projects
Chapter 17 On-line Technology Isn't Enough: Transforming the Teacher-Student Learning Process
Chapter 18 Three Critical Gaps in Computer Literacy
Chapter 19 Technology and the Tyranny of Tradition in Japanese Higher Education
Part 20 Conclusion: Technology and the Status Quo: The Paradox of Reform

Product details

Published Mar 04 2003
Format Hardback
Edition 1st
Extent 364
ISBN 9780739105641
Imprint Lexington Books
Dimensions 236 x 159 mm
Series Studies of Modern Japan
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

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