A Discussion on Education and Information Technology : Based on Martin Heidegger's "The Question Concerning Technology"(<Special Issue>Educational Research in the Age of Information Society: Themes and Concerns)

The purpose of this article is to show the tasks and problems of educational research in the information age. For this, he shows his discussions on education and technology through his qualitative researches on information technology uses in education. Through the discussion, he asserts the importance of observational and theoretical approach in educational settings for future educational research. From this article, the author tries to examine the meaning and significance of information technologies i.e. personal computers and the internet in education, ultimately aiming at an examination on technologies in education. He then tries to understand what is the relationship between information technologies and humankind, how it appears in what phenomena, how we can confirm the appearance, and what kind of methodologies through which we theorize them and develop the discussions on technologies in education. He especially tries to accomplish it based on Martin Heidegger's work on the theory of technology "The Question Concerning Technology". He first overviews the educational policies related to coping with the information age. He briefly describes how Course of Study of Japan led the information-oriented education in Japanese schools. He then introduces both relatively positive and negative writings on the information age and information oriented society, and allows the readers to understand that the information society has various aspects. These opinions and outlooks are based only on understandings of the characteristics and nature of information technology. He then asserts the necessity to examine information technologies in education within a comprehensive context of ontological examination of technology itself. The author then examines the phenomenological and ontological meaning and significance of technology citing phrases from Martine Heidegger's "The Question Concerning Technology". He emphasizes the importance of Heidegger's idea that not only nature but also humankind is to be transformed by technologies. Then he also amplifies Heidegger's understanding on modern technologies on information technologies. He also introduces Heidegger's idea on danger and saving power contained technology itself citing "But where danger is, grows the saving power also." which was cited by the philosopher from Friedrich Hoelderin's poetry. He then describes his phenomenologist qualitative researches on technology uses in education. He briefly describes qualitative research methodologies. He goes on to introduce a topic of the students' encounter with unlearned Kanjis on the internet that are quite often observed during the Integrated Learning Time. He discusses the fact that Japanese curricular and teaching-learning culture are profoundly and unconsciously formed by modern technologies especially by printing technologies through the analyses of the topic. But he also shows a case of one student's solution to the problem using a Japanese dictionary installed in her PC. He regards it as liberation from such constraint utilizing information technology. He also discusses about invisible power structures between teachers and students that have been formed by modern technology's restrictions that mostly consists of printing and documentation technologies. He asserts the importance of deconstruction of such structures considering latent impacts by modern technologies in terms of expected change of professional development of teachers. He then discusses the negative aspects of human development through common daily uses of information technologies in the information age. But, at the same time, he argues about possibilities and the cases of liberation of humankind through saving power of information technology, i.e. Internet. Finally, he notes future tasks for the research and the researcher.