Situating Cognition and Crossing Borders: Resisting the Hegemony of Mediated Education

Advances in technology coupled with a changing social, political and economic climate is seeing a proliferation in the growth of mediated education. Recognizing that mediated education and the application of various technologies in mediated education is constructed from a particular cultural perspective, this paper proposes to challenge this perspective, arguing that we need to develop heuristic frameworks that help us think of meeting the needs of a culturally diversified population. Using the concept of communities of practice as an analytical lens it begins by making explicit the origins of mediated education and the implications this has had for culturally marginalized peoples. Arguing that mediated education, as it is constructed, is a form of neo‐colonialism, it proposes to examine mediated education within the context Giroux's concept of border crossings. Implications for application are then explored.