The Emergent Effects of a Wired World to an Educational Paradigm Shift in Saudi Arabia: A Case Study

Abstract

In the new world of the virtual and through the lens of the Arabic/Islamic Educational paradigm associated with the internet, distance education may create new settings that pose serious challenges. These challenges become more apparent within a conventional structure of power in a classroom in distinct traditional societies, especially in a Saudi context (Elyas & Picard, 2010). As the ‘altar’ of the conventional physical classroom is transformed into a mere ‘window’ through which the instructor is observed, or ignored, power is ‘virtually’ located in a territory that distances the teacher from the centre of authority. This study follows one teacher journey into the wired world of classroom settings and explores arisen discourses that he is forced to question. The study applies a Foucauldian theoretical framework of power and struggle in investigating the ways in which the teacher's position in the net of classroom power relations is undermined. The virtual ‘reality’ of online distance learning classrooms generates a set of conditions that result in a new, compromised position of power for the instructor through the absence of direct eye contact and body language, the constant open access to online resources, the possibility of student communication that excludes the teacher, and above all, the reverse panoptic on structure where the teacher is constantly caught up in the possibility of being observed by his/her student without having the ability to observe them. In this paper, we conceptualize that these challenges are greatly undermined and unexplored and more research is needed in order to better equip teachers in such distinct societies.