Beyond Determinism and Instrumentalism

Abstract

The primary goal of this chapter is to review two dominant theories of technology and propose a new direction of theory and practice for teaching and learning of English as an additional language. I describe this new direction as a cultural theory of technological mediation. The chapter is divided into three sections. In the first section, I review some dominant theoretical approaches in the literature on CALL. In the second section, I discuss two theories of technology: technological determinism and technological instrumentalism. In the third section, I argue that both determinism and instrumentalism have remained as dominant theoretical approaches in the field of CALL. I discuss why both of these approaches are problematic. Then I propose an alternative to these theoretical approaches. I conclude the chapter by providing three pedagogical principles and a set of heuristic questions that may be helpful for language teachers and language-education researchers.