Asian Journal of Education and e-Learning (ISSN: 2321 – 2454) Volume 05– Issue 05, October 2017 Asian Online Journals (www.ajouronline.com ) 172 Who’s Steering: Technology or Pedagogy? Analyzing an Arabic Immersion Experience Ali Hechemi Raddaoui Alef Education - Abu Dhabi Financial Group Abu Dhabi, UAE Email: araddaoui [AT] gmail.com _____________________________________________________________________________________________ ABSTRACT — With reflective practice as framework, this paper ponders whether the ICT tools used during an Arabic language immersion course run by the National US StarTalk program at the University of Wyoming are subservient to pedagogy or whether pedagogy has primacy over these tools. In Part One, I introduce the context for this immersion initiative. In Part Two, I examine two paradoxes: (i) the disjuncture between teaching and pedagogy, and (ii) the conflicting representations of the net-gen. In Part Three, I analyze the Arabic StarTalk curriculum to determine whether its objectives were served or enslaved by the available technologies. I conclude with a call for rethinking this binary technology/pedagogy theorization toward a position suggesting instead a rapport of interdependence, convergence and symbiosis. Keywords— Immersion, Web 2.0, Technology, Pedagogy _____________________________________________________________________________________________ 1. INTRODUCTION Our world is abuzz with extensions “2.0”: Web 2.0, enterprise 2.0, business 2.0, and even museum 2.0. The field of education, too, has its share of such slogans: education 2.0, school 2.0, curriculum 2.0, English 2.0, Arabic 2.0, etc. One way to appraise this state of affairs is to say that technology happens, and then rolls unto other fields, with the inevitable question Salomon (2002, 71) asks, ‘Could the new information technology leave education unchanged […], or would education experience profound changes…?’ This question echoes an earlier one by Heilbroner (1967): “Do machines make history?” Commenting on computers in the mid-nineties, Bigum (1997) asks a more direct question: “Teachers and computers: In control or being controlled?” An inspiring answer to these questions appears in an OECD publication (2010): ‘Inspired by technology, driven by pedagogy’. This article considers the relationship between pedagogy and technology with reference to a two-week Arabic immersion program for Wyoming school students at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, under the aegis of the US national program called StarTalk. The main question I address is this: In the design and implementation of this program, was pedagogy subservient to ICT, or did ICT prime over pedagogy as an organizing principle? In Part One of this article, I briefly introduce the national context of this initiative. I then follow a two-pronged approach to answer this research’s question. First, I consider the literature on the rapport de force between technology and pedagogy in a general sense. Next, I examine this specific Arabic StarTalk initiative and consider the technology/pedagogy interface from the angles of the curriculum and its implementation. I conclude with some thoughts on the altogether not so antithetical relationship between pedagogy and technology. The main impetus for this research comes from a principled position which consists in stepping back from my context of practice both as an Arabic teacher and program designer. I seek to examine this practice and evaluate it both empirically and theoretically so as to be able to improve upon it for future StarTalk programs and in the day-to-day conduct of my teaching and life as a reflective practitioner and researcher. Del Carlo, Hinkhouse & Isbell (2010, pp. 58- 59) list five types of reflection, including reflection in action, deliberative reflection, and reflection on action. While the first two formally and informally occurred throughout the program, during regular and chance meetings of program staff, and primarily through a site visit conducted by officially-appointed StarTalk site program evaluators, reflection on action is an exercise that I am engaging, after the fact, and at my own behest. Also, the ubiquitous presence of technology during the course more than begged the question about the degree of fit between the technologies used and the course goals and activities: Was technology an alien from outer-space in the program, or was it part of the program in seamless ways? In other words, was I, as program designer and one of the program teachers, using technology to serve the goals of the Arabic language program, or was technology there simply because it had to be there and because it naturally imposed itself on the context?