Savard and Mizoguchi (2016) present an upper ontology of culture in which they have modeled knowledge according to a procedural approach. Such an approach allows for making explicit the functionalities of culture and opens a door to concrete and practical solutions for cultural adaptation in ITSs and DES. Logically, in the course of this research, modeling of the context became necessary. This article presents an ontological view of the differences and complementarities between context and culture.
As in Savard and Mizoguchi (2016), culture here is defined as “an evolving (in both time and space) cognitive structure composed of such schemes that influence the behavior of each of the members of a given group, the manner in which the members of the group interpret the behavior of other persons and groups, and the processes of interpretation and representation that allow them to interact with their environment.” As illustrated in Fig. 1, culture has the attribute of being shared by a group of persons and consists of interpretation and manifestation schemes. As it will be explained in Section 3.2, the same individual is usually influenced by different cultures.
Context, as represented in Fig. 1, refers to the external context briefly described in the introduction. This context may be defined as the set of circumstances that frames an event or an object, including the following: one or more agents that have the role of being participants, one or more environments, one or more events, and one focus entity that can be the role holder (RH)Footnote 2 participant or the event, through which it enables the framing operation that manages to attach the appropriate circumstances to itself. Each of these elements will be explained in more detail in Section 3.1 below.
In the same procedural approach, in order to analyze the functionalities (of context and culture) and to open the door to concrete and practical solutions for adaptation, context is represented here as a substrate, meaning that it serves as a support for something else to exist, such as culture. That is to say, we use our cultures IN contexts and the intensity of their influence may vary according to the context. It is only in context that culture has an influence. Without the context, culture has no concrete influence, only a potential influence. It will be discussed in the following sections.
Figure 1 also shows that a “common world” has been defined. This part of the work has been done based on the “common world” described in Omnibus, the ontology of education presented by Hayashi et al. (2009). In this world, concepts are represented that are common to all cultures, for example the concepts of time or space.
As humans, we evolve in a variety of other “worlds,” each having their own particularities. They are represented in Fig. 1 under the label of “experiential world.” Examples shown in this figure are the world of family, world of education, world of politics, and world of economics. These are worlds where we live different experiences and that generally incorporate a subculture, i.e., a particular “evolving (in both time and space) cognitive structure composed of such schemes that influence the behavior of each of the members of this given group (in relation with the specific experiential world), the manner in which the members of the group interpret the behavior of other persons and groups, and the processes of interpretation and representation that allow them to interact with their environment” (Savard and Mizoguchi, 2016). This will be explained in greater detail in Section 3.2 below.
Firstly, the concept of context will be discussed in depth. Then, the concept of culture will be explained in relation to context.
Model of context
Figure 2 shows that (external) context can be generic or specific. While the generic tends to be more neutral, the specific context is situated in space and time. This figure also shows, as defined earlier in this article, that the context includes the following elements: one or more agents that have the role of being participants, one or more environments, one or more events, and one focus entity. When all the information is available, context can be planned in advance, but it can also be unpredictable (Bazire and Brézillon, 2005) and can be defined as and when required. In all cases, context can be the substrate of culture. Both context and culture are dynamic and evolving.
The following paragraphs briefly describe the different elements (p/o) of context represented in Fig. 2.
An agent, which is an element of context, can be singleton or complex. A singleton agent can be artificial (e.g., a robot) or natural (e.g., a human being). As explained earlier, every human being is influenced by different cultures. A group can be considered a complex agent.
An environment can be virtual (e.g., online learning platform), hybrid or physical (e.g., classroom, practice field). The environment is generally created by humans (influenced by their cultures).
An event has a participant and an action. The concept of action is central here. Bazire and Brézillon (2005) analyzed 150 definitions of context in order to identify the main components of context. They concluded that many of these definitions “concern the context of a behavior, the behavior being an action or a cognitive activity (decision, problem solving, or representation construction).” As mentioned earlier, it is precisely in relation to action (or cognitive activity) that the context can be considered the substrate of culture. Indeed, it is in and on action that culture has an influence.
In our model, partly shown in Fig. 3, the action is represented in the event, which is an element of the context.
Figure 3 illustrates that an action can be simple or complex. Among the simple actions is the single actor action involving a doer agent. Cognitive action is a kind of single-actor action. Complex actions involve two or more simple actions as subactions. Problem solving is a kind of complex action as well as a human (social) interaction that occurs in context (as represented in Fig. 2).
Finally, as was explained earlier about the focus entity, a context is determined by collecting entities relevant to a focus entity, since a context must be an entity FOR something. It cannot be independent of “something.” For example, a singer sings songs in a concert event. The singing action is performed in the context of the concert, which consists of many actions performed by the audience and staff members who support the concert. If we do not focus on the singing action, the concert event is just an event and it is not a context. When students learn in a lesson event in a class, the learning action is accomplished in the context of the lesson, whereas if we do not focus on the learning action, the lesson is just an event. A context cannot be just anything on its own. A context emerges only when we focus on an entity. Gilbert et al. (2011) approach this idea and discuss context as being “formed around some focal event—an important or typical event—that draws the attention of the learners.”
Model of culture
As humans, we are not influenced by only one culture. We all have different sets of schemes that influence our behavior, our interpretation of other people’s behaviors, and processes of interpretation and representation that allow us to interact with different environments (professional, sports, leisure, etc.). These different sets of schemes are subcultures. As shown in Fig. 4, every human agent (participant in context, in Figs. 1 and 2) has a cultural configuration that includes a main culture and different subcultures (for example, “Canadian” could be someone’s main culture and instructional design for one of his/her (professional) subcultures).
It is essential to model the cultural configuration because groups also have their own cultural configuration. In fact, the cultural configuration of a group is not necessarily the sum of the cultural configurations of the individual humans who make up the group. For example, in an international working group of instructional designers, the professional culture will probably have more weight than the national cultures of the participants, who will adapt to each other and also to the context (as represented in Fig. 2) in which the group is working. So, culture can influence context and the reverse is also true: context can influence culture. Subcultures can be quite ephemeral and “exist” for the time it takes to complete a project.
Figure 5 shows in more detail the distinction between main culture and subcultures. Main culture has some influence on subcultures and experiential worlds, and each subculture influences the experiential world to which it is attached. The reverse is also true: the experiential world can influence the subculture. All of this is dynamic, as represented below, and these are systems that interfere with each other.
We believe that for individual human beings, main culture is often the national culture, the one in which they grew up, the one used by their parents to educate them. Of course, as illustrated in Fig. 5, the main culture could be Métis and be composed of more than one culture (such as when one parent is from one culture, let us say Japanese, and the other parent is from another culture, Canadian for example). The idea here is to allow the model to take into consideration the weight of the different cultures and subcultures that can influence more or less strongly behaviors, the interpretation of behaviors, and the processes of interpretation and representation.
This cultural configuration will be adjusted according to the context. The group or the individuals will adjust according to the context. For example, when I am interacting with my family, the subculture of the World of family has a higher weight. I can assume that the individuals with whom I interact (and with whom I have many cultural references in common) will understand my references to events or expressions without me having to explain them. But when I interact with a new Japanese friend, I cannot use the same references without explaining them, I cannot take for granted that my friend adopts the same rules of politeness, and I must provide or ask for explanations. Depending on the context (and the agent or action, which are part of the context), our cultural configuration is adjusted. Understanding and distinguishing between the two concepts is essential to their full synergistic potential use. This distinction can help to avoid wasting time trying to solve a problem by adjusting contextual (external) elements when it is the cultural configuration that requires adjustments. Obtaining clear “External Parameters” and “Internal Parameters” requires the clear differentiation between contextual (external) and cultural (internal) matters. By recognizing context as the substrate of culture, we recognize the functions and potential roles of each (context and culture) in teaching and learning, and we broaden the horizon of possibilities for effective transfers and deeper learning. We make sure not to use both concepts as if they were synonyms and to create a harmful ambiguity. We enable ourselves to use both, context and culture, in their full synergistic potential of use.