The ‘Nearly Digital Natives’ of Brunei Darussalam: A Review of Digital Diversity, Nativisation, Wisdom and Dissonance in the Digital World

Abstract

A 2013 report by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) ranked Brunei Darussalam 13 out of 180 countries in its Digital Natives list with 73.7% of the Brunei youth population profiled as digital natives. However, the ‘digital nativeness’ of Brunei’s learners is hardly reflected in their learning; prompting the question if these learners are indeed digital natives. Extending from a preceding literature review that analysed the discourse between proponents and critics of the ‘digital native’ theory, this paper integrates into the existing discussion several new profiling constructs, notably the constructs of ‘digital wisdom’, digital dissonance and the digital world. In addition, recent concurrent studies on Bruneian learners’ dispositions towards digital nativeness have contributed to a more contextualised understanding of the learner. This review expands its query from identifying two hypotheses on the existence of digital natives in the Brunei learner population, to establishing a further two hypotheses that inform us of the pathways our dynamic learners undertake in seeking digital nativeness.