Clienteles for distance education in Australia

We present data from an array of sources on the characteristics of external (distance education) students in Australian higher education in comparison with internal full‐time and part‐time students. Profiles of the three populations are drawn up in terms of age, gender, marital status, home location, social background, education and employment history, field of study, and level of course. Also examined are students’ reasons for studying externally, the relationship between employment and study and various effects of education on employment, attitudes and life‐style.     

Applying Kember's Linear‐Process Model to distance education at Charles Sturt University‐Riverina

Kember's linear‐process model of drop‐out from distance education (described in detail in Distance Education 10, 2, 196‐211) has been adapted and used as the basis for a series of interviews with students studying externally at Charles Sturt University‐Riverina. Although the sample is small, many issues are raised that arc relevant for distance educators. It is concluded Kember's model provides a useful theoretical underpinning for examining not only reasons for student withdrawal but also why they continue their studies.     

我国远程教育实践研究现状分析与对策建议——基于《中国远程教育》(资讯版)的内容分析

《中国远程教育》(资讯版)作为中国远程教育实践发展的窗口,能比较客观地反映实践中关注的热点与发展动态。本文选取该杂志2003-2006四年期刊共1062篇文章作为研究对象,采用内容分析的方法,分析了我国远程教育实践领域中所关注的问题,同时也指出了一些理论领域亟需关注和进一步研究的课题。本文还立足于高校网络教育学院,针对如何使远程教育理论研究者与实践者结合成一种互补、对话的研究共同体提出了建议和对策。     

Changing Research Perspectives on the Management of Higher Education: Can Research Permeate the Activities of Manager‐Academics?

The paper considers whether, and if so how, research evidence can permeate the world of higher education (HE) management in publicly funded institutions. The paper explores the author's experience of two recent research projects (1998–2000 and 2004) on aspects of managing UK HE institutions and issues arising from the preparation of the HE element of a third study of leadership and public service change agendas in education and health during 2004. Despite the topicality in education and other public services of debates about evidence‐based practice, there is little indication that this debate has permeated HE management qua management. The paper utilises Bourdieu's work on academics and social and cultural capital to explore why manager‐academics may resist taking the findings of research seriously in relation to their own work. It is suggested that, where there is reluctance to learn from research, this may reflect the changing nature of HE, the status of HE research as an academic field and form of academic capital and the relative paucity until recently of training in management for most UK manager‐academics.     

Researching Teaching about Teaching: Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices

The growth in the field of self-study of teacher education practices has largely been based on teacher educators' desire to better understand teaching and learning about teaching. This paper reviews research over the last decade that has been important in shaping understandings of self-study and the issues, concerns and agendas that are emerging as crucial to furthering the work. A major purpose of the paper is to draw particular attention to ways of expressing the learning from self-study so that it might be meaningful and applicable in practice for other teacher educators; especially in relation to developing a pedagogy of teacher education.     

Legitimacy and identity in teacher education: a micro‐political struggle constrained by macro‐political pressures1

To gain a clear sense of teacher educators at work, we need to look closely at the context in which they practice. Any attempt to address the questions of what works and the nature of evidence must be situated in the macro‐political context that constrains the work of teacher educators struggling for legitimacy and identity within both the university and the professional field of teaching. We characterize the macro‐political context as a set of neo‐liberalist forces that works to undermine the central role universities have played in the development of the nation state. As the university's role has become focused on supporting economic development and global competitiveness, this context is at odds with longstanding agendas of professional responsibility and self‐governance in teacher education. In this policy context, we argue that teacher educators need to engage in rigorous practice‐based inquiry that addresses issues of policy and governance, particularly those that tend toward direct government intervention or professional governance.     

金融海啸下运程教育和继续教育的机遇及对策——香港大学举办2009年电大系统校长高级研修班综述

"2009年广播电视大学系统校长高级研修班"于3月在香港大学举行.在全球面临金融海啸冲击的形势下,研修班探讨了以下主题:全球金融危机下继续教育的发展机遇及对策;国际视野中高等教育的管理和改革;国际远程教育的发展和趋势;国际网上教学的理念与实践;香港继续教育的质量保证机制;香港远程教育的办学理念和实践;香港的职业教育和培训.为把学术研讨和实地考察有机结合,这次研修班组织参加者考察了香港的继续教育、远程教育及职业教育的办学机构.     

Strange new world: applying a Bourdieuian lens to understanding early student experiences in higher education

Occupational therapy pre‐registration education stands at the intersection of the fields of health and social care and higher education. UK Government agendas in both fields have seen an increase in the number of students entering with non‐traditional academic backgrounds, a group noted to experience particular challenges in negotiating the transition to, and persisting and succeeding within, higher education. Drawing on data from an ongoing longitudinal case study, a Bourdieuian lens is applied to exploring the early educational experiences of a group of these students during their first year of study and highlights a number of key issues, including the high‐value status of linguistic capital and its relationship to understanding the rules governing practices within the learning environment, the processes via which students manage to adapt to or interestingly, to resist, the dominant culture of the field, and some of the barriers to finding a foothold and legitimate position within the new field.     

Student perspectives on videoconferencing in teacher education at a distance

This article reports the findings of a small‐scale study exploring student views of the videoconference as a teaching and learning tool in teacher education. The context of this study is a distance education course, run primarily through videoconferencing, for prospective primary school teachers. The use of videoconferencing in this area has not yet been the subject of significant research and so the study aims to make a contribution to the field.

The study is part of an ongoing action research project, aimed at improving the quality of the course in question. Taking account of literature on the videoconference format in distance education, the project used a questionnaire to gather student views of the perceived effectiveness and value of videoconferencing, with a particular emphasis on issues relating to teaching approaches and the active engagement of the learner. The article highlights some key findings regarding the efficacy of the format from a student perspective and raises some issues for future pedagogical practice.     

Policy ‘partnerships’? Power dynamics in curriculum reform

In curriculum policy, discourses of ‘policy partnerships’ and ‘communities of practice’ have become increasingly prevalent and were reflected in Western Australian curriculum policy processes from the mid‐1990s to the late 2000s – a period of significant, highly contested change. This paper presents the findings of an empirical study into the impact of curriculum reform on the changing dynamics within and between the government and non‐government education sectors, drawing on critical theory and post‐structuralist approaches to policy analysis within a broader framework of policy network theory. This approach is used to highlight power issues at all levels of the policy trajectory. This research found that despite policy discourses of collaborative and consultative processes to create a ‘shared’ curriculum, the government and non‐government education sectors remain largely distinct due to significant power differentials, as well as structural and cultural differences. The analysis reveals three closely connected emergent themes – limited collaboration, regulated consultation and enhanced state control of curriculum policy agendas. It is argued here that although discourses of ‘policy partnerships’ and ‘community of practice’ are increasingly evidenced in contemporary curriculum policy, they do not take sufficient account of embedded hierarchical power relationships. Further, such discourses can be used as legitimisation strategies to promulgate policy changes which enhance the steerage capacity of the state. Deeply entrenched power differentials operate simultaneously to distort policy partnerships and communities of practice, by both including and excluding particular sets of policy actors.     

Studying computer programming externally: Who succeeds?

Learning computer programming is difficult for many students. Distance education students in particular often have problems as the difficulty of the course content is compounded by the problems of isolation from other students and their tutor. This paper reports an investigation of distance education student performance in an introductory computer programming course. The aim of the study was to develop a better understanding of the factors associated with academic success, withdrawal or failure and to attempt to identify students at risk of non‐completion. Some implications for teaching computer programming externally are discussed.     

The supposed demise of bureaucracy: Implications for distance education and open learning — more on the post‐Fordism debate

This article contributes to the current controversy concerning the application of the Fordist framework to distance education and open learning by showing that bureaucratic practice can best be understood from within the Fordist framework. In addition, it draws attention to the distinction between bureaucratic and post‐bureaucratic practices, These issues are of particular significance to distance education institutions for frequently their success has been measured by the size of their student populations, and large student populations increase the prospects of bureaucratic practices being the norm.     

论远程教育的逻辑起点和主要矛盾——兼论远程教育的若干基本问题

构建有中国特色的远程教育理论体系需要进行元分析和元研究，即研究构建远程教育理论体系的基本问题。其中，远程教育的逻辑起点和主要矛盾是两个与远程教育概念定义及远程教育及其研究领域界定直接相关的基本问题。本文对上述两个基本问题进行了历史追溯，并给出了新的见解。     

Design and implementation of an M.B.A. program in the United Kingdom

Abstract

The current leadership literature includes the concepts of visionary leadership, transformational leadership, situational leadership, breakthrough leadership, and shared leadership. This article relates the literature to specific distance education settings and presents cases in higher education that reflect relevant leadership issues and dimensions of leadership. The article includes theory‐ and practice‐based applications to assist leaders in higher education in the implementation of distance education initiatives. Case examples from outside the United States illustrate important leadership variables in exporting distance education to new settings. The significance of networking and collaboration as leadership strategies is explored as a major theme of the article.     

Three Decades of Implementation Research in Higher Education: Limitations and Prospects of Theory Development

The article adopts a comparative approach to review three periods of theory development in research into higher education policy implementation. Given the conceptual affinity between Cerych and Sabatier's 1986 seminal study into higher education policy implementation and public policy implementation theory, the field of public policy is chosen for reference and comparison. The article argues, first, that the underlying characteristics of higher education research such as sector‐isolatedness, application drift and sensitivity to political agendas hindered the development of sector‐specific theories of policy implementation. Second, this gap in theory formation started to be narrowed from the late 1990s onwards, due to critical reappraisal of the 1986 study and due to limited utilisation of mid‐range theory concepts conceived within or related to the public policy field. It is through the utilisation of such public policy theory that higher education implementation research may reach a more mature stage.     

Placing cybereducation in the UK classroom

The use of the Internet in the classroom has often been characterized as a practice that disconnects the teacher from traditional forms of externally imposed influence. This paper examines this assertion by mapping the emerging field of cybereducation and considering how endemic knowledge is contextualized by national curricular authorities. The field theories of Pierre Bourdieu and Basil Bernstein are employed in order to demonstrate the relationship between expert discourse and classroom pedagogy, using the National Grid for Learning (NGfL) as a case study. This attempt to capture the dynamics of cybereducation ultimately suggests how this emergent intellectual field’s fragmentation and decoupling from State education forces offers policymakers the capacity to influence use. Progress of the UK government in integrating knowledge from an emergent educational field with its incumbent priorities is gauged, demonstrating the way in which national education officials have attempted to constrain potential departures from unregulated, officially mandated curriculum.     

Critical Issues in Distance Education: A report from the United States

Distance education has grown rapidly in the United States in recent years. Both private‐ and public‐sector organizations have embraced the practice of reaching their clients, employees, and students at a distance via new technologies afforded them by the telecommunication and computer nexus. Distance education is grounded on technology, and its practice would be difficult, if not impossible, without it. However, reducing the idea to its technological foundations, and losing sight of its social science base has led to a conceptual confusion in the field. This article will illustrate the growth of distance education in the United States, describe the social science paradigm of distance education, demonstrate the empirical evidence of this paradigm, and analyze its ramifications for the field in general, as well as for students, educational organizations, and instructors.     

>Education as a Practical Matter: some issues and concerns

The article begins by reviewing the problems and possibilities which emanate from education being located in university schools of education. It is noted that, to some extent, location of education within universities represents a ‘devil's bargain’: in the sense that faculties and schools of education have to face both towards the theoretical mission of the university and the practical mission of the field. The current fundamentalist movement to push education as a primarily practical matter is then reviewed and a series of issues and concerns raised. In the conclusion, a strategy for re‐integrating theory and practice in a more field‐based terrain is tentatively outlined     

Distance education research priorities for Australia: A study of the opinions of distance educators and practitioners

The advantages of undertaking research in distance education are numerous. They include those which impact on national development, educational practice, professional practice in distance education, policy and management, and the constant review of research needs and methodology.

Research in distance education has suffered from a number of problems which include lack of co‐ordination and focus, and the involvement of comparatively few researchers. This is perhaps why there have been calls of late from some quarters such as the Australian Research Council to prioritise educational research agenda in Australia. Future development in distance education would require a coordinated effort in establishing research priorities in Australia to effectively drive distance education theory and practice. One of the criteria in setting research priorities should be that derived from distance educators and practitioners of distance education. This paper reports on the Australian data collated from an investigation carried out as part of a worldwide study of the opinions of distance educators and practitioners regarding: (1) the availability of research information; (2) the areas in which research efforts should be concentrated; and (3) the order of priority to be given to such research areas in distance education. Using a five‐part questionnaire (with a Cronbach's Alpha reliability coefficient of .89), the results suggest the need for a conceited effort to embark on vigorous research in almost all areas of distance education. The distance educators and practitioners have also prioritised the areas of research and have ranked the difficulties they face doing research in distance education. The results are discussed and their implications for distance education practice and further research indicated.