Distance education and distance learning: some psychological considerations

Face‐to‐face education and distance education, viewed as differing sets of organisational provisions for the fostering of learning, emphasize different kinds of learning processes, and depend upon somewhat different psychological properties in learners. Nonetheless, all practical learning settings, whether they are labelled ‘school’, ‘adult education’, ‘distance education’, or something else, involve a mixture of face‐to‐face learning and distance learning. The psychological difference between the two kinds of setting is thus note purely qualitative in nature, but is also quantitative: for instance, certain learner characteristics which are useful in face‐to‐face learning (discussed in detail in the body of the present paper) are indispensible for distance learning, while certain processes which are at the heart of distance learning (also dis‐cusssed in detail later) are often given little emphasis in face‐to‐face settings, although they are in principle possible and even desirable there. The question thus arises of whether it would not be desirable to give more emphasis in face‐to‐face settings to psychologically desirable aspects of distance learning.     

The Luddite Revolt continues

The bicentenary in 2011 of the Luddite Revolt prompts us to ask ‘what would Ned Ludd think of today’s automated styles of distance education?’ He would no doubt echo the common criticism that educational technologies create an impersonal style of teaching and learning, and devalue the teacher. He would probably agree that online methods have major potential for millions of distance‐based students who cannot attend classroom‐based education and training; but he would emphasise the need for quality assurance and cost‐effectiveness studies in distance education implementation. He might also ask why anyone would encourage the development of e‐learning in countries where the Internet is largely inaccessible. This article uses the Luddites’ views of workplace automation to explore how global distance education practices might be improved. It suggests that the intentions of the original Luddites were laudable and worthy of application in distance education today.     

Problem‐based distance learning of energy issues via computer network

Problem‐based learning (PBL) modified for distance education (PBDiL = Problem‐Based Distance Learning) has been used for teaching energy issues at Uppsala University, Sweden. Collaborative learning in groups of seven to eight students was enabled by computer communication and enhanced the use of Internet. Two different teaching methods have been tried and are compared, both being influenced by methods used in conventional face‐to‐face PBL. The problem presentation was entirely built on pictures, and examination through student reports was successful. A student remark, ‘I study on my own but yet not alone’ shows the importance of social contact.     

Economic instrumentalism and integration in Australian External Studies

In this article Derek Rowntree of the Open University UK's, Institute of Educational Technology, examines the implications of quality assessment for distance education and other forms of materials‐based learning. He suggests that materials‐based teaching cannot properly be judged in quite the same terms as the conventional, face‐to‐face teaching that academic peers are most familiar with. So what might they be looking for when they come to assess the quality of a department's materials‐based teaching? And what might we expect to result from such assessments?     

The role of learning at a distance in national educational systems

This paper argues that, while distance education may have a continuing role as ‘complementary’ education, it is better viewed as part of the resources of the total life‐long education process. Any face‐to‐face classroom teacher exercises a range of options in catering for individual needs. Distance education is surely one of the wider range of options available to every teacher, and to any individual with capacity for independent learning.

To suggest that the attractiveness of distance education lies in its potential for economies of scale may not only under‐value the capacity of distance education to satisfy a wide range of needs but also lend support to the notion that cheap education is the paramount criterion in assessing the efficacy of the educational process.     

Professions in organizations,professional work in education

Professions are occupational arrangements for dealing with human problems. Professional ‘people work’ requires a certain interactive closeness; face‐to‐face communication is prominent in professional–client relations. This also seems the case in the educational system. But in education, organization provides the raison d’être of this profession. This organizational infrastructure enables and delimits educational interaction. The school bureaucracy is criticized by the profession; the profession has an outspoken interest in reforming its organizational infrastructure again, again and again. This article provides a theoretical analysis of teaching, which elucidates this relation between profession, organization and work.     

Student variables in the evaluation of mediated learning environments

This paper discusses the results of the student dimension in an evaluation applied to an educational teleconferencing system in a Mexican higher education institution. Traditionally, this institution has gained prestige for its face‐to‐face programs, and students are not used to mediated or distance learning. Courses offered through this system are based on a pedagogical model which emphasises the active role of the learner. Therefore, student variables such as perceptions of the self, and self‐regulatory processes become key components in this learning environment. Conclusions here presented correspond to: (i) students’ expectations; (ii) perceptions of efficacy for self‐regulated learning, and perceptions of the course, and of the teacher's and learner's work.

Results indicate students’ expectations focus on ‘learning more than in face‐to‐face situations’, followed by ‘using technology’, and ‘having freedom and initiative’. Perceptions of efficacy for self‐regulated learning were high overall. Nevertheless, analyses of individual items indicate specific areas requiring improvement. Qualitative data on perceptions of the course, and teachers’ and learners’ work suggest that these courses are more demanding than the face‐to‐face ones they are taking. Students’ responses include attitudinal and cognitive adjustments needed for these learning environments. These results have led to improvements, which are presently being applied. The importance of considering these student variables in evaluations of mediated learning environments is discussed.     

Teaching by tape: Some benefits,problems, and solutions

An examination of the development of tape as a teaching medium illustrates both its attributes for distance education and some of its drawbacks. Attention is drawn to methods of preparing and presenting audiorecorded information to maximize the potential of the medium. In particular ‘reading by listening’ for print handicapped people is addressed, along with ways of reducing the difference in time required to access information which presently favours readers of print. Organization of cassette contents, cassette indexing, self‐pacing techniques, and time‐compressed speech presentations are techniques which improve the versatility of teaching by tape.     

Have the shifting sands of Fordism resulted in ground lost or ground gained for distance education?

Industrialisation and distance education make uncomfortable bed fellows. This article critically analyses the paths travelled by distance education when burdened by industrial sociology. The models for industrialisation, specifically Fordist and post‐Fordist ones, whether methodologically anchored in modernity or post‐modernity, are argued as having relevance only to the production aspects of distance education. The attempts of various authors in distance education over recent years to identify strong paradigmatic links between distance education and industrialisation have resulted in the qualities of distance education as an educational process being overlooked or rejected in favour of a supposedly more ‘open’ form of teaching and learning.     

Being ‘at’ university: the social topologies of distance students

This paper considers how online, distance students enact the space of ‘the university’, in the context of the rise of distance education within a traditional, ‘elite’ institution. Aiming to provide insight into how students translate into distance the space of a university which has traditionally had its basis in conventional on-campus education, it locates itself within the ‘new mobilities’ paradigm (Urry in Mobilities. Polity Press, Cambridge, 2007), drawing on four different kinds of social space delineated by Mol and Law (Soc Stud Sci 24(4):641–741, 1994) and Law and Mol (Environ Plan D 19:609–621, 2001) in order to analyse narrative and visual data generated with distance students at the University of Edinburgh. The paper shows that the material campus continues to be symbolically and materially significant for a group of students who may never physically attend that campus. Distance students, we find, need their own version of the ‘spatial certainties’ of bounded, campus space. Yet, in exploring the ‘new proximities’ of online distance education, we also argue that to define institutional and academic authenticity solely in terms of this bounded, ‘regional’ space is inadequate in the face of the other topologies which also come into play throughout distance students’ accounts of what it means to be ‘at’ university.     

Face‐to‐face with children

This paper investigates the motivational power of children to change teachers' beliefs about teaching. Weekly and summary reflections written by 18 preservice teachers served as data sources. Preservice teachers were learning from the children what they expect their teachers to know, to do, and to be, and in consequence of the face‐to‐face encounters with children, teachers were likely to establish and change their beliefs about children and how to teach. Teacher educators may encourage this learning by asking preservice teachers, during and after their work in classrooms, to respond to the questions: ‘As I related to the children, what did they require from me?’, and ‘How did I respond to these demands?’. The work of Emmanuel Levinas on the relationship in the face‐to‐face encounter between people provided an interpretive framework for evaluating responses to these questions.     

浅谈“英特尔未来教育”理念在远程开放教育中的应用

电大远程开放教育的教育质量是关系到电大系统远程开放教育成功与失败的大事。保证远程开放教育的教育质量,课堂是阵地,教学是关键。如何提高课堂教学效果是一个复杂的系统工程,本文提出将＂英特尔未来教育＂理念引入电大面授辅导课堂教学之中的设想,以期改善电大面授辅导课的教学效果。     

Outcomes of structured teaching for children on the autism spectrum: does the research evidence neglect the bigger picture?

The adoption of ‘structured teaching’ is evident in educational settings worldwide and has fast become one of the key ‘tools’ in autism education. As calls for evidence‐based practice have increased, research evidence has grown to interrogate the effectiveness of structured teaching components. Previous systematic literature reviews of the research evidence suggest that structured teaching has positive effects upon problem behaviours and also increases engagement and independent task organisation. This literature review builds upon previous reviews in order to explore the effects of structured teaching upon behaviour and learning, asking what the research evidence actually measures in relation to these two concepts. Gaps in the research evidence are identified, and discussion focuses upon the need for research which investigates the role of structured teaching components in meaningful learning, the need for greater attention to evaluate social validity of the approach which takes into account those who implement and indeed those who receive the intervention and finally the need for research to analyse the effects of structured teaching upon alternative outcomes of ‘well‐being’ and ‘quality of life’.     

Teaching strategies for moral education: a review

We present the results of a literature review of studies on teaching strategies for moral education in secondary schools (1995–2003). The majority of the studies focus on the ‘what’ and ‘why’, i.e. the objectives, of curriculum‐oriented moral education. Attention to the instructional formats for enhancing the prosocial and moral development of students (the ‘how’) is relatively sparse. Most studies on teaching strategies for moral education recommend a problem‐based approach to instruction whereby students work in small groups. This approach gives room for dialogue and interaction between students, which is considered to be crucial for their moral and prosocial development. Other studies discuss more specific teaching methods, such as drama and service learning. We conclude that the theoretical discourses on moral education are not reflected on the practice of curriculum‐oriented moral education and its effects on students’ learning outcomes. We recommend that future research on curriculum‐oriented moral education includes the subject areas encompassing moral issues and the social differences between students.     

Turning to teaching: gender and career choice

As the largest public sector institution in the United Kingdom, education is a key site for studying the context of ‘choice’ and changes in the identities of professional workers in contemporary society. Recruitment and retention problems in education have led to the creation of new routes into teaching to attract career changers from other professions and occupations. In this paper we focus on career changers within the Economic and Social Research Council project ‘Primary Teacher Identity, Commitment and Career in Performative School Cultures’ who have entered teaching from other private sector occupations. We analyse these career changes in terms of ‘turning points’ in the participants’ lives in order to assess the extent to which choices are ‘self‐initiated’, ‘forced’ or ‘structural’. We are interested in the basis on which these choices were made and the impact of gender on career decisions.     

MATHEMATICS TEACHER EDUCATION AND QUALITY

‘Quality’ in mathematics teaching does not relate solely to pupil achievement, to teaching approaches or to deeply held beliefs about the nature of mathematics and its teaching and learning, but to all of these. A model of a teacher's mathematics‐related belief‐system is presented, and the issue of the contrast between espoused and enacted beliefs is discussed. ‘Quality’ in mathematics teacher education raises all of these issues, as well as the aims, goals and means of the teacher preparation process itself. The paper concludes by arguing against the ‘apprenticeship’ model of mathematics teacher education, for depriving student teachers of theory and of practical research experience. A well known dictum paraphrased states that theory without practice is empty, but that practice without theory is blind. ‘Quality’ in mathematics teaching and teacher education depends on both theory and practice in systematic cooperation.     

Data Return: The Sense of the Given in Educational Research

Educational research is dominated by a particular model: data is gathered and analysed. Much literature on methods concerns either ways of processing data, or ethical issues regarding its collection and handling. The present paper looks beyond these matters to the taken‐for‐granted idea of data itself. What can be meant by ‘data’? How does this connect with ideas of the given? What is the place of giving in education—in teaching and learning, in research itself? These issues are explored in the light of information technology’s impact on research, uncovering ethical dimensions that the seeming naturalness of data otherwise obscures.     

Student perceptions of support services and the influence of targeted interventions on retention in distance education

To improve student retention in distance education, Simpson suggested in 2003 that institutions analyse their own retention characteristics and ‘spot the leaks.’ In 2008 the Centre for Distance Learning at Laidlaw College, New Zealand, employed two part‐time academic support coordinators in an effort to improve student retention and success. This study compares the retention statistics for first‐time student outcomes across two semesters, one without and one with specific course retention interventions. Results are benchmarked across national data. Interviews with students who were retained revealed that students frequently attribute their success to their own efforts. Student support services in distance education might therefore be perceived by its beneficiaries as a ‘hygiene’ factor (Herzberg, 1968, 2008) in that their presence is not generally appreciated by students. However, their absence is noticed. The similarity of this finding with Shin’s institutional transactional presence (2002, 2003) is also explored.     

Pedagogies for the ‘Dis‐engaged’: Diverse Experiences of the Young People’s Arts Award Programme

Art education is often praised for its engaging programmes and inclusive pedagogies, with many initiatives created with the intention of widening access for those who are deemed to be lacking. This article investigates one such programme – the young people’s Arts Award, which is a nationally recognised qualification for young people aged 11–25. I call upon a range of pedagogies in order to critique the Arts Award within the context of informal and alternative education settings in the United Kingdom. Drawing on a 12‐month ethnographic study, the research was conducted across five diverse programmes which included youth work projects and alternative provision. I present two cases – ‘learning to be an artist’ and ‘learning to behave’ – which demonstrate a hierarchy of pedagogy in the application of this programme across these particular contexts. Artists’ Signature Pedagogies are used as an analytical framework to explore the affordances of working with artists through the programme. Further, I engage with the Pedagogy of Poverty to demonstrate that young people who were classified as ‘dis‐engaged’ were more likely to receive lower quality programmes, low‐level work and over‐regulated teaching. I argue that despite changes to the ways that young people access art education, there continues to be unequal opportunities. This finding is significant for not only creative practitioners and youth arts workers, but also arts education policy makers and programmers.