Time,space and distance education

This paper challenges the lingering tendency to understand distance education in terms of the ‘real thing’, that is, face‐to‐face, classroom teaching. It critiques distance education's implicit theory of text, space and time, ontology and epistemology, and examines its connections to the current practice of teaching‐at‐a‐distance. These arguments are developed in response to the questions: who teaches? who is the student? and who or what is ‘distant’ in distance education? On this basis, drawing on the philosophy of critical realism, an alternative model of distance education is presented and its implications for course design, and the role of editing, are considered.