Critical Reflections on Distance Education

What a rare and welcome event -the publication of a book on distance education that is neither descriptive nor prescriptive, that sets out and effectively demonstrates the merits of a "critical" approach to this burgeoning but still fledgling area of endeavour and one that has much to offer those teaching in more conventional classroom settings!For once, we have a text that is more than a collection of interesting but only tangentially related articles.The editors, Evans and Nation, who themselves work several hundred miles apart, chose their contributors carefully, asked them to adopt the perspective of 'critical reflection' developed from the work of social theorist, Anthony Giddens, and then to participate in a two-day seminar to critique each other's articles.The result is a provocative and integrated collection that closely relates theory and practice.Reflecting its subject matter, the book abounds with contradictions and ironies as practitioners are confronted with the realities of trying to overcome the problems of distance.In one of the strongest contributions, Jackie Cook, seconded to Shanghai for a year but teaching one of her Women's Studies courses by correspondence back to Australia to help overburdened colleagues, is startled by the personal depth of the writing she receives from her distant students which often exceeds the quality produced by those in classroom settings.In an open and engaging manner, she recounts how the experience forced her to challenge her own commitment to student "self-direction" on campus where students are apparently less "liberated" from the authority of the instructor.Another example, from the other side of the ledger, is that of Fitzclarence and Kemmis, experienced practitioners in distance education, who become increasingly disillusioned with the distance mode of operation in trying to design a course on curriculum theory for distance delivery in Deakin University's Master of Education programme.In confronting growing state control over curricula and an age when students' lives are increasingly characterized by abstracted and 'distanced' social relationships, the authors wonder aloud whether distance education is "an expression of the problem or part of its resolution" (p.171).Smyth finds that budget cuts which prevent him from getting a phone also have a positive outcome in that they force him to reduce the number of written assignments, thus freeing his students up for more reflection and control over their own learning than he had previously allowed them.