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.