2: Distance Education as a Discipline: A Response to Holmberg |
Distance Education is not a Discipline
Distance Education is a derivative field of adult education which itself is not a discipline. Rather, both are "professionalizing vocations" (Houle, 1980) - areas of skilled practice like urban design, audiology, nursing, public administration, social work, or accounting, all of which draw on core disciplines for their intellectual foundations. The ontology of distance education is its complex application, not its academic origin.
Holmberg's case for a discipline rests on a number of descriptive assertions: that the number of research studies has increased rapidly; that distance education is being examined through established fields like economics; that some universities offer distance education courses to train practitioners; that professional bodies have adopted post-graduate study as a standard for practice; that academic courses on distance education have a common content and viewpoint; and that both traditional and non-traditional institutions have established departments for research and development work in distance education. Individually, each assertion is open to debate. Collectively, they do not provide convincing evidence of a discipline. The repeated assertion that distance education is a discipline because it is being studied and taught by universities is particularly vulnerable.
North American universities, at least, offer many complex subjects which are not disciplines, especially in professional fields. For example, occupational therapy, business administration, early childhood education, health information science all exist in curricula without being disciplines (C.A.U.T., 1987). Arguments about their status are irrelevant to their academic development, if not pernicious.
Holmberg himself seems uncertain, on the one hand describing distance education as an "emerging" discipline and on the other stating that distance education is, de facto, an "established" discipline for research and university study. The weakness of his case is further evident when key issues such as individualization/autonomy, integrity/support and media/methods are introduced.
Professional debate about these issues is clearly normative, not scientific. Thus, Potvin's (1976) view that neither the institution nor the tutor have the "right" to prescribe what and how the distance learner should learn is judg-mental, not objective. It may be valid judgment but it is not social science. Similarly, the degree to which institutions should control an independent learner can only be arbitrated by reference to impartial learning outcomes, not moral positions. Whether it is "tactless" (p. 30) for tutors to be proactive with adult students is not, as such, a question for research. The choice and efficiency of media for distance education is also an evaluation exercise which requires an objective, not a subjective framework.
All these dilemmas illustrate the fragility of the claim to disciplinary status at present. Further, they beg the obvious question of why status as a discipline is important at all.
What Then is to be Done to Advance the Field?
First, familiar concepts must be raised to the level of constructs for dispassionate study (Kerlinger, 1965). The concept of "distance" is an obvious (and ignored) starting point. This concept needs to be displaced from its geographical and spatial context to a psycho-social framework; as Holmberg notes, distance education is increasingly used in on-campus, residential settings. "Control" and "autonomy" are two other candidates for construct formation. These two phenomena clearly operate in a unique way within the distance education transaction.
A further fruitful concept might be called, simply, "validation." The current validation of distance education by academic outcomes alone weakens claims to uniqueness by precluding other significant effects such as changes in adult social roles. Moore (1986) hints at this problem by suggesting that teaching and accreditation in distance education be de-coupled (p. 19); this approach is now being tried in China (Haughey & Devlin, 1987).
Finally, the critical concept of "learning" in distance education needs attention. From other research, we know that adults discuss their learning behaviors in a natural language foreign to that of academic speech (Tough, 1979). If learning by distance education is fundamentally different from any other organized form, then proponents must translate the two dialects into a scientific language which permits communication and validation of claims.
As a second broad strategy to advance the field, the search for a "comprehensive" theory of distance education should be abandoned. In its place, we should substitute rigorous empiricism together with modest conceptualization to generate stable propositions with some generality. Measurement must be tied more closely to constructs and less allied to personal judgement. "The danger for any field of social science or educational research lies in its potential corruption (or worse, trivialization) by single paradigmatic view" (Schulman, 1986).
In more "mature" fields like sociology, there is still no consensus that acceptable theories exist or even how theory should be crafted (Blalock, 1982). The idea of a single theory advanced by Holmberg is extremely unconvincing. Small scale conceptual models must precede any truly theoretical work, and distance education practice is rich in the potential for this level of abstraction. Indeed, Professor Holmberg's concept of distance education as "guided didactic conversation" is precisely the stuff of such models. The optimal configuration of communication systems discussed by Bates (1986, p. 41) illustrates another potential as does Moore's (1986) treatment of structure and dialogue (p. 11).
A final broad strategy is to link the study and practice of distance education in a truly innovative manner over time.
Other branches of education have paid a terrible price for divorcing theory and practice, content, and method. In few other fields do working professionals view conceptual endeavors with such skepticism as in education. Distance education practitioners can bring an experiential and intuitive competence to the question of research priorities. Because the field is new, the dispatch educational backgrounds of operatives is a strength. Academicians bring clinical skills to the indeterminate problems of the field. The potential currently exists to establish a unique mode of academic inquiry and professional practice.
Distance education is the first educational development in two millennia to liberate human potential on a mass scale. Its rapid adoption by both social-ist and capitalist jurisdictions illustrates the value-free nature of its social utility. The academic utility of distance education should also be a question which is value-free. Only then will claims to a discipline be entertained in the wider world of scholarship.
References
Bates, T. (1986). Computer assisted learning or communications: Which way for information technology in distance education? Journal of Distance Education, 1(1), 41-57.
Blalock, H. M. (1982). Conceptualization and measurement in the social sciences. Beverly Hills: Sage.
Canadian Association of University Teachers. (1987, November). Bulletin, 34(9). All examples taken from the list of faculty vacancies.
Haughey, M., & Devlin, L. E. (work in progress). Houle, C. O. (1980). Continuing learning in the professions. San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass. Kerlinger, F. N. (1965). Foundations of behavioural research. New York: Holt, Rinehart. A construct is a concept with the additional meaning of having been created or appropriated for special scientific purposes (p. 32).
Moore, M. (1986). Self-directed learning and distance education. Journal of Distance Education, I(1), 7-24. Potvin, D. J. (1976). An analysis of the androgogical approach to the didactics of distance education. In G. Granholm (Ed.), The system of distance education: Vol. 2 (pp. 27-30). ICCE. Malmö: Liber.
Schulman, L. S. (1986). Paradigms and research programs in the study of teaching: A contemporary perspective. In M. C. Wittrock (Ed.), Handbook of research on teaching. New York: Macmillan.
Tough, A. (1979). The adult's learning projects. San Diego: Learning Concepts.
Lawrence E. Devlin
University of Victoria
Box 1700
Victoria, B.C.
V8W 2Y2
PID: http://hdl.handle.net/10515/sy5251fz8
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
 |