The Language of Distance and Open Learning |
A recent issue of Open Learning contained an article by Greville Rumble in which he argues, thoughtfully and instructively as always, that the terms, open learning and distance learning, "have never been used precisely" and that "there is a need for greater clarity in our use of these concepts if we are to avoid misleading ourselves and others." He returns to this theme at the end of the article, branding some of the current uses of "open learning" as "a monstrous misuse of language which needs to be stopped now" (Rumble, 1989a).
Nobody who has witnessed the deterioration of the language recently can argue against the need for greater precision in its use. Any Canadian who sat squirming in front of his television as the host of the country's best news program began a question with "let me hunch the downside scenario"; anyone who regrets that we no longer have chances but "windows of opportunity"; anyone who waits hopefully for that beleaguered adverb to be used correctly again - all such people will applaud any effort towards greater clarity of expression and thus of thought. But I am not sure that what Mr. Rumble is talking about is, in fact, greater clarity of thought. It is merely another plea for a definition of the terms he discusses.
Clearly, this is a subject much on his mind at the moment. In the latest issue of The American Journal of Distance Education, he has an article entitled "On Defining Distance Education" in which, in addition to surveying earlier attempts to define the term, he tries to provide a new definition of his own (Rumble, 1989b). As Rumble points out, much of the last ten years has been devoted to a debate on the subject of definition. Starting from Desmond Keegan's (1980) article in the first issue of Distance Education, most of the major writers in the field have made contributions. The discussion continues unabated and it may be time to ask whether it has been very fruitful.
Definitions are, after all, only important as long as they are useful; and I confess that I can find little in the continuing debate about definitions that has been useful, little that has affected the practice of distance education or open learning in my own country or anywhere else. The discussion seems endless; I suspect that Rumble's two new articles will provoke rejoinders that will ensure that it continues. Could it be, however, that there is strength in this inability to arrive at a working and widely acceptable definition?
As Jocelyn Calvert (1986) has remarked, one of the features of distance education researchers and practitioners is that most of us come to it by way of another discipline and thus draw on the experience and insights gained in practicing something else. In my own case, such experience provides what seems to be an instructive example. One of the most widely read and used discussions of the discipline of history is Edward Hallett Carr's What is History? One of his responses to this question is that history is "a continuous process of interaction between the historian and his facts, an unending dialogue between the present and the past" (Carr, 1961). He argues persuasively that history is a changing discipline, shifting its emphases and modifying its conclusions as the dialogue between past and present continues. He comes close to concluding that history is what historians say it is, that a fact only becomes a historical fact when a historian takes notice of it and ascribes some significance to it. It follows that, since historians agree only infrequently in their interpretations and emphases, the attempt to define history in precise, universally, even widely acceptable terms is probably a futile exercise.
The same may be true of distance learning and open learning, the two terms from which Rumble's Open Learning article begins. I should, at this point, say that I do not take issue with his major conclusions. He is, I think, right when he says in summarizing them that "there is no such thing as an open learning system in the sense of a method of education (or training) that is separate from contiguous or distance education (or training) systems"; that "educational and training systems all fall somewhere on a continuum that ranges from the purely contiguous to the purely distant"; that "many of the approaches used by distance education...can be used to support classroom teaching"; and that "as a result the divide between contiguous and distance education has become less obvious." Such comments are, I believe, unarguable.
What I would like to suggest, however, is that the long debate on definitions may have outlived its usefulness. It is surely one of the strengths of distance and open learning systems that, as they have been and are being set up in different parts of the world, they have taken account of the widely differing geographical, demographic, historical, societal situations in which they are placed. Research and experience based on one context can be used to inform activities in another; but it is surely an error to assume that systems themselves can be transplanted from one context to another. Because of this, we must, as Rumble pleads, be clear and precise in the language we use to discuss distance and open learning. But perhaps we should be content with the conclusion, that in my backyard, distance education is what I say it is.
Calvert, J. (1986). Research in Canadian distance education. In I. Mugridge & D. Kaufman (Eds.), Distance Education in Canada, pp. 94–110. London: Croom Helm.
Carr, E. H. (1961). What is history? New York: Knopf. Keegan, D. (1980). On defining distance education. Distance Education, 1(1), 13–36.
Rumble, G. (1989a). `Open learning,' `distance learning,' and the misuse of language. Open Learning, 4(2), 32–40.
Rumble, G. (1989b). On defining distance education. The American Journal of Distance Education, 3(2), 8–21.