Key Issues in Open Learning-A Reader: An Anthology from the Journal Open Learning 1986-1992, Alan Tait (Ed.) Harlow, UK: Longman, 1993, 269 pages. |
VOL 11, No. 1, 139-141
The journal Open Learning is well known to most theoreticians and practitioners of distance education. Published by the British Open University since 1986, when it replaced the journal Teaching at a Distance, Open Learning has become recognized as a leading vehicle for the exchange of views on theoretical issues, innovative practices, contentious commentaries, and book reviews. As Alan Tait points out in his introduction to the collection under review here, this recognition has been translated into financial viability, with a subscription list of twelve hundred in 1993.
Key Issues in Open Learning is, as its subtitle indicates, a selection of articles that have appeared in Open Learning between 1986 and 1992. The seventeen papers have been arranged into seven categories: theoretical approaches; policy and management; student support and staff development; equal opportunities and access; workplace and school settings for open learning; and technology and open learning. The authors’ interests and expertise range over many aspects of open learning and distance education, including management, educational technology, counselling, organizational development, and training. Their geographical spread is much more limited. Of the four who work outside the United Kingdom, two are expatriate Britons (Tony Bates at the University of British Columbia and Terry Evans at Deakin University in Australia), one is Australian (Daryl Nation, who often collaborates with Evans), and one is Norwegian (Erling Ljosà at NKS Ernst G. Mortensens Stiftelse). This is not so much problematic as surprising, suggesting that global telecommunications have not yet reached the stage where national journals have a predominantly international authorship. (Alternatively, it might simply reflect the strong institutional links between this particular journal and the British Open University.)
The obvious question to ask when reviewing a book of this nature is “Why produce a collection of articles at this time?” Although Alan Tait, who in addition to overseeing this collection has edited Open Learning since 1989, does not address this issue explicitly in his introduction, some of his comments there can be adduced as reflecting his motivation in this regard. In particular, he cites two major changes in distance education as leading to the establishment of Open Learning : “the development of flexible learning systems and methodologies which began to be perceived as mainstream rather than marginal strategies” and “[changes] in the political context as governments began to adopt and implement within national priorities” (p. 2). The tenor of his commentary suggests his belief that these trends have continued to the present day. The blurb on the back cover is more enlightening about the rationale for the book: it is claimed to bring together “some of the most significant articles which have influenced the course of open learning in the past few years and set the agenda for the next decade.”
In this, Tait has largely succeeded. The three papers presenting “Theoretical approaches” constitute a strong beginning: Roger Lewis’s 1986 article “What is open learning?”; Greville Rumble’s controversial essay “ ’Open learning,’ ’distance learning’ and the misuse of language”; and the more recent suggestions for “Theorising open and distance education” by Evans and Nation. The section on “Policy and Management” consists of accounts of quality assurance, distance education in a changing Europe, and pressures for distance education institutions to adopt a dual mode approach to course offerings. “Student support and staff development” is presented in terms of notions of independent learning, counselling through the written words of correspondence, and applying a competence framework to staff development.
As Tait’s introduction points out, the three papers in the section entitled “Equal Opportunities and Access” take up in different ways the important question of the extent to which distance education courses “liberate” and “empower” the predominantly female student population, as opposed to perpetuating their “marginalized status.” (It is particularly in this section that one regrets the absence of editorial efforts to set up “topics of conversation” between articles both within and among categories. Apart from the introduction, the editor has contented himself with a brief summative paragraph at the beginning of each article.) In “Workplace and School Settings for Open Learning,” the potential versatility of open learning is shown in discussions of its connections with performance training, the change process, and the Technical and Vocational Education Initiative (TVEI) in Britain.
I beg to differ from the editor’s thinking in positioning “technology and open learning” as the last theme in the collection and his inclusion of only two papers in the section. Rather than “new technological developments hav[ing] receded as the key to large-scale expansion of opportunity” (p. 6), many individuals, institutions, and governments continue to devote time and money to exploring yet more “minor roads” on “the information super highway.” Commendable in themselves, Tony Bates’s account of distance education technologies and Tait’s own review of the edited book Mindweave, Communication, Computers, and Distance Education are unable to do justice to this enduringly important topic.
The production quality of the book is high, and it has an imaginative cover design. The absence of an index-let alone a comprehensive one-is as perplexing as it is irritating. The fact that indexes are the exception rather than the rule in edited collections of papers, certainly in the education discipline, is no excuse: the extra labour and expense involved in producing one would be more than offset by the benefits to readers.
Overall, Key Issues in Open Learning is a useful series of snapshots of developments in distance education and open learning in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The contributing papers are substantial and have been selected with care. Whether the issues chosen for coverage in this collection will remain at the top of the open learning agenda or alternatively will give way to other questions (such as explications and contestations of the globally manifest sociocultural and ideological underpinnings of “open learning” programs) remains to be seen.
P. A. Danaher
Senior Lecturer in Open and Distance Learning
Faculty of Education
Central Queensland University
Rockhampton, QLD 4702
Australia