远程教育研究的演变:来自美国的观点

Evolution of Research in Distance Education: An American Perspective

美国的教育工作者对远程教育的兴趣可以追溯到19世纪80年代开始的函授教育,然后是20世纪30年代至50年代的广播教育,再接下来是60年代到现在的电视教育。但是,直到20世纪下半叶,随着电视教育的发展,系统的远程教育研究才开始建立并兴盛起来。在最初的研究阶段,研究者们主要想知道电视教学是否和课堂教学一样有效。当早期研究表明电视教学和课堂教学在教学效果上并没有统计上的显著差异之后,研究者们开始将他们的注意力转移到对学生个体差异的研究。这使大家更清楚地了解到了远程教育的复杂性,并促使研究者开始通过系统学的方法探讨远程教育中复杂变量的各个层面。

In the United States, educators became interested in distance education with the advent of correspondence education (1880) , educational radio (1930-1950) , and educational television (1960-present) . But it was not until the second half of the 20th century, with the growth of educational television, that systematic research in the field was established and flourished. At the outset, from WWII to the late 1960s, researchers were interested to know if instructional television was as effective as classroom instruction. However, since early research showed that there was no statistically significant difference between classroom instruction and educational television, researchers turned their attention between late 1970s and early 1980s to the question of individual differences among students. This led to an understanding of the relationships between student characteristics and media use (particularly the match and interaction between student aptitude and teaching media) as well as their effect upon learning outcomes. In the evolving postmodern world, this author maintains that distance education research should emphasize the learning objectives of learners and individual differences. In addition, new research methodologies ought to be utilized. Apart from questionnaires, interviews and discourse analysis, system theory could offer insights into the complex relationships among various factors in post-modern distance education.