This invited article provides a comprehensive overview of the history and development of distance learning in Aotearoa New Zealand's school sector over the past century. It begins with a discussion of creating a common language to describe distance learning. The article then transitions to its main focus on the history of distance…

In 1919, the Canadian province of British Columbia (BC) established the Elementary Correspondence (EC) School to provide formal education for children living in rural areas with difficult access to a school. Through children's letters, this paper interrogates the concept of place, a key one for placed-based approaches to environmental education.…

Using a collection of settler family letters to the Elementary Correspondence School (ECS) in British Columbia, the first provincial government--supported "schooling by mail" arrangement of its kind in Canada, I highlight the efforts of rural families to secure an education for their children in the period between the First and Second…

In this paper, I examine the provenance of distance education or "teledidactics" in Australia. I take as my case studies the New South Wales Correspondence School and the School of the Air and suggest that their emergence was underpinned by a desire on the part of educational and broadcasting bureaucrats to increase the equity of school…

In large continental landmasses such as Australia, forms of education, including correspondence schooling, emerged in the early twentieth century that allowed children in remote regions to access education. To make such schooling possible, other "technologies" of state provision were mobilised such as the postal system, rail network, and…

The first round of attempts to extend the access of working people to higher education began in 1873 with an imitation of the University of London on the prairies of Illinois. For all practical purposes, it ended in the legislature of the State of New York in 1892, although it took more than a decade to formally close all of the external degree…

Arguing that extensive efforts to produce open learning materials should not be undertaken until the possibility of using or adapting existing materials is considered, this paper identifies current sources of materials available in Great Britain for non-advanced further education. The first sections of the paper review common types of open…

Begun in 1933 to serve rural regions of New South Wales (Australia), the Postal Sunday School Movement (PSSM) now offers over 200 nondenominational lessons via mail about the Bible, Christianity, and practical aspects of Christian life. PSSM employs approximately 130 teachers from various church backgrounds; enrolls about 2000 students, preschool…

Two-way radio lessons and home visits are used to supplement correspondence courses in Australia's School of the Air. Problems and benefits of this system and future plans are discussed. (DF)

The year 1972 marked the Golden Jubilee of the New Zealand Correspondence School, an integral part of the New Zealand educational system with a unique function--to serve both children and adults who cannot, for a variety of reasons, attend regular schools and institutions. (Author/CB)

FlexiStudy is a new type of correspondence course developed by the National Extension College, which has become a center for the production and distribution of distance learning materials, while local colleges take the responsibility for teaching, counseling, and administration. (EAO)

Introduces the definition and conventions of distance education, otherwise called correspondence coursework, as it has developed over the last several decades. Characterizes the movement of distance education from peripheral to central prominence in many educational systems, particularly as relates to the challenges and opportunities in the…

Soviet education is designed not only to produce specialists whose skills will be more useful to the State, but also to reshape the character of the person so that it is compatible with Communist ideology. The study attempts to investigate and describe the development of higher education correspondence study in the U.S.S.R. Subproblems…