http://www.davidloewen.org/blog/2017/6/11/decolonizing-distance-education
David Loewen introduces himself as a as a non-Indigenous Settler. His inquiry is shaped around the following questions.
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Why is it that ‘distance education’ is considered to start with academic institutions like Queens University in Canada, and University of Chicago in the U.S.? And, starting in the 1800s?
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How is it that we might only be in the “5th generation” of ‘distance learning’?
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If ‘distance learning’ is considered, by definition, to be comprised of teaching and learning with the ‘teacher’ and the ‘learner’ at different places and/or separated by time – and utilizes some form of ‘communications technology’ – then:
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What is a totem pole? (is it not teacher and learning?)
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What is an oral history? (Are these not teachers and learning spread across time and space and place?)
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and concluding with “that the field of ‘distance education’ could do with some significant decolonizing, or at least opening to much expanded viewpoints about what may, or may not, comprise ‘distance education’ – let alone what might be described as ‘education’ and whom, or what, might deliver it – and probably more importantly… develop it (e.g. learning, curriculum, etc.)” (Loewen, 2017).
I found this inquiry to be thought provoking in how it challenged colonial relationships of teacher and learner and separation by distance and time.