Life, Learning and Flexible Delivery 

INTRODUCTION The general thesis of this 
paper is that flexible learning is a critical 
development i n  assuring high quality 
educational provision for individuals at all 
stages of their lives, but there are significant 
dangers that the potential of this approach to 
the delivery of learning opportunities will be 
compromised by the actions of education 
professionals. To establish this position it is 
necessary to understand what is meant by a 
concept central to our present conference theme, 
that is, flexible delivery. The reasons are fairly 
obvious. First, if people at all ages are to derive 
something of value from a particular approach 
to educational delivery, then it must in part be a 
product of the characteristics shaping it which 
distinguish it from other forms of delivery that 
adds this apparent value. Second, we need to 
understand whether there are similarly 
distinctive characteristics of or requirements for 
education throughout life, and specifically 
beyond the walls of our familiar teaching 
institutions, that are likely to be best served by 
flexible delivery. Finally, we need to consider the 
role of the educational professional in relation 
to both lifelong learning and flexible delivery 
to determine. whether what educators are doing 
now: with flexible delivery makes it likely that 
its potential for serving a larger function is being 
circumscribed. 

I want to unpack this introduction. First, why 
do I say that flexible delivery is a critical 
development for learners at all stages of their 
lives? In part this is pre-empting the discussion 
of what we mean by the term and the 
characteristics which shape it, but in general the 
importance I place on this development derives 
from (1) the shift in power relations it affords 
for teaching and learning, and specifically the 
passage of control to the learner from the 
teacher, (2) the use it makes of developments in 

BRUCE KING 
, SouTHERN SYDNEY INsTITUTE 

NEW SOUTH WALES TAFE COMMISSION 

communications technology which are shaping 
all other aspects of our lives, and which have 
been relatively slow to make an impact in. 
teaching institutions beyond compulsory levels 
of schooling, and (3) its recognition that the 
context within which structured learning is to 
occur is more likely to be informal rather than 
formal, that is, learners will study at hpme or in 
the workplace or wherever suits them, even 
when takh1g programmes from traditional 
providers." 

Second, why do I see the potential of flexible 
learning being compromised by the actions of 
professional educators. The answer will be 
developed below, but it involves the shift in 
power relations mentioned above and this has 
a number of dimensions, two of which I will 
refer to here as the structural and the 
psychological. The first involves the very 
establishment of educational institutions as 
assessing and certifying bodies and the need 
those within them perceive to establish 
conditions through which the validity of their 
certification can be maintained. The second 
involves the individual teacher and the strong 
dhnension of personal control as a driving force 
in teaching. This is hardly a new idea, but my 
experience strongly reffiforces the notion that 
one of the strongest threats that can be presented 
to individual teachers is the prospect that they 
be moved from the central position in the 
management of others' learning. 

GENERATION GAP There is the further 
dimension at the present time of a possible 
generation gap between learners and teachers 
in relation to processes of communication. By 
this, I mean much more than the differences 
between y ounger and older people in our 
societies in the acquisition of computer literacy, 
although this�is critical. It also has to do with 

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how people source, access and disseminate 
ideas. This came home to me markedly while 
listening to a radio debate about Helen Ge1rner 's 
book, The First Stone., a fictionalised account of 
an a c t!lal sexual harassment case at the 
University of Melbourne's Ormond College 
which has polarised feminists in Australia. 
Garnet and Anne S ummers, a prominent 
publisher and former women's advocate, were 
debating women's responses to the book in 
terms of feminist theory with two y ounger 
women, one a student activist and the other a 
disk jockey on ABC radio's alternative rock 
station, Triple J. The age gap between the two 
pair of women was approximately thirty years, 
that is the older women were about my age! Two 
points struck me with some force. First, the older 
women did not know of the younger, although 
the reverse was not true, despite the fact that 
one of them is a leading performer on national 
radio with one of the largest listening audiences 
in Australia. Second, the older women implicitly 
criticised the younger for not publishing their 
views and representing the perspectives of 
younger women. But, of course, they had done 
so, on popular radio and through the Internet, 
both media the older pair did not access. What 
became equally clear is that, unlike Summers 
and Garner, they saw those media as much more 
contemporary sources of ideas than the books 
and journals the older women regarded as 
appropriate for disseminating and accessing 
information and 9pinion. What was particularly 
telling was that Summers and Garner, both 
successful professional communicators, 
appeared not to recognise that the Internet in 
particular was a primary source of intellectual 
exchange for the generation behind them, rather 
than s i m p l y  an additional means of 
dissemination beyond the literary sources they 
turned to for reference. 

I have spent some time on this anecdote, for my 
experience in university distance and open learning, 
and more recently in TAFE, persuades me that is 
generational difference is quite patent amongst 
educators and their students and, I suspect, likely 
to become a significant barrier to the opportunities 
for flexible delivery that developments in 
communications technology offer. 

Two points need to be made at this juncture: 
first, flexible delivery is, in my view, very much 
in the hands - and the control- of professional 
educators, that is, those who deliver teaching 
programmes within our conventional schools, 
vocational education and training colleges, and 
universities. I say this because flexible learning 
is centrally a delivery issue and this is where 
teachers and lecturers have made a determined 
bid to stake their claim within the educational 
process, although this is not as strongly the case 
in the vocational education and training sector. 
Further, there have been real pressures on 
teachers to adopt flexible delivery and those 
who have responded will have strong 
commitment to their new practice. The funding 
authorities of public education have tended to 
pursue flexible delivery as a national strategy 
in an attempt to reduce the unit costs of teaching 
(DEBT, 1994a). Individual institutions have 
sought similar savings from the extension of 
techniques developed in distance education into 
on-campus teaching under the flexible delivery 
banner. Such pressures are accompanied by a 
legitimising rationale which is strongly 
defensible in educational terms. It is not 
surprising, therefore that teachers and 
academics, as Ted Nunan (Nunan, 1994) have 
pointed out, have made either a pragmatic or 
ideological commitment to use flexible delivery 
strategies. What is more, having made such a 
commitment, because teaching is such a highly 
individualised activity and lacks a technical 
culture, the new strategies staff have adopted 
will carry a significant personal commitment. 

I do not think this influenced by whether such 
institutions are privately or publicly funded, 
although there is probably an argument that 
some private providers are concentrating on a 
niche market involving technologically driven 
and individualised study programmes created 
by the inflexibilities of public providers. 
However, there are other resource issues which 
make it difficult for small providers to move to 
flexible delivery. 

At one level, this is highly desirable. Despite the 
concerns raised above about teacher control as 
an issue in flexible delivery, there is no doubt in 

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my mind about the general desirability of 
learning programmes being shaped in terms of 
their purposes, content and sh'ategies to support 
learning by those who have a professional 
understanding of education as a social force. In 
other words, despite the cautions raised here, I 
do not want to see conh'ol of learning wrested 
from educators simply to pass into the hands of 
politicians, press barons or the entertainment 
industry. Clearly, I would argue that more 
power should pass to learners, with a re­
conceived role for teachers in facilitating the 
learning process. That brings me to the second 
point, which concerns the significant questions 
that need to be asked about the role, if any, of 
professional educators in lifelong learning. This 
will be taken up below when we have clarified 
what we mean by flexible delivery and lifelong 
learning. 

fLEXIBLE DE LIVERY AND 
LIFELONG LEARNING For the purposes 
of discussion, I have adopted the definition of 
'flexible delivery' used in an Australian 
document, Flexible Delivery: An Overview of The 
National Framework for Implementation in TAFE. 
The base document was endorsed by the 
National TAFE Chief Executive's Committee in 
November, 1992. This is not intended to be 
parochial on my part. The paper was prepared 
after two y ears of national investigation and 
consultation in Australia during 1991 and 1992 
and represents a very comprehensive summary 
of current thinking in the field. The definition 
used is: 

Flexible delivery is an approach to 
vocational education and training which 
allows for the adoption of a range of 
learning strategies in a variety of learning 
environments to cater for differences in 
learning styles, learning interests and 
needs, and var iations in learning 
opportunities. 

Three comments need to be made. First, I think 
we could substitute any level or area of 
education for 'vocational education and 
training' without altering. the force of the 
concept of flexible delivery advanced in the 

definition. Second, the critical orientation of the 
definition is to catering for diversity. Generally, 
this takes two forms, which can be related: the 
maximisation of choice over the elements which 
comprise the total learning situation and the use 
of flexible arrangements to pursue access and 
equity objectiv�s. Third, the definition begs the 
critical question of whose approach we are 
considering. It remains silent on the related 
matters of participation, purpose, planning, and 
permission in the educational transaction. This 
is not just playing with words, for the idea of an 
approach which allows a range of learning options 
to be exercised is predicated on the notion of an 
authoritative decision-taker. 

Let me expand this a little. The word approach 
in this context is being used in the sense of 
method or ,steps taken in setting about a task 
which in turn suggests the deliberate adoption 
of a set of arrangements which is intended to 
bring about some desired end. What is of 
interest is whose intention that might be. It is 
evident, I suggest, that it is not intended to be 
that of the learner. The point I am trying to make 
here is that even in this very broad definition of 
flexible delivery, there is a clear indication that 
the learning opportunities afforded by a 
particular programme have to be planned by 
someone other than the learner. That is, there is 
a critical role in flexible delivery for the 
professional educators, whether we think of that 
person as a curriculum developer, educational 
planner, or teacher. Those labels do not mean 
the same thing, of course, but I am trying to 
avoid the notion that the educator 's role is 
unambiguous in flexible delivery. 

The TAFE document identifies seven 
characteristics of flexible delivery: 

• flexibility in terms of entry, programme 
components, modes of learning and points of 
exit 

• learner control and choice regarding the 
content, sequence, time, place and method of 
learning 

• appropriate learner support systems 
• the application of learning technologies where 

appropriate 

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• access to information on courses and services 
• access to appropriate learning resources 
• flexible assessment processes 

A number of observations can be made about 
this list. First, it is obviously describing flexible 
delivery from the point of view of existing 
provider institutions. Thus, it carries the explicit 
assumption that existing courses will be used, 
that there will be a system of learner support, 
that some authority figure will determine that 
constitutes an appropriate application of 
learning technologies, and so on. Now, this is 
not s u r p r i s i n g ,  given the source of the 
document, but the list also demonstrates the 
confusion of ideology and practice when 
definitions and defining characteristics are 
developed to take into account existing 
educational systems. 

For example, consider the tension, if not 
contradiction between the first two 
characteristics. The first allows flexibility over 
programme components, which presumably is 
a requirement of the providing institution, while 
the second gives control over content, 
sequencing and other course components to the 
student. If these two are taken to operate 
together, then the only control a student has is 
to exercise choice between predetermined 
options, which is not control at all. Indeed, the 
second characteristic distinguishes between 
control and choice, although to what end is not 
really now clear. Take another example. The 
second characteristic gives the student control 
over the sequence of programme components, 
but presumably this is constrained by the 
information provided about courses in 
characteristic five. And how much control does 
a student have if someone else determines what 
learning technologies and resources are 
appropriate? 

Now, this seems to be fairly sloppy thinking. To 
understand why a major document, the product 
of considerable work, presents such a confused 
case, it is worth looking at the antecedents of 
flexible delivery and how they have been taken 
up in the paper. These include distance 
education, developments in open learning 

theory, and changes made possible b y  
developments in communications and 
computer technologies. 

ANTECEDENTS OF fLEXIBLE 
DELIVERY Distance education, itself a 
development fwm correspondence education, 
has become established over the last quarter 
century as a legitimate dimension of 
conventional course provision at all levels of 
formal education. Of course, this sentence has 
immediately to be qualified. The legitimacy is 
still contested in some conventional educational 
institutions and by individual teachers in those 
schools, colleges and universities where distance 
delivery is a substantial part of overall course 
provision. Further, the quarter century is a rough 
approximation to the period of significant 
growth of n�w institutions, such as the great 
open universities of Asia, the consolidation of 
external studies in tertiary education in North 
America, Australasia, South Africa and in 
Europe. It certainly encompasses the period of 
significant academic publishing in the field. This 
is not to diminish the much longer involvement 
in correspondence education of many 
institutions around the world and, drawing on 
my own experience I think immediately of the 
Schools of the Air in Australia, the external 
studies provision of TAPE through which I 
pursued matriculation in the mid-sixties, the off­
campus programme of the University of 
Queensland which commenced in 1911, and the 
later but formative influence of the University 
of New England which set the pattern for 
distance education at university level in 
Australia. 

Two things need to be said. First, most attempts 
at flexible delivery in conventional provider 
institutions have their base in existing distance 
education infrastructure and practices. This is 
not surprising. Typically, distance educational 
providers have three infrastructural elements 
which are highly supportive of flexible delivery: 
an administrative mechanism for dealing with 
students who do not access educational 
programmes in the conventional way, a capacity 
to produce learning resource materials, and a 
student support sy stem. The application of 

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distance teaching capacity to flexible delivery 
is explicitly discussed in the Jevons and 
Northcott report, Costs and Quality in Resource­
based learning On, and Off-Campus, (NBEET, 
1944b). MacFarlane (1992) in a recent report, 
Teaching and learning in an expanding higher 
education system, summarises the situation from 
a UK perspective: 

With the transformation of higher 
education into a system that is adapted 
to servicing the needs of much larger 
numbers comes the imperative to 
develop much greater flexibility. Distance 
a n d  open learning methods - long 
practised by the Open University - free 
students from the constraints of time and 
place, a n d  even allow for more 
individualised feedback to students than 
could be contemplated within the 
traditional university teaching system. 

Second, there is a direct link between the 
underlying assumptions of distance delivery 
and moves to introduce flexible learning. 
Experience suggests that conventional 
universities move to distance provision for one 
or more of the following reasons: 
• course or subject viability 
• raising the profile of a teaching area or 

institution 
• reducing the unit costs of teaching 
• deploying staffing capacity 
• to enable collaborative ventures 
• marketing educational courses and services 
• enhancing quality 
• access and equity considerations 
• passing educational control to students 

Of course, these are very different in nature, the 
fir s t  six being essentially pragmatic 
considerations for a provider institution, with 
the remaining three having strong educational 
and normative underpinnings. Ted Nunan 
(1994, 5) argues for flexible delivery on such 
educational grounds: 

The question of improving practices to 
promote quality learning depends upon 
our ability to structure a teaching and 

learning environment- that is, upon our 
ability to see quality learning as a matter 
which depends on more than teaching as 
it also involves the phy sical a n d  
communication r e s o u r c e s  of the 
environment, the access to support for 
learning and resolution of learning 
difficulties,' and the student's approach 
to learning. Promotion of quality learning 
involves looking at the ways in which 
courses are delivered and with flexible 
delivery there is the opportunity to bring 
the issues together in way s which suit a 
wider range of style of learning. 

The similarity with recent government 
documents advocating moves to flexible 
delivery is marked, (see, for example, NBEET, 
1994b). In the formal advice of the National 
Board of Employment, Education and Training 
to their Minister (NBEET, 1994c, 3), the Chair of 
the Higher Education Council, Professor Ian 
Chubb wrote: 

The Higher Education Council believes 
that the opportunity and potential now 
exist for universities to make more 
effective use of distance education 
materials, methodologies and 
technologies to enhance student on­
campus learning environments . . .  it is 
important for universities to recognise 
that quality outcomes in the wider use 
of distance education on-campus are 
attainable. This can be done by using 
minimal distance education processes 
and procedures, as well as by providing 
state-of-the-art materials, methodologies 
and technologies. 

It is important to remember, however, as Ted 
Nunan (1994, 1) has pointed out, that for 
Government policy makers ' At the broadest 
level, flexible delivery is one response to 
resource allocation issues'. At policy level, it is 
probably dominant. As a member of the Steering 
Committee for the project from which the 
Higher Education Council's advice derived, I 
was extremely conscious that a constraining 
factor for the project officers was the need to 

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have advice re11dy for the Minister in time for 
the preparation of budget papers. I think there 
is a sharp distinction in Australian universities 
between those who rather naively believe that 
flexible delivery, particularly that mediated by 
sophisticated technology, will reduce costs and 
those who see the potential for improving the 
quality of teaching and learning through more 
flexible delivery approaches. 

Flexible delivery has its intellectual base in open 
learning theory. This can be shown by 
comparing the characteristics of flexible delivery 
identified above with one of the standard 
definitions of open learning, provided by Dick 
Johnson (NBEET, 1990): 

Open learning is an approach rather than 
a system or technique; it is based on the 
needs of individual learners, not the 
interests of the teacher or the institution; 
it gives students as much control as 
possible over what and when and where 
and how they learn it; it commonly uses 
the delivery methods of distance 
education and the facilities of educational 
technology; it changes the role of teacher 
from a source of knowledge to a manager 
of learning and a facilitator. 

Despite constraints which will be discussed 
below, the most familiar Australian instance of 
open education at university level, the 
programme offered through Open Learning 
Australia, has made significant ground in 
moving towards the ideal embodied in that 
definition. Entry requirements have been 
overcome, much more flexible course structures 
have been developed, the capacity for choice 
over units of content has been increased, credit 
transfer a r r angements have dramatically 
improved, study periods are more frequent and 
so on. 

The situation appears somewhat different in 
vocational education and training, although on 
first sight one could be excused for thinking that 
the same agenda prevailed. Indeed, in the recent 
report of the National Flexible Delivery Project 
in Australia (ANTA, 1995, preface), differences 

between 'open learning' and 'flexible delivery '  
are dismissed a s  semantic, and the preceding 
definition of open learning is adopted in its 
entirety as a description of flexible delivery. That 
differences between the two concepts as so 
readily dismissed helps account for the 
difficulties the rest of the paper presents. This 
report is likely to become a key document in the 
vocational education and training sector in 
Australia and as such is worthy of greater 
consideration than is possible here. What is 
immediately apparent is the movement away 
from the value position of the definition, which 
focuses on the learner, to one which is centred 
on the client. Immediately following the 
definition is a statement: 

This defines flexible delivery in the 
context �f the training market - it is 
customised training designed to meet the 
needs of clients. (ANTA, 1995, i) 

The shift from learner to client is significant, for 
on page 4, the Report continues: 

. . .  the key clients of the sy stem are 
enterprises because they are competing 
for high value added jobs to provide 
employment and that they utilise and 
invest in skills to do so. 

What this does is effectively render the value 
commitments of the definition meaningless. 
For all practical purposes, individual learners 
have been kissed goodby e and the realities of 
v o c a t i o n a l  e d u c a t i o n  a n d  t r a i n i n g  
dramatically revealed: the principal clients are 
not learners but€nterprises. This is completely 
unabashed. The recommendations of the 
Report call for the establishment of a national 
policy framework which would promote an 
approach, inter alia: 

• where flexible delivery is viewed as training 
which is provided to meet the specific 
demands/needs of an enterprise client. This 
customisation of training is the point at which 
provision can be determined as flexible. 

• where clients rather than providers determine 
the training product (ANTA, 1995, 25). 

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! 
i 



I want to be perfectly clear. There is no criticism 
here of the critical role of enterprises in shaping 
vocational education and training. What I am 
concerned about is the invoking of a particular 
value position - the priority given to learner 
control - which has no relation to the specifics 
of what follows and is, as indicated, 
immediately repudiated by the rest of the text. 
Learners are not ignored completely, of course. 
The Report covers a number of important 
considerations in implementing a system of 
flexible delivery, for example identify ing 
necessary elements of student support systems, 
(ANTA, 1995,12). What is of concern is that we 
understand that when discussing flexible 
delivery in different sectors of education we are 
talking about very different things. 

STAKEHO LDER S  The differences turn on 
who comprise the stakeholders in education and 
training. Nunan (1994,5) identifies them for 
university education: students, academics, those 
staff engaged in supporting teaching and 
learning environments, and those engaged in 
designing and managing courses. To these, we 
would have t o  add the university as an 
organisation, the professional bodies that 
provide accreditation for qualifications or are 
represented on course advisory committees, and 
funding authorities including government. In 
secondary education, we would want to include 
students, parents, teachers, the school as an 
organisation, government officials, formal 
parent organisations, sometimes powerful 
pressure groups, and so on. What is to be taught 
is negotiated to establish some common ground 
among the stakeholders on what knowledge 
and related skills students should be expected 
to acquire. This is then mediated through the 
ability, personality and training of the teacher 
or lecturer involved. 

What is critical here is the degree of control 
various stakeholders are able to exert on the 
content and delivery of learning programmes 
which stakeholders might be described as 
internal to the educational process and which 
external. Elsewhere (King, 1994, 6), I said: 

.. . the attempts by governments to take 
greater control of the national curriculum 

agenda in schools, the move to prescribed 
competencies in vocational education, 
and the quality assurance interventions 
in higher education make it quite clear 
that those groups who see themselves as 
representing national and vocational 
interests are determined to assert their 
participat�ry, even determining, role in 
setting the purposes of education. If 
any thing, the contribution . . .  of the 
Australian professional teacher or 
lecturer has diminished over the last 
decade. 

My experience with schools, universities, and 
more recently in the vocational education and 
training field strongly suggests that only in the 
latter case are external stakeholders recognised 
as legitill!ately in control of educational 
developm

'
ent and delivery. In schools and 

universities, students and their teachers still 
exercise a critical influence on what occurs in 
the teaching/learning interaction. The role of 
teachers, however, will have to change because 
of the third contributing element to flexible 
delivery, developments in communications 
technology. 

CHANGING pAR ADI G MS I have 
argued elsewhere that over the past century and 
still in most schools and colleges, the dominant 
paradigm in educational provisions has been 
information transmission, that is, students have 
gathered to receive information and acquire 
skills determined and imparted by an authority 
figure - the tea cher. Developments in 
communications technology make the 
weaknesses of the information transmission 
model both apparent and afford an alternative. 
I discussed this in a paper for the Learning 
Environment Technology Australia Conference 
in Adelaide last year (King, 1994,3-5): 

What is wrong with the information 
transmission model centres on two 
issues. First, it is at odds with what most 
educators claim to be the point of their 
activities. Second, it is increasingly 
impractical. These are both elaborated 
below. 

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. . . In both general and vocational 
education, there is now widespread 
acceptance of the importance of students 
being able to engc;tge with, question and 
reflect upon the content and context of their 
studies . ... In short, the aims of both general 
and vocational education stress the active 
cognitive involvement of the learner and 
emphasise those higher order skills which 
are the components of intellectual 
judgement. This necessarily involves a 
view of the educational process in which 
learners might for good reasons come to 
different perspectives or understandings 
on the same matters. Such a view is 
logically at odds with a transmission model 
of teaching and learning whereby students 
are directed to particular knowledge and 
specific interpretations of it. 

Secondly, the transmission model is 
simply not up to the task of teaching 
beyond elementary levels. The sheer 
volume of information now available on 
any non-trivial matter makes its 
channelling through a single individual's 
presentational capabilities necessarily 
result in content which is partial, selective 
and more or less idiosyncratic. 

The two points are interrelated. The point 
of educational practice identified above 
increasingly requires of learners that they 
become information literate. That is, our 
students should develop growing 
competence in understanding how 
society orders, stores and retrieves 
information. They must be able t o  
identify what information they need, 
understand how it can be located and 
accessed, in order that their 
understanding and judgments might be 
shaped, tested and confirmed by its 
application. It is simply anachronistic to 
order teaching as though such 
competence can be achieved by students 
relating to the knowledge and 
understanding possessed by a single 
authority figure. The test of good 
teaching must become less a matter of 

transmission of information which, by 
some relevant test, is accurate and 
relevant and rhore one of supporting 
students in accessing and using 
information from a range of sources. 
Inevitably, because of the sheer volume 
of informati<;m now available on any 
subject and the time required to access 
and process it, being a successful teacher 
or student will increasingly depend upon 
familiarity with, and skills in using, 
information technology. 

Information technology is not simply a 
faster route to conventional wisdom. 
Because of its almost unlimited potentl.al 
to bring information sources together, it 
enables the generation of new 
understaJ1pings formerly the prerogative 
of the privileged few. The implications for 
teaching are significant. Students now 
can become more expert on a given 
subject than their teachers and it is the 
new obligation of teachers to encourage 
and support that end. 

This takes us both backwards and forwards in 
the discussion. Backwards, in that it is clearly 
at odds with the point made in discussing 
stakeholders concerning control in vocational 
education and training being outside the 
providing educational institution. Forwards, in 
that the movement of control to learners 
afforded and necessitated by developments in 
technology has implications for the subject of 
the final section of this paper, lifelong learning. 

In relation to vocation education and training, 
it needs to be acknowledged that many of the 
skills acquired by y oung workers involved 
relatively straightforward instruction and 
supervised practice. This notwithstanding, two 
comments need to be made. First, developments 
in the workplace will increasingly be computer 
driven and require operators who have 
sufficient understanding of processes that they 
can be both receptive to change and readily 
reskilled. Second, many enterprises would 
actually welcome training that was more learner 
centred and technologically oriented. 

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A Coopers and Lybrand study, Small Business 
·
Training: Needs Preferences and Markets cited in 
the Final Report of the National ·Flexible 
Delivery Project (f\NTA,1995,6) indicates that 
small business has a preference for training 
which is: 

• demand driven 
• learner-centred and learner-directed 
• short, sharp and specific rather than general 

and theoretical 
• built around active learning strategies 

including the use of team and group learning 
and problem-solving related to practical 
issues in the workplace 

• flexible in the programming of sessions in 
terms of time and place 

• sanctioned and supported by a peer group 
such as an industry association, and 

• built on personalised and segmented markets. 

The study highlighted the need for adequate 
learner support for flexible delivery in the 
workplace, including through skills centres or 
telecentres. 

Now, if it genuinely is the case that small 
businesses would welcome flexible delivery of 
training that was learner-centred, why are they 
not getting it? Some obvious responses come to 
mind. First, as the ANTA report (1995,5) 
indicates, the bureaucratic barriers to small 
businesses becoming involved in training are 
considerable. Second, the costs of introducing 
the technologies which would support flexible 
learnin g  can be significant. Third, small 
businesses may well not have their voice heard 
in the formal organisations which purport to 
represent stakeholders. Fourth, flexible delivery 
involves on-the-job training which is a source 
of tension between industries and providers, 
particularly over assessment. Finally, as 
indicated earlier, flexible delivery threatens the 
teachers in training institutions. It is an irony 
that as enterprises seek changes towards more 
flexible delivery, it is their historical association 
with training colleges which no frustrates them. 
Over time, teachers have developed a comfort 
zone which renders change both undesirable 
and, for many, apparently unnecessary. The 

industrialisation of the teaching force, the 
implacability of the training culture, and the 
continuing demand for course places which 
youth unemployment creates, have contributed 
to a situation in which many teachers see no 
reason to alter their practice. 

This is reinfor�ed in my view by the separation 
of course development and delivery which 
occurs in some VET organisations. Where course 
development is primarily industry led, and 
teaching progressively controlled by industry 
established training standards, then there 
appears little incentive for teachers to be 
proactive in relation to alternative approaches 
to course delivery. This is exacerbated by 
contestation between teachers and enterprises 
over the validity of off-the-job assessments. If I 
have fairly; characterised the VET climate, there 
seems littl� reason for teachers to adopt more 
than minimalist approaches to flexible delivery. 

Again, the situation is compounded in those 
VET organisations where there has been a 
traditional separation of classroom teaching 
from distance delivery. Flexible delivery 
requires that provider institutions have a 
significant infrastructure to support learners. 
Where this, together with all relevant expertise 
in student support is remote from the possibly 
not understood or known by technical teachers, 
then flexible approaches are likely to founder 
on the reluctance of teachers to become involved 
with something which seems to them hopelessly 
unrealistic. In these circumstances, the interests 
of individual learners seem doomed to come a 
poor last to the interests of other stakeholders. 

LIFELONG LEARNING Finally, I want to 
turn the lifelong learning. In the discussion 
above concerning the inadequacy of information 
transmission approaches to teaching, I said: 

. . .  our students should develop growing 
competence in understanding how 
society orders, stores and retrieves 
information. They must be able t o  
identify what information they need, 
understand how it can be located and 
accessed,_

, 
in order that their 

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understanding and judgments might be 
shaped, tested and confirmed by its 
applications. 

I 

I argued that technologically driven approaches 
to flexible delivery were essential to bring about 
this d e s i r e d  e n d .  T h i s  seems to me to be 
absolutely the bridge to lifelong learning. 

There are various related concepts: for example, 
lifelong learning, recurrent education, continuing 
education, and education for the third age. This 
is not my field, and I seek here only to make some 
comments upon that learning which individuals 
voluntarily engage in at any time to increase their 
personal fulfilment or enhance their social and 
economic situation. 

T h e r e  a r e  c l e a r l y  s u b s t a n t i a l  e x i s t i n g  
o p p o r t u n i t i e s  f o r  i n f o r m a l  l e arn ing in 
developed societies, through broadcast media, 
public libraries, participation in the arts, travel, 
and participation in various clubs and private 
a g e n c i e s .  I do n o t  i n t e n d  to address this 
dimension of lifelong learning here. There are 
other, more formal kinds, for example, second­
c h a nce education for those who have not 
acquired necessary social or vocation skills in 
earlier y ears, the inservice education undertaken 
by professionals to maintain the currency of 
their practice, and learning in the workplace 
which has a similar inservice dimension. I want 
to focus on the last of these. 

In an excellent report, De veloping Lifelong 
Learne r s  t h r o ug h Undergra duate Education, 
(NBEET,l994a) Phil Candy and his colleagues 
have drawn on their own earlier research to 
s h o w  t h e r e  is a large n u m b e r  o f  m a j o r  
differences between initial formal education, 
specifically at university, and learning which 
occurs in the workplace. 

Wh e r e a s  u n i v e r s i t y  l e a r n i n g  is generally 
curriculum-driven, competitive, theoretical, 
abstract, longterm, and generalised, workplace 
learning tends to be more problem-based, 
c o l l a b o r a t i v e ,  a p p l i e d ,  i m m e d i a t e  and 
s p e c i a l i s e d .  T h e y  a c k n o w l e d g e ,  too, that 
workplaces are themselves subject to change, 

through internationalisation, total q u ality 
management practices, workplace restructuring, 
and so on, such that the very sort of learning 
that workers need to undertake is changing. 

The implications of this seem to be: (1) the way 
we teach people pefore they enter the workplace 
will not match the way they need to learn on the 
job, and (2) what we teach them about the job 
will have limited currency and utility. Further, 
(3) if they have not acquired skills in seeking new 
information for themselves, they will become 
progressively out of step with the demands of 
their workplace. To compound that,, (4) even if 
they have such skills, these may become outdated 
over time, for example, through changes in the 
manner information is stored and retrieved. 
Finally, (5) if their workplace brings them into 
contact with'*'uppliers, customers or other staff 
who have more sophisticated understandings 
and capacities to learn about the workplace, they 
will become increasingly frustrated and less 
functional. Of course, if the individual concerned 
changes jobs, the whole cycle accelerates. 

One of the submissions to the study undertaken 
by Candy et al. contended: 

No biochemist this c e n t u r y  c o u l d  
anticipate a state o f  knowledge stability 
adequate for a professional career that did 
not have constant input from new sources. 
The extensive digitisation of reference 
material and storage of data in national 
and international respositories means that 
the established practice of j o u r n a l  
browsing may be expected to decline. 
[Even] teaching the mechanics of keeping 
current is therefore not practical, so we 
trust that the attitude of responsibility to 
keep current is what is transferred by our 
teaching. (NBEET, 1944a,34) 

This, I think, extends the obligation I identified 
above to use technology such that our students 
were able to understand how society stores, 
retrieves and uses knowledge. It suggests that 
what is critical is inculcating an attitude of 
responsibility to remain current in whatever 
field one finds,Q_neself, if y ou like, developing 

Journal of Distance Learning, Vol2, No.1, 1996 (c) Distance Education Association of New Zealand 

12 



. responsibility for one's own learning. Quite simply, 
this must become the new role· of teachers in all 
sectors beyond elementary levels. 

I 
Now, this seems an impossible task if the other 
stakeholders of education and training, through 
pursuit of their own legitimate interests, remove 
the learner from the centre of the learning 
process such that the skills and attitudes of mind 
w h i c h  f o s t e r  p e r s o n a l  r e s p o n s i b i l i t y  a n d  
commitment to continuing learning a r e  not 
fostered. Further, if teachers do not model such 
responsibility in the way they operate in their 
w o r k p l a c e ,  t h e n  t h e  role of e d u c a t i o n  
institutions in supporting lifelong learning 
seems hopelessly circumscribed. I think it was 
Lawrence Stenhouse who observed that the two 
driving forces in teacher behaviour seemed to 
be the need for rectitude and for control, that is, 
the need to be right and be in charge. 

Neither is appropriate for the present, let alone 
the future. If teachers, or any other stakeholder, 
force learners from their rightful place at the 
centre of learning and fail to support them in 
assuming responsibility for and exercising real 
control over their own learning, then the 
profession of education will become a horse that 
has bolted, and all we will be left with is the 
sound of a stable door banging in the wind. 

REFERENCES 

Australian National Training Authority, 1995: National 
Flexible Delivery Project, Final Report, Consultant 
Kim Bannikoff, unpublished photocopy. 

KING, B., 1994: Point and Partnerships in Contemporary 
Education. A paper delivered at the Learning 
Environment Technology Australia Conference, 
September 25-28, Adelaide, pp. 3-5. 

MacFARLANE, A., 1992: Teaching and learning in an 
expanding higher education system: Report of a 
Working Party he Committee of Scottish University 
Principals. PQlton House Press, Midlothian. 

National TAFE Chief Executives Committee, 1993: An 
Overview of T he N a t i o n a l  F r am ewo r k  fo r 
Implementation in TAFE. Flexible Delivery Working 
Party, South Brisbane. 

National Board of Employment, Education and 
Training, 1990: Open Learning. Commissioned 
Report No. 4, AGPS, Canberra. 

National Board of Employment, Education and 
Training, 1994a: Developing Lifelong Learners 
through Undergraduate Education. Commissioned 
Report No. 4, AGPS, Canberra. 

National Board of Employment, Education and 
Training, 1994b: Costs and Quality in Resource-Based 
Learnin/ On- and Off- Campus. Commissioned 
Report No. 33, AGPS, Canberra. 

National Board of Employment, Education and 
Training, 1994c: Increasing the Learning Options. 
Advice of the National Board of Employment, 
Education and Training and its Higher Education 
Council, AGPS, Canberra. 

NUNAN, T., 1994: Flexible delivery - a discussion of 
issues. University of South Australia Distance 
Education Centre. 

Bruce King is Director of the Southern Sydney 
Institute, New South Wales TAFE Commission. This 
paper was presented as a keynote addres s to the 1995 
Distance Education Association of New Zealand 
Conference in Auckland. 

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