BRAZILIAN RESEARCH ON DISTANCE LEARNING, 1999-2003: A State-of-the Art Study

 

 

 

 

Fredric Michael Litto

Escola de Comunicação e Artes da USP –  frmlitto@usp.br

 

 

Andrea Filatro

Faculdade de Educação da USP –  afilatro@uol.com.br

 

 

Claudio André

Faculdade de Educação da USP –  cfandre@uol.com.br

 

 

 

TEMA D: Educação a Distância nos Sistemas Educacionais

 

 CATEGORIA 4: Outras - Pesquisa em Educação a Distância

 

 

 

Abstract:  The purpose of this study was to “map” the production of scholarly works in the field of distance learning (DL) in Brazil, using as the corpus of analysis the masters and doctoral theses successfully defended in the country’s graduate programs, as well as articles published in specialized scholarly journals. The corpus included 847 titles, which were analyzed within the categories of general subject, extent of coverage and year of appearance in the primary literature.

 

Keywords:  Distance learning, Online Education, Virtual Education, Research, State-of-the-Art, Brazil.

 

 

I – Objectives and Delimitations of the Study

 

            The objective of the study was to identify and analyze the themes emerging from research on Distance Learning (DL) in Brazil in the period 1999-2003.  We concentrated our attention on the scholarly production represented by 847 works, seeking to construct a panoramic view of the national research effort, and organizing this primary literature so as to determine tendencies, overlaping situations, gaps and challenges for further investigation.

            Any analysis of the state-of-the-art of research in DL must constantly maintain, in the background, an understanding of the nature of theory and practice in the field, which is a vast, complex phenomenon which maintains numerous interfaces with related fields of educational endeavors.  The multi-faceted nature of the phenomenon is reflected in the fields of knowledge which generate scholarly work in DL, such that the theses and articles which were the object of study here were brought forth from areas as different as Production Engineering, Mathematics and Statistics, Pedagogy, Communications, and others, each one with its particular paradigm and special contribution to be made for comprehending DL. This dispersion of the literature is also compounded by the fact that, throughout the world, research in DL is carried out not only in traditional academic institutions of higher learning but also in private companies, foundations, cultural organizations, and by independent investigators.

            Nevertheless, to orient our collection of the corpus of the literature, which would permit us to identify a “state-of-the-art,” we used the following criteria for inclusion of works:

·        be the result of systematic investigation based on quantitative measurement or some qualitative study supported by clearly-expressed criteria;   

·        demonstrate originality in its aims and in its conclusions.

Hence, the corpus included principally the theses successfully defended in the stricto sensu (requiring a traditional dissertative study) graduate study programs in Education and other areas of knowledge, in the period 1999-2003, and the scholarly articles published in the same period in two of the principal journals of the field. Because of the incomplete coverage by official sources of theses produced in the country, we believe that a number of works may have escaped our attention, but perhaps they will be included in a future continuation of this study.

            The significance of this type of investigation is that it fills a gap of information at the meta level, showing how a large number of researchers in a unique, populous country, are conducting their work.  Its results should be useful to graduate advisors in universities within Brazil and elsewhere, helping them to suggest topics for research to their advisees or planning new developments in graduate programs concentrating on DL as a practice; it could also be helpful to other researchers and librarians as a guide to already-existing literature; it may well be an important strategic tool for local, national, regional, and international agencies which support research or DL projects, as it furnishes indicators of tendencies and lacunas; and finally, it may serve as a stimulus to editors of learned journals who, seeing the gaps of studies in the area, can organize special issues of their publications, creating incentives for new research.

 

II – Methodology

            A – Data Collection

The first stage of research consisted of locating bibliographic references to the scholarly production related to DL, specifically for the period 1999-2003, which was expected to reflect the increasing maturity of the Internet as a factor of growth in DL, and which in turn facilitated access to the studies themselves. Various sources were used to obtain references to the appropriate theses among the 33,000 graduate theses defended each year in Brazil: the Banco Digital de Teses e Dissertações Eletrônicas do Instituto Brasileiro de Informação em Ciência e Tecnologia (IBICT), and the Biblioteca Virtual de Educação a Distância do Prossiga (CNPq – National Council for Scientific and Technological Development).  But because of the incompleteness of these sources, we were forced to consult the virtual libraries of the principal academic institutions themselves: Saber and Dedalus of the University of São Paulo; Lumen of the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo; Banco de Teses of the University of Brasília; Biblioteca Digital of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul; Banco de Teses e Dissertações of the Federal University of Santa Catarina; Banco Minerva of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; and the Biblioteca Digital of the State University of Campinas, São Paulo.¹  The scholarly articles were located in the data base of ABED – the Brazilian Association for Distance Education, whose records yielded the papers approved in the international congresses and national seminars organized by that Association, as well as the articles published in its new online journal, RBAAD-Brazilian Review of Open and Distance Learning; and also pertinent papers contained in the Annals of the National Congresses of ANPED – National Association of Graduate Studies and Research in Education.

            Retrieval of the titles was done through the search terms “distance education” (educação à distância), “teaching at a distance” (ensino à distância), “learning at a distance” (aprendizagem à distância), “education on-line”  (educação on-line), “teaching on-line” (ensino online), “learning on-line” (aprendizagem on-line), “virtual education” (educação virtual), “virtual teaching” (ensino virtual), “virtual learning” (aprendizagem virtual), sought  out in the search engines of these data bases.

            All works which fell into the various “generations” of DL were included, namely, correspondence courses, tele-education (synchronous), multi-media models, and flexible learning (asynchronous, through the Internet). In all cases, the minimum information required for inclusion was: complete title, name of author or authors, institutional identification, key-words, abstract, and year of defense or publication. In some 4 to 5% of works found, it was impossible to discover the year of production, and these items were not included.

 

 

 

            B – Treatment of the Data

Once the pertinent works were identified, a digital record was established for each (32 doctoral dissertations, 459 masters theses and 356 journal articles) in a data base specially-prepared to manage this bibliographic information.²  The data base was structured so as to offer a visually-friendly form for each register containing rather complex information, as the following figure shows:

 

 

Figure 1 – Example of the principal screen of the data base management system

Initially, the dissertations, theses and articles were indexed together with the bibliographic references, the key-words, and the abstracts indicative of the contents.  Later on, the research staff filled out additional forms with analytical data, including a classification by categories and range of coverage.

            Once this stage had been reached, with the forms for indexing and classification filled out, statistics as to categories, coverage, instituitional origem and year of defense/publication were generated, preparing the data for interpretation by the staff.  To facilitate analysis, seven grand categories were established:

·        Philosophy, Policies and Strategies: general principles, strategies, politics and goals of distance education, general and local history of DL;

·        Content and Skills:  regular curricular content, extra-curricular content, values, attitudes, basic intellectual and technical skills;

·        Pedagogies and Technologies:  doctrines, principles and methods of distance education aided by information and communication technologies;

·        Support and Services:  physical and virtual infra-structure, help networks, and DL projects;

·        Management and Logistics:  articulation of human, material, and financial resources for carrying-out DL projects;

·        Research and Evaluation:  qualitative and quantitative descriptions of student performance, of the internal didactic situation created by the institution and by agents of the teaching-learning process;

·        Quality Assurance and Certification:  evaluation of teaching quality and of the results of the education given by external and central authorities, the certification of competencies, of proficiency and professional qualification.

 

These categories are used by the ICDE-International Council for Open And Distance Learning to classify the themes of sessions in its World Conferences on Open and Distance Learning.  To a certain extent, the categories reflect the process involved in DL: a general definition of principles and strategies, selection of content and skills, choice of educational methods and techniques, organization of the support infrastructure, implantation management, and evaluation and certification.  We refined somewhat the domains of the categories by extracting definitions from the Thesaurus Brasileiro de Educação (Brazilian Thesaurus of Education),³ and then classified the material found according to its coverage and the educational audience to which it was directed, in the following categories:

·        Corporate Education:  training, professional development and updating in the environment of companies, public, private, and non-governmental organizations;

·        Education of Young Adults:  initiatives directed at benefiting young adults with little schooling and educational programs geared specifically to young people and adults;

·        Special education:  programs directed at the education of persons with physical or mental disabilities ;

·        Infant Education: educational programs for children from 0 to 10 years of age;

·        Primary Level Schooling:  programs of basic, obligatory schooling;

·        Secondary Level Schooling:  post-primary level schooling, with a view towards deepening basic learning, preparation for work and educating the fully-rounded citizen; it includes program of vocational-technical training;

·        Higher Education:  programs of undergraduate studies and graduate studies (with and without theses);

·        Education in Social Movements:  programs related to education for the environment, workers unions, movements of those without land, re-education of prisoners, and the like;

·        Teacher Training:  governmental and private initiatives to augment the degree of schooling of teachers or to prepare them for distance education or for the use of information and communication technologies in the classroom;

·        Multi-Faceted Applications:  research applicable to all or more than just one area of coverage.⁴

III – Results

            A – Overall View of the Data

We observed significant productivity among the masters-degree programs (459 theses, or 54.0 % of the total of works found) and in the papers presented in scholarly meetings (356 papers, or 42.0 % of the total), but the field appears to be very modest in producing advanced studies at the doctoral level (32 works, corresponding to only 4.0 % of the total).  Ninety percent of the papers (321 in absolute numbers) were contributions to the international and national meetings organized in the period by ABED-the Brazilian Distance Learning Association.  Ten percent of the articles (35) were prepared for the annual meetings of ANPED-the Association for Graduate Studies and Research in Education, specifically for the Group in Communication and Education.  With regard to the theses, it was possible to analyze the contributions of the principal institutions, state by state and by region in the country, revealing the noteworthy case of the high productivity of the State of Santa Catarina, in the south of Brazil. The Federal University of Santa Catarina, where there was a fortuitous union of circumstances (forward-looking leadership and able management, strong financial support from State and Federal governments and the realization of a large number of DL projects for internal and external partners), resulted in the generation of an extraordinary number of papers and theses.⁵

 

 

          Table 1 – Theses and Dissertationss on Distance Learning (1999-2003) by Region, State and Institution

 

B – Interpretation by Year of  Publication

 

           We observed a very positive rate of growth beginning in 1999 (62 titles, or 7.32% of the total), with production growing in each subsequent year (129 titles, or 15.23% of the total in 2000; 160 titles, or 18.89% of the total in 2001), and practically doubling in growth in 2002 (288 titles, or 34.0 % of the total).  The reduction of productivity in 2003 (208 titles, or 24.56% of the total) could be in part a consequence of the so-called “explosion of the bubble,” the 2000-2001 phenomenon when the overheated NASDAQ investment market collapsed, weakening belief in the possibilities of companies, government, and society in dot.com ventures and in the revolutionary power of technology in general.  Another cause might have been the re-structuring of the highly productive Graduate Program in Production Engineering at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, because of the criticism, by an evaluating committee sent by the Ministry of Education, of the program having too many students per advisor. Nevertheless, the annual “distribution” of the titles among theses, dissertations and scholarly journal articles shows reasonable coherency, with the exception of 2001, when the number of articles was rather low in relation to the annual average of articles (71.20%) and in relation to the number of theses and dissertations successfully defended.

 

                       Table 2 – Titles in Distance Learning by Year of Publication

 

 

 

C – Interpretation by Category and by Coverage

                        As explained earlier, a qualitative analysis of the total grouping of theses and journal articles treating DL would depend upon the definition of the categories and of the types of coverage appearing in the works found.  Table 3 represents the confrontation of the two different classifications, and offers a more detailed view of that which Brazilian researchers of the period in question were looking at when they investigated DL.

 

           Table 2 – Titles on Distance Learning  (1999 - 2003) by Category and Coverage of Subject

				<--------------------------- Coverage  --------------------------->
		Titles	%	Continuing Education	Corporate Education	Education of Youth and Adults	Education  Social Movements	Higher Education	Infant Education	Multi-Application	Primary Schooling	Secondary Schooling	Special Education	Teacher Training
	Titles	847	100,0%	47	46	14	9	174	8	340	37	35	26	111
	%			5,5%	5,4%	1,7%	1,1%	20,5%	0,9%	40,1%	4,4%	4,1%	3,1%	13,1%
<--------------------------- Category  --------------------------->	Philosophy, Policies and Strategies	146	17,2%	8	6	5	4	17	1	60	3	4	2	36
	(%) in relation to total			0,9%	0,7%	0,6%	0,5%	2,0%	0,1%	7,1%	0,4%	0,5%	0,2%	4,3%
	(%) in relation to coverage			5,5%	4,1%	3,4%	2,7%	11,6%	0,7%	41,1%	2,1%	2,7%	1,4%	24,7%
	(%) in relation to categories			17,0%	13,0%	35,7%	44,4%	9,8%	12,5%	17,6%	8,1%	11,4%	7,7%	32,4%
	Content and Skills	70	8,3%	6	1	0	3	9	2	21	11	9	4	4
	(%) in relation to total			0,7%	0,1%	0,0%	0,4%	1,1%	0,2%	2,5%	1,3%	1,1%	0,5%	0,5%
	(%) in relation to coverage			8,6%	1,4%	0,0%	4,3%	12,9%	2,9%	30,0%	15,7%	12,9%	5,7%	5,7%
	(%) in relation to categories			12,8%	2,2%	0,0%	33,3%	5,2%	25,0%	6,2%	29,7%	25,7%	15,4%	3,6%
	Pedagogy and Technologies	298	35,2%	12	9	5	2	67	4	113	19	9	14	44
	(%) in relation to total			1,4%	1,1%	0,6%	0,2%	7,9%	0,5%	13,3%	2,2%	1,1%	1,7%	5,2%
	(%) in relation to coverage			4,0%	3,0%	1,7%	0,7%	22,5%	1,3%	37,9%	6,4%	3,0%	4,7%	14,8%
	(%) in relation to categories			25,5%	19,6%	35,7%	22,2%	38,5%	50,0%	33,2%	51,4%	25,7%	53,8%	39,6%
	Support and Services	132	15,6%	9	8	0	0	22	1	76	2	4	3	7
	(%) in relation to total			1,1%	0,9%	0,0%	0,0%	2,6%	0,1%	9,0%	0,2%	0,5%	0,4%	0,8%
	(%) in relation to coverage			6,8%	6,1%	0,0%	0,0%	16,7%	0,8%	57,6%	1,5%	3,0%	2,3%	5,3%
	(%) in relation to categories			19,1%	17,4%	0,0%	0,0%	12,6%	12,5%	22,4%	5,4%	11,4%	11,5%	6,3%
	Management and Logistics	118	13,9%	11	15	2	0	45	0	22	1	7	2	13
	(%) in relation to total			1,3%	1,8%	0,2%	0,0%	5,3%	0,0%	2,6%	0,1%	0,8%	0,2%	1,5%
	(%) in relation to coverage			9,3%	12,7%	1,7%	0,0%	38,1%	0,0%	18,6%	0,8%	5,9%	1,7%	11,0%
	(%) in relation to categories			23,4%	32,6%	14,3%	0,0%	25,9%	0,0%	6,5%	2,7%	20,0%	7,7%	11,7%
	Research and Evaluation	69	8,1%	1	4	2	0	13	0	42	1	2	1	3
	(%) in relation to total			0,1%	0,5%	0,2%	0,0%	1,5%	0,0%	5,0%	0,1%	0,2%	0,1%	0,4%
	(%) in relation to coverage			1,4%	5,8%	2,9%	0,0%	18,8%	0,0%	60,9%	1,4%	2,9%	1,4%	4,3%
	(%) in relation to categories			2,1%	8,7%	14,3%	0,0%	7,5%	0,0%	12,4%	2,7%	5,7%	3,8%	2,7%
	Quality Assurance and Certification	14	1,7%	0	3	0	0	1	0	6	0	0	0	4
	(%) in relation to total			0,0%	0,4%	0,0%	0,0%	0,1%	0,0%	0,7%	0,0%	0,0%	0,0%	0,5%
	(%) in relation to coverage			0,0%	21,4%	0,0%	0,0%	7,1%	0,0%	42,9%	0,0%	0,0%	0,0%	28,6%
	(%) in relation to categories			0,0%	6,5%	0,0%	0,0%	0,6%	0,0%	1,8%	0,0%	0,0%	0,0%	3,6%

 

      With relation to the Categories, we can offer the following observations:

 

• The research category which most stood out is that of Pedagogy and Technologies (35.18% of the total), focused principally on Multi-Faceted Applications, Higher Education and Teacher Training (which together represent 75.2% of the titles).  It is possible to observe here a strong intention of approximation between two complementary areas in on-line DL: researchers experienced in technology acquiring the theoretical background necessary to make pedagogical decisions, and researchers from the field of education seeking to incorporate the fundamentals of computer science to their investigations. It is perhaps important to note that, in the classification process, we included in the category Pedagogy and Technologies those works which emphasized the relation between technological tools and learning.  The creation of new software, the study of physical support networks, and all other research directed at technological development in its strictest sense were classified as Support and Services.
• It is possible to observe, in second ranking order, the high concentration of research in the area of Philosophy, Policies and Strategies (17.2%), which indicates strong interest in “thinking about” DL in the present context or in a historical framework, and examining possible wider implications of politics and policies.  Also salient are the concentrations of interest in Multi-Faceted Applications and Teacher Training (together reaching 65.8%), indicating a tendency more towards theory than towards the different levels or contexts of applications.  One could also note here a distinction between the categories of Management and Logistics, which includes the analytical investigation of administrative policies, and the results of projects already terminated or still in progress, and that of Philosophy, Policies and Strategies, which tended to deal more with questions of justifications for projects and policies.
• In the category Support and Services (15.6% of all the titles), 57.6% were classified as covering Multi-Faceted Applications.  A preponderance of titles in this area were directed at the study of audio-conferencing, video-conferencing, environments for virtual learning, mobile computational technologies, and tools for simulation, though in general they were not tied down to any specific application context.
• The works collected under Management and Logistics were fourth in the ranking, with 13.9% of the total, of which 38.1% focused on Higher Education.  This was, in fact, the only category in which a specific application focus contained more titles than that of Multi-Faceted Applications (18.6%).  Most of the works were journal articles, theses, and dissertations which described projects and initiatives in DL within Higher Education programs or courses. One can also note here attention given to Corporate Education (12.7%), Teacher Training (11.0%) and Continuing Education (9.3%).
• The category Content and Skills, although representing only 8.3% of all the works encountered, merits a more detailed analysis with regard to the fields of knowledge involved.  Of the 70 titles found, 60.0 % were concerned with the teaching of Portuguese language (including literacy) and Mathematics (with emphasis on Geometry and Statistics), followed by 14.0% for Foreign Languages (especially English and Spanish), 11.0% for Physics, Chemistry and Biology, 9.0% for Computer Science (including entry-level learning and programming logic), 3.0% for History and Geography, and 3.0% for Physical Education. In the case of the 30.0% grouped in Multi-Faceted Applications, it was possible to observe interest in the development of general skills such as verbal expression, logical thinking and digital “fluency,” as well as strong interest in Secondary Level Schooling  and Higher Education (each with 12.9%), revealing greater concern with the teaching of specific academic disciplines.
• Research and Evaluation followed, with 8.1% of all titles, a somewhat low indicator of interest, but which perhaps can be explained by the incipiency of on-line learning and the newness of practical experience with it.  Almost 61.0% of these titles suggested that they dealt with Multi-Faceted Applications, revealing that most probably they were generalized discussions of the question of evaluation in DL.
• Truly disappointing was the indicator of 1.7% (merely 14 titles) in the category Quality Assurance and Certification, though we were not surprised by the distribution of the coverage: Multi-Faceted Applications had 6 titles, consistent with the line of generic studies identified in the prior categories; Teacher Training, with 4 titles, probably the result of Article 87 of the Brazilian Government’s Law of Policies and Directives for  Education, of 1996, which, concerned with the high number of “lay teachers” (primary school teachers who themselves never finished their own high school studies...in fact, some 16.0% of Brazil’s 2.4 million schoolteachers do not possess the legally-required years of schooling for teachers, hence the great interest in DL projects to diminish this sorry state), establishes 2007 as the target for serious application of the laws regarding teacher preparation; Corporate Education, with 3 titles, showed an understandable concern with quality assurances and performance results.

With regard to Coverage, we can offer the following observations:

·        As was mentioned above, we rather suspect a certain superficiality in the research works found by us, since in almost categories, with the exception of Management and Logistics, the coverage indicated is that of Multi-Faceted Applications:  Philosophy, Policies and Strategies (41.1%), Content and Skills (30.0%), Pedagogy and Technologies (37.9%), Support and Services (57.6%), Research and Evaluation (60.9%), and Quality Assurance and Certification (42.9%).  This could, of course, indicate a “pulverizing” of the thinking behind each research project, making quite difficult any serious, deep investigation or reflection with regard to a specific action or area, and thereby diminished opportunity for arriving at significant conclusions.

·        Higher Education concentrated 20.5% of the titles, with emphasis on Pedagogy and Technologies (38.5%), and Management and Logistics (25.9%).  It was possible to see among the titles a tendency to re-think methodological questions of teaching, provoked most likely by the introduction of new technologies into undergraduate and graduate studies, an institutional movement responding to this new modality in education.

·        It is interesting to note that 72.0% of the 111 titles in Teacher Training (which represent 13.1% of the total) are “situated” between the categories of Pedagogy and Technologies and Philosophy, Policies and Strategies, indicating an approach to problems which is more generalist and geared to the production of essays than to the experimental or quantitative, and perhaps distant from the proposal of useful improvements in educational practices. The noteworthy appearance of Quality Assurance and Certification (28.6%) in this context has already been commented upon.

  ·  Surprisingly, companies are encouraging research in Corporate Education (5.5%), more than was noted in

      Primary Level Education (4.4%), Secondary Level Education (4.1%), Special Education (3.1%),

      Education of Youth and Adults (1.7%) and Infant Education (0.9%). Not surprisingly, however, the focus of  

      these investigations involved Quality Assurance and Certification (21.4%) and Management and Logistics 

      (12.7%).⁶

 

IV – Principal Conclusions

            Long seen as a palliative, a supplement for the education of adults with little or no schooling, distance learning in recent years has reached the status of a privileged solution for adults engaged in the marketplace, in the world of consumerism, and as citizens in a democratic society.  The political, economic and social transformations of the last two decades, sometimes called the entry into the Knowledge Society, allied with the explosion in all sectors of information and communications technologies, have contributed to the renewal of interest in distance learning in the most varied range of experiences, but especially that of adults who must maintain themselves in a continuous process of personal and professional development, preferably taking advantage of the convenience represented by learning anytime and anywhere, a possibility made a reality by the technological connections now available.  Keeping this scenario in mind, the results of the present study reveal a large contingent of “new players” on the stage --  researchers who are approaching an “old” theme (distance education), now dressed in new “apparel” (on-line distance learning) – provoking a return to fundamentals on the part of those who do not yet possess a solid basic preparation in the field.

            A rapid analysis of the key-words attributed by authors to their works revealed a certain degree of insecurity on their part, seen in the highly generic, over-reaching and repetitive terms used. Even in abstracts as brief as 250 words, we could sense the introductory character of the thinking, the need to “warm-up” the discussion before entering into the principal subject of the study, as if all investigations in the field of distance learning had to begin with a defense of its importance. In addition, remembering that we are discussing a body of scholarly literature which inevitably intersects with almost all of the social sciences (52.4% of the titles were classified within the categories Pedagogy and Technologies and Philosophy, Policies and Strategies), it should come as no surprise that most authors felt it necessary to establish, initially, what was to be understood by the basic concepts to be touched upon. Such clarification became even more urgent in the present moment of substantial social, economic and political changes, which in turn oblige us to re-think older concepts and paradigms (Filatro, 2004, pp. 35-44), but, when all is said and done, depicts a backdrop of research effort which is still incipient and somewhat shallow.

            Consequently, as a rather recent area of study in the academic world, research in DL has revealed itself to be more a form of self-learning for those who wish to study and practice this educational approach.  Considering the lack in Brazil of a broad range of offerings of undergraduate and graduate programs to prepare professionals in DL, the possibility of carrying out research on the subject for advanced degrees at least offers encouragement to enthusiastic beginners.

When we join several blocks of the categories and coverages already analyzed, we observe, with surprise, that only 13.7% of the total number of titles deal with non-formal education (continuing education, corporate education, education of youth and adults, and education in social movements).  If the explosion of DL accompanies the relocation of education within society, into a place more central and essential, then the research connected with it seems  much too attached to systems of formal education, which was the subject of 29.0% of the titles distributed among Primary Level Schooling (4.4%), Secondary Level Schooling  (4.1%), and Higher Education (20.5%).   This last indicator does indeed cause concern, given the Brazilian Ministry of Education’s ambivalence on the question of tertiary-level DL (Litto, 2002).⁷

The indicator of research focused on Teacher Training (13.1%) likewise seems low if we consider the enormous problem of human resources that Brazilian education is currently facing (the Census of 2000 revealed that only 47.3% of the primary school teachers in the country have college degrees, and since then, many programs of distance learning for in-service teachers have begun throughout the country).  Special Education also had a disappointing number of titles (3.1%), contrasting with the needs of the country, which, according to the government’s Census of 2002, has 24.6 million inhabitants with special needs (14.5% of the total population).

 

 

V – Recommendations and Challenges

 

            The 847 works examined for this study revealed some clear patterns of development of the research community in DL in Brazil.  A large part of the literature produced in the period serves to demonstrate the importance of DL in the present context of social and economic development in the country. Many researchers defended the implementation and regulation of DL, and as well investigated  methodological and technological possibilities; they analyzed modernized organizational structures, and proposed new forms of developing contents and skills, but they still left much to be done. Considering how recent it is that DL began to make new conquests as an alternative and effective approach to education, gaining credibility in the minds of politicians and the society in general, it behooves us to encourage future research which will offer subsidies to the formulation of public policies and the formation of educational profissionals specialized in DL, so as to find appropriate solutions for many of the most pressing problems afflicting education in Brazil: improving teacher qualification, especially at the primary, secondary and tertiary levels; reaching out to minorities and persons with special needs in the population; and making access to learning in remote geographic areas of this vast country more democratic, more accessible and more convenient.

            Finally, recognizing the present limits of the range of coverage of the works found by us, and which do not permit us to advance beyond the interpretations and conclusions already offered above, we intend to repeat this study, applying the same methodology to a larger group of research-producing institutions, and refining the system of knowledge management we developed, in order to probe more deeply into the qualitative analysis of the data, so that we can compare the incidence of key-words selected by authors; analyze questions of research methodologies used by authors; examine and collate the bibliography used by authors; and furnish to readers more detailed classifications of the material found, especially with greater historical details. 

 

 

 

 

VI – Notes

 

¹ Although many institutions are included in the two principal virtual respositories of theses and dissertations, some do not make available through on-line access enough information about the contents of their theses to have been useful for this project, and for this reason it was not possible to include all of their academic production.

² The data base management system Sigma Ò works with the data base software Microsoft Access and SQL Server, and programming language Active Server Pages (ASP), using the Web Internet Information Server for publication of web pages. It is our intention to make the entire data base containing bibliographic titles and abstracts available on the web to all interested parties, most probable on the site of ABED -  www.abed.org.br  .    

³  See www.icde.org  and www.inep.gov.br .

⁴  It should be noted here that, due to the incipient nature of much of the research in DL in Brazil at this time, those authors who do not explain clearly the context in which their research was set, had their works classified by us as covering many areas, hence the designation Multi-Faceted Applications.

⁵  The numeric superiority of the Federal University of Santa Catarina as a producer of research in DL in the period is related to the significant investments made in the UFSC program by the government of that State in teacher training through DL, by private companies who wished to offer advanced training at the masters level to their employees, and by trade unions in various fields of endeavor—all choosing to use DL as the principal mode of delivery, whether through videoconferencing, the web, or both.

⁶  It would be useful to compare this data with the distribution of members of ABED: 50% university professors and institutions; 30% corporate personnel and companies; 10% national-level vocational training institutions such as SENAI, SESI and SENAC; 5% teachers and schools; 5% NGO’s, museums and libraries (2004 data).

⁷  Data collected in 13 June 2004 by the Ministry of Education’s Secretariat for Higher Education reveal that of 1,900  institutions of higher education operating at the present time in the country, only 29 institutions have been authorized to grant diplomas for undergraduate courses given through DL.  36 institutions have been authorized to award certificates to those completing DL courses at a level somewhere between a bachelor’s and a master’s degree (“lato sensu” is the term used in Brazil), and 4 institutions have been authorized by the Secretariat to give diplomas to those finishing DL “sequencial courses”.  At the same time, the Secretariat admits to there being a waiting list of over 4,000 requests for beginning DL courses at the university level and no perspective of having conditions to examine these requests for authorization within the near future. (See: www.mec.gov.br/sesu/educdist.shtm#institutions  .

 

 

 

VII - Bibliography

 

FILATRO, Andrea. Design instrucional contextualizado: educação e tecnologia. São Paulo, SENAC-SP, 2004.

LEE, Y., DRISCOLL, M. P & NELSON, David W. “The past, present, and future of research in distance education: results of

     a content analysis.”   Forthcoming in the American Journal of Distance Education.

 

 LITTO, Fredric (January, 2002). “The Hybridization of Distance Learning in Brazil -- An Approach Imposed by Culture.”      

    International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning: 2, 2 [iuicode: http://www.icaap.org/iuicode?149.2.2.6]

MOORE, Michael & KEARSLEY, Greg.  Distance Education – a system view. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1996.

REKKEDAL, Torstein.  “Research in Distance Education – Past, Present and Future (1994).”  http://www.nettskolen.com/forskning/29/intforsk.htm  [Accessed 15 May 2004].

SIMEROTH, Jason; BUTLER, Suzanne; KUNG, Hui-Chen; MORRISON, James. “A Cross Sectional Review of Theory and Research in Distance Education.” In:  Online Journal of Distance Education Administration. Summer 2003 - Volume 6, Issue 2.  http://www.westga.edu/%7Edistance/ojdla/summer62/simeroth62.html  [Accessed 15 May 2004].

WRIGHT, Thomas C., HOWELL, Scott L. “Ten Efficient Research Strategies for Distance Learning.”In: Online Journal of Distance Education Administration. Spring 2004 - Volume VII, Number I.  http://www.westga.edu/%7Edistance/ojdla/spring71/wright71.html   [Accessed 15 May 2004].

Internet URL’s

·        Annals of the National Conferences of ANPED (the National Association of  Graduate Study and Research in Education):  www.anped.org.br/inicio.html

·        Data Base of Papers Presented in Annual Meetings of ABED (Brazilian Association for Distance Education): www.abed.org.br

·        Data Bse of Theses, UnB - University of Brasília:   www.teses.cpd.unb.br/

·        Data Base of Theses, UFSC - Federal University of Santa Catarina:   http://teses.eps.ufsc.br/tese.asp

·        Data Base of Theses in Digital Form,  IBICT - the Brazilian Institute for Information in Science & Technology:  http://bdtd.ibict.br/bdtd/

·        Data Base Minerva of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro: www.minerva.ufrj.br/

·        Digital Library of UFRGS - Federal  University of Rio Grande do Sul:   www.biblioteca.ufrgs.br/bibliotecadigital/

·        Digital Library of UNICAMP – State University of Campinas:   http://libdigi.unicamp.br/document/search.php

·        Virtual Library of Distance Education of Prossiga – CNPq (National Council for Scientific & Technological  Development):  www.prossiga.br/edistancia/

·        Dedalus USP – University of São Paulo:   http://www.usp.br/sibi/

·        IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography & Statistics):    www.ibge.gov.br

·        ICDE (International Council for Open and Distance Education): www.icde.org

·        INEP (National Institute for Pedagogical Studies):  www.inep.gov.br/pesquisa/thesaurus

·        Lumen PUC-SP – Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo:  http://lumen.pucsp.br/

* Fredric Michael Litto is President of ABED-the Brazilian Distance Education Association, Coordinator of the “School of the Future” of the University of São Paulo, and recently retired as Professor of Communications in the University of São Paulo; Andrea Filatro is a doctoral student in the School of Education of the University of São Paulo and Coordinator of Projects in Distance Learning of Universia-Brasil.  Claudio André is a doctoral student in the School of Education of the University of São Paulo and a consultant in projects in distance education.