ABSTRACT
The framework developed by Y. Bertrand divides educational models into three broad categories: institution-centred models, person-centred models, and society-centred models. The main feature of institution-centred models lies in maximising the effectiveness and the efficiency of educational practice. Institutions and projects do exist which are exclusively designed around a particular educational model: neighbourhood or community education projects aimed at bringing about social and political change, or schools purporting to teach according to a particular behavioural or humanistic philosophy, would be examples. The majority of distance education projects in the formal education sector are what Bertrand would call institution-centred, inspired predominantly by systematic models of education. Many distance education projects in the formal educational sector conform to institution-centred models in which the primary focus is on increasing the efficiency of the institution as a purveyor of mass education. In person-centred educational models the learner is an 'independent' consumer of the products of the system, be they educational materials or services.
