ABSTRACT
Tutors in distance education have always been undervalued. This is a result of many factors. But the underlying explanation, I believe, resides in the belief that ‘teaching’ was the preserve of the study materials thus making the ‘teacher’ redundant — at best an unfortunate necessity for the remedial student. (I have always had a suspicion that this is what has made distance education so attractive to many policy makers! The appeal of reducing the numbers of expensive personnel rather than the appeal of access and equity implicit in the value systems of many distance educators.) The provenance of the tutor in distance education literature has invariably been confined to ‘marker’ and ‘giver of feedback’. In addition, in much distance education provision the tutor has invariably been the provider of ‘learner support’. Learner support is frequently but, mistakenly in my view, narrowly con-ceived as the range of services that guide the student through the administrative maze of off-campus study — this is often conceptualised as a counselling/mentoring type activity — not an educational, and certainly not an academic one. Thus distance education provision, despite the existence of Open Universities with missions to democratise educational provision, have unknowingly replicated the hierarchies of the academy. These hierarchies favour and admire the academic role over all others.
