ABSTRACT
When I first encountered the term ‘flexible learning’ some years ago, I was wryly amused at its possible meanings and implications. I had visions of learners bending and flexing as they learned their calculus, psychology or history. Given the enthusiasm with which it has been adopted in some countries, perhaps I should have been more respectful. Educators – or, more likely, educational policy-makers and politicians – have landed teachers and trainers with some rather ‘challenging’ names of forms of educational practice over the years. Those familiar with (what is now called) distance education will know that there are various terms which have been used to name practices in the field: ‘external studies’, ‘correspondence education’, ‘extramural studies’, ‘extension studies’, ‘off-campus study’; and some of these are still in use. The schools sector has had its fair share with ‘open classrooms’, ‘discovery learning’ and ‘integrated studies’. But perhaps some of the most difficult for those of us involved in the teaching and training of adults have been those which have sought to describe our various excursions outside the classroom, not just in the physical sense, but also in the curricular and pedagogical senses. Some of those are terms from distance education mentioned above, but others have been those more concerned with (ostensibly at least) focusing on the learners’ and/or employers’ needs, interests and contexts. As Nunan explains in Chapter Four, such terms are ‘independent learning’, ‘open learning’, ‘open training’ or, of course, ‘flexible learning’ or ‘flexible delivery’.
