ABSTRACT
Distance education theory, like the theory of any other field of educational study, has as its focus what is characteristic of the field. This is what Sparkes in 1983 called the general acceptance in the academic community of the emergence of a new set of problems. The new set of problems with which distance education theory deals focus on the concept of distance. As distance education is a field within the discipline ‘education’, it is educational distance that is in question here: distance from the schools, colleges, universities and other educational institutions around the world.
