DISTANCE EDUCATION: PHILOSOPHICAL BASES AND ANALYSIS OF DEFINITIONS

Distance education still represents a quite disputable phenomenon. On the one hand, distance education technologies and electronic learning have been recognized by pedagogical experiences and reflected in the federal law «About education in the Russian Federation». On the other hand, scientists and educators argue about issues such as terms and definitions about distance education and distance learning, mobile learning, electronic learning, virtual learning, etc., its philosophical bases, and, of course, social benefit, advantages and disadvantages of application. The latter have been more investigated, and the literature available contains enough pros and cons. However, there are no investigations into the philosophical bases of the phenomenon. The paper considers philosophical bases of education as of social good proposing them also to be valid for distance education, since the distance education is its subsystem: gnoseological principle, axiological principle and existentialism principle. Modern distance education implies active use of telecommunication media as a means of archiving and reflection of information and a means of learning communication. Learning communication consists of communication itself, interaction, and perception. Learning communication realized in synchronous mode via modern electronic devices involve all three components more or less. One of features of contemporary society is reflection of non-digital reality in digital format. It relates also to education. Thus, the digital reflection of education reproduces its structure, characteristics, functions, enhancing the educational space. It also should be noted, that education consists of two main components - learning and breeding that are tightly connected. It means that each educational situation, each educational environment is aimed at two purposes at once, and it does not depend on the participants’ - teachers and students’ - awareness of this fact. Distance education is partly based on principles of computer aid, audio-visualization, and informatization as well. Since the translation media for distance education is the technology or technical equipment, there are plenty of terms that are often used interchangeably with it. However, they do not mean the same. The paper contains hermeneutic analysis of the most widespread terms and their definitions. The remoteness of educators and students from each other is the main point in the early definitions for distance education, the later ones do not pay attention to social value of education at all, the main idea in them is the digital environment or device. As telecommunication technologies are evolving rapidly, it allows suggesting a new boom of distance education when a new technology to reflect and transmit information appears.

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