Section Two

Access: A key issue for women's learning

Overview

Access to learning has a number of dimensions: availability of learning at times and places suitable for the learner (physical access); and conditions that meet learner's needs for appropriate content and a supportive environment (social access). This section will focus primarily on the components of physical access, and consider how new learning technologies link into the access chain, comprised of communications infrastructures, institutional systems, community resources and individual learners. It will consider not just technical systems, but also the expectations and decisions that shape those systems. Cost is closely linked to access: this section briefly notes cost issues discussed in greater depth in the next section.

Social aspects of access considered in this section include institutional initiatives to overcome barriers to learning. Social dimensions are also explored in greater depth in the section on equality and quality of learning.

Key factors that determine whether or not learning is truly accessible are related to geography, communications and transportation systems, social and economic situations, gender and language. This section explores the actual and potential role of various educational technologies in providing access to learning and addressing these factors.

These are some of the questions explored in this section on access:

• What are our expectations regarding access to education?
  
  
• What factors affect women's access to learning?
  
  
• What are the layers of access, and how are they linked, from national and regional infrastructures, educational providers, the community to individual learners?
  
  
• How do public policy and technical decisions at various levels affect access to learning?
  
  
• How can learning technologies, both old and new, improve access?
  
  
• What are some important considerations when learning technologies are used to provide access?

Background: What are our expectations regarding access?

As Canadians, we have a particular perspective on access, almost regarding it as one of the essential items of our citizenship. Living in a geographically dispersed and culturally diverse country, we have come to expect that public policy would stipulate some basic standards in access to communication and transportation as a means of allowing citizens to participate in the political, social and economic life of the country. For example, we have come to expect that we can mail a letter anywhere in the country for the same priced stamp, that we will be able to have a telephone at affordable rates, and in most parts of the country, that the road that goes past our house will connect with a network of roads and highways that will take us across Canada. ⁵

Our expectations of access to education are equally a part of the rights we expect as citizens. In Canada, the first country in the British Empire to establish public education, the rationale for accessibility has been shaped by several enduring principles. An important one dates back to 1841, when a founder of the Canadian education system, Egerton Ryerson, argued that universal access to education was essential so that Canada would not be "a nation of hewers of wood and drawers of water"⁶ - that it be able to take on leadership in the political and economic sphere and not be confined to a colonial and dependent role as shipper of raw materials to Britain and recipient of its manufactured goods. That statement, and Ryerson's vision, is still a guiding rationale for providing access to education-to prepare people to contribute to the political and economic life of the nation.

How have expectations changed?

The benchmark of what constituted an adequate education has shifted over the past 150 years, generally in tandem with the demands of the economic system. (It has rarely been argued that people required more knowledge because of an evident need for more personal growth among the population as a whole.) In the earlier part of this century, in a mixed economy dominated by agriculture, grade school completion was regarded as quite adequate for most people. In the 1950's and 1960's, high school completion became the normal expectation. By the 1990's, there were often repeated statements that the new "information economy" required at least 17 years of education. It is not the purpose here to argue With this rationale, but merely to note these prevailing assumptions- that the purpose of education is to prepare people to be part of the workforce, and that increased levels of education provide better preparation for this role.