Teachers in Distance! : The opportunities and difficulties expressed by teachers in distance education

The purpose of this essay is to show the opportunities and difficulties of teaching within distance education. I will show this from two different parts of the world. One being Sweden and the other Australia, both countries run a distance education program with similar reasons students whom travelling, some living hundreds of miles from any schools and some students with health and or social disadvantages. This study is based on the actual teacher’s accounts and experiences the opportunities and difficulties in teaching in distance. The main method of collecting this data has been through interviews with the teachers, a distance-school administrator and a researcher from Sweden. A survey was mailed to Australia which has been filled in and returned by an administrator/head teacher for distance education. The main research questions asked were: What are teacher’s experiences in distance education? What are the opportunities and difficulties by teaching in distance education? The interview conversations has been structured, generalised and reformulated in order to form a concrete set of teachers overall experiences. The literatures were support for many of the teacher’s thoughts and even things that compliment and add a broader picture of the subject and the results are discussed and weighed up against teacher’s own experiences. The study reaches the conclusion of how the teachers express are of opportunities and difficulties in teaching the students in the best possible way, to stimulate learning by not only focus on teaching content but also on its learning environment