| Contemporary social conditions underscore current educational needs and the adoption of national policies for lifelong learning constitutes an important step in promoting the legitimacy of self-directed learning. Educational services are unevenly distributed throughout Quebec's vast territory; hence, long-distance learning is regarded as providing a solution within industrialized nations' educational policies to the problem of accessibility. Tremblay (1986) defined self-directed learning as a process within which individuals initiate, with or without the assistance of others, the determination of their particular educational needs, the formulation of their educational objectives, the identification of the human and material resources they will need, the selection and implementation of strategies, and the evaluation of results. Of course, its opposite is other-directed learning. To place monitored self-directed learning, the specific educational situation under study, in perspective, we relied upon the work of Candy (1991), who defines it as teaching oneself (rather than being taught), but where the learner does not exercise pedagogical control (as would an autodidact), since content is determined by some other agent (in this case, by a university-level distance education program).; This research undertakes to contribute to institutional consideration of mentoring, perseverance and abandonment that is proper to universities' and Quebec priorities, as conveyed by "performance contracts", as well as to that of monitored self-directed learning within a lifelong learning context. This project aims to identify and describe the pedagogical, psychological and environmental factors that influence perseverance and abandonment of distance education programs chosen by women workers for the purpose of maintaining or acquiring skills.; Just as our predecessors, we must confront the complexity of the phenomena of perseverance and abandonment. All the major factors that could counter abandonment cannot be attributed to distance learning institutions alone. With the exception of individual aptitudes or inescapable obstacles, the analysis of the statements and tests revealed personal characteristics, preferences and behaviours concerning learning that either promoted or impeded work-related, monitored self-directed learning. And the multiplicity of characteristics that emerge from this study must be combined with the expression of these women's expectations of their universities and employers. Even if they no longer feel capable of continuing, lifelong learning remains a shared objective for all the women who participated in this study, whether they were administrators or nurses and had completed the program or not. Indeed, why do these working mothers, worn-out and dissatisfied with tutorial instruction, study? It emerges that anticipated employment gains, rather than institutional mentoring, provide the impetus for perseverance. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)... |
