DEVELOPMENT OF DISTANCE LEARNING IN HIGHER EDUCATION ABROAD IN THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF UKRAINIAN PEDAGOGICAL SCIENCE

Abstract

The problem of developing distance learning in higher education in Ukraine became relevant at the intersection of the 1990s and 2000s. During its implementation, foreign experience in this area was actively studied. Thus, the historiography of Ukrainian pedagogical science has accumulated a significant array of various studies that require systematisation and comprehensive analysis. The purpose of the article is to analyse the historiography of Ukrainian pedagogical science on the development of distance learning in the higher education system abroad in order to identify the achievements, bottlenecks and prospects for further research on this issue. It has been determined that the dynamics of the historiographical process under study were marked by three main stages: 1) post-Soviet (1991 - 2000/2001); 2) pro-European (2002 - 2009/2010); 3) ‘globalist’ (since 2011-2012). The scientometric analysis of representative and special thematic bibliographic indexes allowed us to determine the dynamics of the development of research on the foreign experience in organising distance higher education, their thematic perspectives, and the views of scientists on the role of this problem in the structure of scientific and pedagogical knowledge. In addition to scientific articles, which constituted the vast majority (85-90%) of this array of historiographical sources, two to five or seven textbooks and approximately the same number of materials from scientific conferences appeared annually in it. A substantive analysis of representative monographs and theses has been carried out, which reflect the main trends and nature of the development of the historiography of Ukrainian pedagogical science on the organisation of distance learning in the system of higher education abroad. The conclusions indicate that with the appearance of the first studies on the problem under consideration in 1996/7, their growth during the second and third historiographical periods did not actually decrease, but their thematic perspectives changed. Despite the narrow regional studies orientation of such studies, their authors tried to comprehensively cover all the aspects of the development of distance learning in HEIs of foreign countries.